[AccessD] Future of Microsoft Access

All,

I suspect that I have quite a different perspective than most of you
regarding Access.  After many years of working in the IBM mainframe
environment, I now find myself working for a small firm.  We have several
PC-based purchased products and we are using Access to build interfaces and
to provide an easy way to get at data that in the past was very difficult to
get at.

I am very impressed with Microsoft Access and what we are able to do with
it.  So far, I have not encountered anything that needs to be done that
cannot be done with Access.  All of our applications are for internal use
only and are there is no need for them to be Web-based.

Over the past couple months, there have been some comments in this forum
regarding Access and its future.  Some people have said that Access is
declining in use and is becoming a niche product.  I would like to get some
more perspective on this issue.  Again, I am coming from a non-Microsoft
environment, so I do not know the history, evolution, direction, and future
of the Microsoft products.

If not Access for the small business environment, then what?

Are some people suggesting that Visual Studio is going to replace Access?

If so, isn't Visual Studio much more complicated and expensive than Access?

If Access can get the job done, is there a need for a more powerful and
complicated product?

If we continue to build things with Access, are we going to be kicking
ourselves 5 years from now?

These are all probably dumb questions.  Please cut me a little slack as many
years of JCL, DB2, COBOL, BAL, etc have left me a bit feeble-minded  :-)

Thanks in advance for your ideas and perspectives on this topic.

Brad