jwcolby
jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Sat Oct 8 11:51:20 CDT 2011
>but it has two serious problems that nothing can be done about; corruption and sensitivity to its environment. Add another serious limitation, single threaded operation. And for programmers, lack of any kind of inheritance. I tried to build a sql server driver application in Access and failed miserably, and I have about as good a grasp of VBA as you will find. SQL Server would go out and do something for 15 minutes and the Access interface just locked up. SQL Server can do one or a hundred things simultaneously, but Access can only cause it to do one thing at a time, because Access only has one thread. I switched to C# and voila, I have a manager and three supervisors (4 threads) running asynchronous tasks simultaneously. SQL Server is doing BCP out and BCP in simultaneously and a supervisor is shoveling the files out to a VM for third party processing and pulling result files back in when that app is finished with a file. All with three separate status panes announcing progress to the user (me). Updating SQL Server supervisor and process flags to log the state of the process. C# is in another league entirely in terms of raw ability. John W. Colby Colby Consulting On 10/8/2011 12:37 PM, Jim Dettman wrote: > Susan, > > Yes, I was surprised myself. First question I asked was; didn't they read > it? Personally I think you hit it right on and they missed the point (and > intent) entirely. > > The points you made were all ones that Access developers have lived with > over the years. And FWIW, I KNOW they all have had to deal with the same > issues(except for maybe Mark, who posted that first comment), which is why I > don't understand some of those comments. > > And I do think your right; Microsoft is sliding Access towards the end-user > end of the scale. We here all know it's much more then that, but it always > has been marketed as an end-user tool and Microsoft seems to be focusing on > that once again. Last couple of releases have been focused on simplifying > things and adding end-user features rather then anything for developers. > And long standing developer problems are simply not being addressed. > > What I see happening is Microsoft moving away from VBA for all of Office. > Access developers will be either pushed into VS or Lightswitch, which will > become Microsoft's light weight/RAD app development tool. Access may or may > not remain in Office, but if it does, I think it will become a much simpler > product. > > And before everyone gets up in arms about the "light weight" comment above, > I do understand that you can do a wide range of things with Access and I do > love it for that. But it does have some serious limitations. Access > developers have been ingenious over the years in working around a lot of > those limitations (i.e. lack of third party controls), but it has two > serious problems that nothing can be done about; corruption and sensitivity > to its environment. The latter is more of a reference to VBA and > references, but how many of us have dealt with app install issues with > either the full or run-time version? Or multiple versions on the same > machine? If I asked those questions in a room full of developers, I bet you > just about every hand would be raised. > > Personally I've been looking to move away from Access for quite some time > as I am tired of dealing with the environment problems and the eye rolling > every time I mention it. But I made the mistake of focusing on VFP. While > it was more work then Access, it was also a lot more on the "developer" end > of the scale. There was not much that you couldn't do with it. It was no > where near as user friendly though. Just about everything was done from the > command window. In fact I got laughed at a bit when I complained that I > couldn't get the query designer to do a simple two table join right. The > response was "no serious developer uses that". My only come back was "Why > is it called VISUAL VFP then?" Got a lot of grumbles after that<g> > > But the data environment alone when working with forms is something Access > developers would kill for. Add to that the ability to compile into a true > .EXE, work with just about any 3rd party control, build COM objects or > DLL's, having unit testing capability, and being able to do n-tier designs, > and it made it quite attractive. Microsoft unfortunately killed it just as > I was coming up to speed with it, so I was back to square one looking for > the next best thing. I keep trying to get into VS, but I keep getting > pulled back into Access. > > I guess I should be thankful I'm still working and for all those users > that do get in over their heads<g>. > > Jim.