There is nothing out of the ordinary, or harder, or more difficult.
Further, there is a FABULOUS scanning tool that will generate GREAT reports
on the status of existing applications on your system
If you are involved in any conversion job, I STRONGLY suggest you get this
tool.
You can find it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/2003/journ/accessconvert.htm
more amazing, if you look at the nice application, the source code is
INCLUDED! (so, if you want to see some Microsoft developed code in
ms-access, grab it!!).
It is interesting that some companies loathe, or are REALLY scared of
upgrading ms-access because of so many horror stories. I can assure you that
in the hands of a experienced ms-access developer, upgrading from access 97
to a2003 is LESS painful then upgrading most other applications. I was
invoiced in a company that upgraded from windows 98 boxes, to office 2003 (a
upgrade long long over due!!). . All of the support people, and network
people, and the company hired to migrate their "other" applications were all
going ape nuts over how upgrading access was going to be their biggest
headache.
Of course, I always run spit database. As the company rolled out new
machines, my applications were converted from a97 to access 2003, but other
machine in the office CONTINUED TO RUN ACCESS 97. In other words, we were
running mixed environments. Needless to say, the vendors upgrading other
products (like Maximizer) etc were stunned, as my applications SEAMLESSLY
UPGRADED to windows xp, and NO INTERRUPTIONS in use of the software
occurred. The other vendors COULD NOT run in a mixed environment like we
could.
By the time the upgrades were finished, the ms-access people came out
smelling like roses, and the other vendors that spend all day complaining
and warning about how difficult the ms-access upgrade would be had huge egg
on their faces, as we clearly out shone all other vendors in the upgrade.
In other words, most of the horror stories about upgrading ms-access is the
result of poor developers,a nd poor setups (like having different versions
of ms-access trying to launch the SAME mdb application, and all kinds of
problems if you let this happen).
There was a number of vendors involved in the upgrade, and a lot of software
and systems were upgraded, but the complex ms-access applications (quotation
system, job costing etc) upgraded without a hitch, and in fact were NOT
interrupted, and were able to run DURING the upgrade (only a few pc's could
be done per day, and thus this whole process took time).
So, the moral of this story is that if you got a good ms-access setup, and
competent people, then you will as a general rule RUN ABSOLUTE CIRCLES
around other software vendors who are upgrading their software.
On the other hand, if the original applications are not split, then you
could very well have a big job on your hand. Think about what happens when
the company has 100 computers, but can only upgrade, and outfit 2 or 3 per
day?
Figure out the time involved - so it is not a surprise that a company will
hire someone to help in upgrading the ms-access stuff, as it can be a very
big job indeed. It is certainly something that the network guy, or the pc
user can not handle. So, sure, hiring someone to help with the upgrade is
not a access 97, or access 2003 thing....it is simply a lot of work.
One company that thought they had a few databases ran the "migration" tools
(in the link above). That scanning tool found 45,000 ms-access
databases....you don't think they need help?
