moving from VBA to VB

  • Thread starter Thread starter Winter Special
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Winter Special

I'd like to move from VBA to VB.

What would I have to use to build forms and reports? Would the MS Visual
Studio be enough?

Thanks

Jack
 
If you don't mind me asking, why?

Development in Access is generally considered to be much faster than doing
the same in VB, as forms in Access are specifically designed for working
with databases.

Add to that the fact that Microsoft has just dropped support for VB, and I'm
not sure I'd recommend going that route.

However, if you're determined, then yes, MS Visual Studio should be
sufficient for Forms. VB isn't very good with reports, though: there is the
built-in DataEnvironment Report tool, but it's not spoken of too highly by
many people. You might look at the Crystal Reports add-in.
 
ugh Crystal Reports. Sorry, feels like a jumper thats too sizes too small
(very restrictive).

I believe it has been said many times that Access is a RAD (rapid
development environment), and to that end is very good at what it does.
Unless you know that your database is going to be used by lots of users, or
if you know that there are some extremely complicated things you wish to do
with it, stick with Access.

With Access, you want to build a form that is related to a table, you
select that table as its datasource and drag controls onto the form - hey
presto.

With VB you need to create the recordset, and populate each control
yourself.

That is just one area where Access is simply faster and easier to mess
about with.

However, making the transition is fairly smooth to be fair - once you know
any VBA you get the gist of the layout of the language, the correct
syntax's and so forth.

What I suggest, and it is something I adopt all the time, is to build my
interim solution in Access, Excel, Word, whatever. Once the bugs have been
ironed out and you've found that the end user actually wanted something
other than what they asked for, then you look at whether you want to move
it into something else.

Hope that helps

John Webb
 
oopsie, RAD <> Rapid Development Environment, though it pretty much means
the same thing...
 
John Webb via AccessMonster.com said:
oopsie, RAD <> Rapid Development Environment, though it pretty much means
the same thing...
Click to expand...

Thanks John & Douglas. As for why, I have some interface work , reading in
flat files received from a remote location, and sticking the data into
Tables, VB would handle this better, don't you think?

Jack
 
Winter Special said:
message


Thanks John & Douglas. As for why, I have some interface work , reading in
flat files received from a remote location, and sticking the data into
Tables, VB would handle this better, don't you think?
Click to expand...

I see no reason why you can't do it with VBA. At that level, there really
isn't much of a difference between VBA and VB.
 
Winter Special said:
Thanks John & Douglas. As for why, I have some interface work , reading in
flat files received from a remote location, and sticking the data into
Tables, VB would handle this better, don't you think?
Click to expand...

Not at all. There is not a lot that VB can do that VBA can't do. There is
a hell of a lot that Access VBA can do that VB can't do.
 
Winter said:
Thanks John & Douglas. As for why, I have some interface work , reading in
flat files received from a remote location, and sticking the data into
Tables, VB would handle this better, don't you think?
Click to expand...


If your text files are even a little tricky to parse out the
fields, take a look at
http://www.mvps.org/access/modules/mdl0057.htm
for a VBA module that might be a big help. If nothing else,
it provides a significant example of how to manipulate text
file input.
 
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