[AccessD] Future of Microsoft Access

Hi Stuart --

<<<
But we find that the same functionality takes 
several times more effort than Access/SQL Server apps
>>>
That's one company experience - mine is different - and you know I'm in
"advanced/extreme" MS Access/VBA programming league since the end of 90-ies
- I mean I do everyday see the difference - MS Access VBA low vs. VB.NET/C#
high productivity etc....

<<<
Maybe the tougher economy is making people 
more realistic about real-world value in 
their systems development.
>>>
Yes, there many good MS Access VBA/VB6 developers developed many good
applications but there are even more who produce "real crap" - so much waste
of time and other resources - with VB.NET/C# the amount of "crappy software"
is considerably less - and in the case one get a task to "clean-up the crap"
it can be done much quicker using VB.NET/C# apps than with MS Access/VBA/VB6
apps - in the latter case whole rewrite is often needed...

MS Access VBA programming has got missed the whole mainstream trend of the
modern programming - Test Driven Development, and it's (happily) missing now
multi-threaded application development...

You know I'm not an "IT snob" - I'm making my customer software development
for living and my customers are small companies - unfortunately IMO MS
Access is getting to the niche programming (rather large niche probably) but
with MS Access VBA one is rapidly get out of mainstream of modern business
software development, and it will be not so easy to get back on that
mainstream - the more you get "spoiled" with MS Access VBA...

Thank you.

-- Shamil

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Stuart McLachlan
Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2010 4:19 AM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: Re: [AccessD] Future of Microsoft Access

A couple of relevant comments that I have just come across on LinkedIn
(Professional Microsoft Access Developers' Network (PMADN))

 Mark Edwards o  I don't know how passionately anyone else feels about
Access, but when I 
discovered how to bring what I learned in enterprise development to the
Access/VBA 
platform, I discovered a whole, new, powerful development environment that I
like to refer to 
as a "Office Studio powered by Extreme VBA". When I get asked to go to a
client for an 
Access contract, they're expecting the usual, wizard, builder, macro,
querydef object stuff 
that most folks usually do that has limited capabilities. Once they see what
else I can do with 
it, I usually end up in extended engagements that have me getting passed
around from 
department-to-department so everyone can get that custome software app they
have always 
wanted (my last 6-month contract lasted 2.5 years!). I've even had other
contractor 
companies working for the same company that I'm working for ask me to help
them with their 
contract work because they don't have anyone who can do what I do (just
don't let their 
Access people feel inferior - maintain good relationships).

Feel free to visit my company website (www.vbaofficesolutions.com) for a
more colorful 
explanation of "Extreme VBA". 

and

 Armen Stein o  I agree with both Marks above. Access has been
under-appreciated as a 
business software development environment, but I think maybe it's changing.
I'm finding that companies are realizing that they need to get something
done, and that a 
professionally-written Access application (especially with a SQL Server
back-end) fits the bill 
perfectly. And I'm also seeing that we're getting less pushback from "IT
snobs" that once 
insisted that Access wasn't serious enough. Maybe the tougher economy is
making people 
more realistic about real-world value in their systems development.

Regarding Mark E.'s comments about what Access actually is: In a panel I
participated in at 
the last TechEd, I described Access as a "development environment that comes
with a free 
database in the box". Here's a link to the video:

http://mfile.akamai.com/14853/wmv/microsofttec.download.akamai.com/14853/Tec
hEdOnlin
e/Videos/08_NA_dev_TEOPanel_05_low.asx

It's this powerful, rapid development environment that gives Access its
value. We do a lot of 
projects using both Access and ASP.NET. Don't get me wrong, ASP.NET has its
place when 
an app needs to be deployed publically. But we find that the same
functionality takes several 
times more effort than Access/SQL Server apps. That's hard to argue with.