Is there any way to use an Access database... without Access?

[Nicholas Scarpinato]

I know this is a pretty ridiculous question, but I'm forced to ask, because
the operations manager of my company who hired me to build this database for
the returns department does not want to spend $1,300 to buy licenses to put
Access on all of the computers in the returns department. (Talk about being a
tad short-sighted...) He wants me to build a web interface, which I've tried
to explain to him would be a bad idea, not to mention the fact that it won't
work for what we need because my entry forms are parsing data and changing
things on the form itself as data is entered... but I don't think he's
getting the message. I need to know if there's a way to open an Access
database for use without actually having Access installed. I was going to use
OpenOffice, but I would have to recreate all my forms and rewrite the code
for them in OpenOffice VBA, which I know nothing about. I need something that
can open my Access forms.

If anybody has any suggestions, I would love to hear them. I'm actually
hoping there ISN'T just so this guy will have no other choice than to fork
out the money. Our operations manager has always been notoriously cheap when
it comes to purchasing new software. It's funny to me that he's unwilling to
spend $1,300 on a project he himself requested, yet he requested this project
because the returns department is backed up and has almost a million dollars
worth of product sitting on the shelves waiting to be dealt with, not to
mention the couple million more we haven't received credit on from the
vendors because it takes two weeks to research a single item with the system
they use now, which is what this database I was hired to develop is supposed
to replace.

Welcome to corporate America.

 

[akphidelt]

Do you guys have excel or no office products what so ever? If you have excel
you can create a form and then set up and link it with an access table.

 

[Albert D. Kallal]

You can most certainly deploy access applications to computers that don't
have a copy of MS access installed.

There is a royalty free, license free version of MS access that you can
purchase that allows you to distribute that copies to as many computers as
you want. Once this runtime system is installed on all of these computers,
then you can simply place your application on those computers as you do now.

For versions of access prior to 2007, there's a onetime cost to purchase
what is called the developer tools for MS access.

For access 2007, the runtime is completely free and can be downloaded by a
anyone to be placed on any computer, and then you simply copy your
applications to those computers and it will run.

more info here:
http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/developereditionversions.htm

 

[Nicholas Scarpinato]

Albert... I don't know what this forum would do without you.

However, there is a catch to this. I'm developing this database in Access
2003. VSTO is almost as expensive as the licenses, and my operations manager
isn't going to want to spend that much money for one application that only
one person is going to use.

However... aren't the Access 2007 Developer Tools free to download now? So
if I could persuade my operations manager to get me the upgrade version of
Access 2007, I should be able to convert my database to Access 2007, download
the Developer Tools for free, and distribute the runtime as needed... correct?

 

[Nicholas Scarpinato]

Sorry... After re-reading your post, I answered my own question.


It's been a long week.

 

[Rick Brandt]

Sorry... After re-reading your post, I answered my own question.


It's been a long week.

Just don't apply SP1 to your Access 2007 (if you get it). The SP1 for the
free runtime has not been released yet and a file built with SP1 won't run
on a runtime install that is pre-SP1.

 

[Nicholas Scarpinato]

Thanks for the heads-up on that, Rick.

Just don't apply SP1 to your Access 2007 (if you get it). The SP1 for the
free runtime has not been released yet and a file built with SP1 won't run
on a runtime install that is pre-SP1.