Jim Lawrence
accessd at shaw.ca
Fri Apr 19 13:02:14 CDT 2013
Hi Arthur: That scenario, is becoming more of an issue as there is now is a clear line being drawn between the older 16/32 bit environments and the new 64 bit multi-core systems. This is a major physical change in all the new operating systems and its software. In Microsoft world, 2003/XP is of the old realm, Vista/Windows7 are in the transition region and Windows8 is their first OS in the new world. The above is the long way to say that there really is no direct line between these two environments. In Access, it is probably advised to write two versions and have installation software automatically detect and install the appropriate one. As an aside; it should be noted is that that is the reason why most new developers are building web based products as they effected skirt that whole issue. Also Linux world is basically unaffected as that OS does most of the hardware management. The new Linux version (3.7?), not yet in the distros, is even supposed to run on Intel and AMI chip sets without requiring different OS versions. Jim -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Arthur Fuller Sent: Friday, April 19, 2013 8:10 AM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: [AccessD] RunTime and multiple clients with different AccessVersions While I have now and then had the hubris to think that I know what I'm doing in Access, a friend and colleague posed a question or two to me, to which I found I had no solid answer, so I'm reaching out to my beloved community for some insight. Here are the problem's parameters: 1. The app is a vertical-market thing written in Access and deployed using RunTime. 2. Some but not all the customers have various versions of Access installed. 3. Being an old-timer, my friend still works mostly in Access XP or 2003 or whatever its correct name is. 4. Many of his customers have not moved beyond this version, but lots have, and he is experiencing problems due to this. Not serious problems, but rather annoying messages that mention "installing" and bla bla bla if said clients are running a subsequent version to his preferred dev-version. Preferred solution if possible: 1. Avoid these annoying "intalling" messages on all versions of both Windows and Office. 2. Avoid version-specific builds; build once and it works on all versions of both OS and Office. 3. Handle References problems transparently without user-intervention. Is there some recipe that can make this possible? I personally have never faced this issue, primarily because I do one-offs and do not attempt to sell a product into a vertical market. So I have little or no experience confronting these issues. From my limited experience in this area, I have almost always stubbed my toe when (on my dev box) trying to run 2003/XP alongside 2007+. Whenever I've tried this, I have always been delayed by Office's attempt to reconfigure itself. The only method that I have found so far that works is to isolate the versions inside separate VMs; but that sucks. Any suggestions gratefully accepted. -- Arthur Cell: 647.710.1314 Prediction is difficult, especially of the future. -- Niels Bohr -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com