Jim Lawrence
accessd at shaw.ca
Wed Feb 20 15:20:10 CST 2013
Hi JB: Good one Jim and I will save the links. (Even setup a Peach Accounting system once.) Aside: Microsoft fumbled, big time, lost track of its users requirements and instead of morphing the Access product to the users needs, like products like Oracle, Adobe did...it is either evolve or expire. Maybe when companies become too rich, dominant and successful they become conservative and lazy...case in point. After IBMs thrashing in the 1980s, they turned things around and Microsoft is trying to do the same but it will probably take ten years in the wilderness (and the retirement of Steve Ballmer) for a hungry and leaner MS to emerge with the ability to listen instead of dictating...and a real new universe database interface will appear where Access used to be. Jim -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of James Button Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2013 10:10 AM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: Re: [AccessD] Tony's comments Well, I'm a recent joiner of the forum, and a long-time lurker in <http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/access-l.html> 40 years in IT - lots of mainframes (DB2, CICS etc.) Oracle & and PC's since the BBC-B & IBM PC's came into the UK When Windows NT & then 2K, with Office2K were 'new' there was a lot of Access activity in business and on forums - major reasons being: Cheap (well, relatively) development platform, Could be kept away from the main IT 'management' and infrastructure Access 'Forms' and reports made it a reasonable knock-up facility - with input forms and report examples being (almost) as easy to create as working facilities as a set of mainframe based demo layouts, and the Access bits worked! There was a reasonable inbuilt access control facility (if the site's web-police' didn't disable it. AND Most developers were on the second quarter of the learning curve (just before the steep bit!) Then we got OFFICE XP, followed by 2003 - not that much change in the facility - so those learning had got to the point of being well skilled but not experts. BUT There were all those other facilities - PHP, HTML MySQL - and the Oracle facility got to be a fairly fully functional front-end GUI builder Add to that Oracle and DB2 that worked on a PC. And - Blogs blossomed, sand seeded all over everything Meanwhile Access had done little to keep ahead of the competition. THEN - we get 2007, 2010 and the 'user-control' gets 'adjusted' - there is the new Ribbon to learn ( not really an Access 'Tech' subject) And Excel gets to be big enough that you really could do database menipulation and storage in it AND Management could avoid the second tier price premium for the product to be installed So - yes, there are few 'learners' coming onto lists such as this Yes - there are few questions being posed. Similar happenings on the < <http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/access-l.html> and <http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/excel-l.html> and even the beginners forum <http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/excel-g.html> So - if you want this forum to recover then I suspect the forum needs to become a bit more inviting to new users, and include such things as you seem to be putting into your blogs, or at least links to the working examples of problems beginners are liable to encounter That way people would (perhaps) start reccomending it as a startpoint for help Consider for instance - Access forms are relatively easy compared to doing it in Excel. So - how about some instructions as to how to generate data entry forms (with validation) in Access, and then use them in association with SQL data extraction insertion, update and deletion running with Excel as a front-end Currently my usage and experience are such that I am unlikely to be posting solutions, but I'm still (probably) going to be lurking! JimB ----- Original Message ----- From: "Susan Harkins" <ssharkins at gmail.com> To: "Access Developers discussion and problem solving" <accessd at databaseadvisors.com> Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2013 5:36 PM Subject: Re: [AccessD] Tony's comments >> 2. "What is also obvious is that we are failing to attract new minnows. >> It's >> possible that this is because the pool of ambitious Access power-users is >> shrinking." >> >> Those two points go to the heart of the matter; Access is a mature >> product, other products have moved into it's niche, and as a result no >> one >> is doing anything new with it. >> >> For example, why is not anyone talking about Azure or Access web >> databases? Because no one (or very few) are doing anything with them. >> Most >> of us have moved onto other things, so there is nothing new to talk >> about. >> Tony's comment of "Nowadays new Access projects are drying up faster then >> the Sahara" is spot on. It's not just here either, but everywhere. The >> Access TA on EE was one of the top traffic areas since 1996 until 2011. >> Now >> it's not even in the top 50 of the most active. And I see the same thing >> everywhere. Anything that has to do with Access has dropped off the >> cliff >> in the past couple of years. > > ===========I live in a very small Access cave, so my contribution to this > discussion is small, and ... probably askew. I can only go by my readers' > needs and questions. I receive no questions about Access. When I publish > an Access tip or article, no one comments. They're not even viewing the > page. Now, that might be because I'm not giving them what they want -- a > very likely scenario. But no one's asking for anything either. I can't > really draw much of a conclusion, but Access was once my bread and butter. > I didn't stop writing about it because I wanted to -- but because > publishers no longer wanted the content because subscribers no longer paid > for it. > > Susan H. -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com