Future of Access 2

[Guest]

I have read last year's thread on the future of Access but have a few
questions about where Microsoft are going with Access as I need to make
decisions on what to spend my learning time on. I currently develop highly
automated processes using VBA and SQL in Access 2000/2003 for users with full
versions of Access. These users are non-comercial which tends to mean there
equipment is at the cheaper end and their software is not the latest thing.

Are there plans to take Access down the .Net road?

What is the future of VBA, whould it be better to change to VB for future
work? Presumable this would involve deploying .Net.

For new work I am wondering whether it is would be useful to have the
developer's extension which is now packaged with VSTO for the licences to
distribute a run-time version of Access. A few things put me off this:

Developers who only use the Access bit have had to upgrade from VSTO 2003 to
2005 just to get the licences when the Access bit has not changed. Is this
going to keep happening to Developers who are not producing .Net products?
I have seen critisms of the package wizard and I cannot findout if it is
able to check the path of msaccess.exe and create the type of shortcut that
specifies the location of the workgroup file for a secured database.

Any help would be apreciated.

 

[Larry Linson]

I have read last year's thread on the future of Access but have a few
questions about where Microsoft are going with Access

Microsofties are, with management approval, blogging Office 2007. But they
are very closed-lipped about future versions, so you'd need the proverbial
cloudy crystal ball to answer those question. Various people (but not
"many"), occasionally get a "glimpse of the future" under Non-Disclosure
Agreement -- but if they blab, they will lose that privilege. And, most will
"err on the side of caution" because they do not want to lose the privilege.

Last time I checked, Access 2.0 applications still worked in Windows XP, so
unless Vista breaks that tradition, I predict you will be able to create
with the tools you now have, and have the databases work -- for some
significant time. And, of course, if your users continue to maintain the
hardware they have, there's very little incentive to upgrade the OS -- in
fact, as most new OSs have heavy processing, memory, and storage
requirements, it's probably not a good idea for them to do so.

Through Access 2003, Access has no support for the DotNet languages, as
contained in the VSTO. Through Access 2007 (and maybe beyond, because I
haven't tried to keep up with all their press releases), they have committed
to supporting VBA.

Developers who only use the Access bit have had to
upgrade from VSTO 2003 to 2005 just to get the
licences when the Access bit has not changed. Is this
going to keep happening to Developers who are not
producing .Net products?

There may be other reasons for such an upgrade, but the Access runtime is
not one of them. In fact, both Access 2002 and 2003, by default, create
databases in Access 2000 format, so your (appropriately patched) Office
Developer Edition should work just-fine-thankee.

I have seen critisms of the package wizard and I
cannot findout if it is able to check the path of
msaccess.exe and create the type of shortcut that
specifies the location of the workgroup file for
a secured database.

Many developers do opt to invest in one of the third-party installers and
pre-written scripts to accompany it. Others use the VSTO Wizard. It's a
substantial investment, but IIRC trial versions of the Installers are
available so you can investigate to see if they provide you enough ROI. I
assisted in an evaluation of Wise and InstallShield, back in Access 2.0
days, for a client and they chose to use one of the packages... but, in
fact, the client had a plethora of unused Access 2.0 licenses so they opted
to install full, retail Access 2.0 on the user's machine rather than a
runtime.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP



Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your full and helpful comments.
S.

Microsofties are, with management approval, blogging Office 2007. But they
are very closed-lipped about future versions, so you'd need the proverbial
cloudy crystal ball to answer those question. Various people (but not
"many"), occasionally get a "glimpse of the future" under Non-Disclosure
Agreement -- but if they blab, they will lose that privilege. And, most will
"err on the side of caution" because they do not want to lose the privilege.

Last time I checked, Access 2.0 applications still worked in Windows XP, so
unless Vista breaks that tradition, I predict you will be able to create
with the tools you now have, and have the databases work -- for some
significant time. And, of course, if your users continue to maintain the
hardware they have, there's very little incentive to upgrade the OS -- in
fact, as most new OSs have heavy processing, memory, and storage
requirements, it's probably not a good idea for them to do so.

Through Access 2003, Access has no support for the DotNet languages, as
contained in the VSTO. Through Access 2007 (and maybe beyond, because I
haven't tried to keep up with all their press releases), they have committed
to supporting VBA.


There may be other reasons for such an upgrade, but the Access runtime is
not one of them. In fact, both Access 2002 and 2003, by default, create
databases in Access 2000 format, so your (appropriately patched) Office
Developer Edition should work just-fine-thankee.


Many developers do opt to invest in one of the third-party installers and
pre-written scripts to accompany it. Others use the VSTO Wizard. It's a
substantial investment, but IIRC trial versions of the Installers are
available so you can investigate to see if they provide you enough ROI. I
assisted in an evaluation of Wise and InstallShield, back in Access 2.0
days, for a client and they chose to use one of the packages... but, in
fact, the client had a plethora of unused Access 2.0 licenses so they opted
to install full, retail Access 2.0 on the user's machine rather than a
runtime.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP



Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP