New Access Version?

[Tony Toews]

I think you'll find that both Access 2002 and 2003 are significantly more
reliable, especially during development, than Access 2000.

Agreed. I found that doing work in A2000 a form would corrupt about once a week or
so. A2003 hasn't had this problem at all.

Also I really like the smart tags Access pops up on the controls.

For example I added some &s to some unassociated labels. Access
promptly tells me they're unassociated and gives me an option to
associate the label to a control. Nice.

Or if you've renamed fields in the tables the controls based on the
old names are obviously incorrect. Now a little triangle appears in
the corner. Again nice.

Created my first report and I see a little flag in that little grey
box in the upper left hand corner of the report. I click on it and
see a "Common Report Error" "Report width is greater than page width"
with a bunch of options.

Very nice. I can see how this would help the newbie/itinerant Access
users.

I also see lots of flags for the label controls in the headers.

Someone spent some time on these little touches.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm

 

[David W. Fenton]

There have been some nice incremental improvements. For example,
if you change the name of a query, and you have a report based on
that query, the report will automatically updated to reflect the
changed name. That's a nice feature -- renaming objects used to be
so difficult. (There are some drawbacks too. The name game is best
avoided.)

That's one of the *worst* features of A2K and its successors, and
it's (Name AutoCorrect) the first thing any experienced developer
will turn off.

 

[David W. Fenton]

It's safe to say that Microsoft want to drop
support for jet and make MSDE the default database engine (we know
it can be installed silently and without user input).

That would be lunacy of the highest sort for them to do so.

It would mean the dropping of the MDB format, since IT'S A FRIGGING
JET DB.

Furthermore, Jet is not dead at all -- it's running
ActiveDirectory's data store, for instance (this is why from Win2K
on the Jet 4 DLLs are protected OS files).

Jet will never be dropped unless Access completely drops all legacy
support. It may be dropped as the default DB engine, but that would
be stupid as well, since it would mean double workset (i.e., to open
an MDB you have to have Jet loaded).

 

[David W. Fenton]

Want to drop support for jet? Possibly. But they never will.
It's in way too many systems now.

Can't without dropping the MDB format entirely.

Would you use Access if you had to use ADPs exclusively?

Make MSDE the default database engine? That's fine by me so long
as it's about as easy to use as Jet.

There are terrible problems with conflicts between multiple
applications installing the MSDE, since a lot of commercial
applications use MSDE as their data store. I've run into with
conflicts between Veritas Backup and Blackberry Server.

It's a new form of DLL hell, and something that I really don't think
any of us need.

 

[John Vinson]

Well, it's not a workgroup. It's just me and the guy I'm working for, who
likes to get his finger in the pie and rename things -- not just change the
prefixes or whatever, but give them entirely new names.

You need either Visual SourceSafe... or a baseball bat!

John W. Vinson[MVP]

 

[Steven Benn]

That would be lunacy of the highest sort for them to do so.

It would mean the dropping of the MDB format, since IT'S A FRIGGING
JET DB.

Furthermore, Jet is not dead at all -- it's running
ActiveDirectory's data store, for instance (this is why from Win2K
on the Jet 4 DLLs are protected OS files).

Jet will never be dropped unless Access completely drops all legacy
support. It may be dropped as the default DB engine, but that would
be stupid as well, since it would mean double workset (i.e., to open
an MDB you have to have Jet loaded).

Jet may not be dead but do you believe that any improvements will be made to
security? Currently, anyone can break the security and I don't imagine MS
are scurrying around in a desperate rush to fix this.

 

[Neil Ginsberg]

Well, over time he's mellowed out, as he's seen the amount of work I've had
to do to keep up with his changes. But he's just one of these compulsive
"changers".

 

[Neil Ginsberg]

Thanks for the input.

soon?

I think you'll find that both Access 2002 and 2003 are significantly more
reliable, especially during development, than Access 2000. Access 2003 has
slightly better help files than 2002, both of which are better than 2000,
BUT not as good as Access 97. Access 2003 does not have an index on it's
help files, and by default wants to connect you to the Internet to get
help.
A 2003 has solved the Name AutoCorrect bug and fixed some of the other
corruption bugs that plague A2000. I think either A2002 or A2003 is a
worthwhile upgrade. Access 12 (the next version) will have some nice
features, but won't be out for some time, so you may not want to wait.
--
Arvin Meyer, MCP, MVP
Microsoft Access
Free Access Downloads
http://www.datastrat.com
http://www.mvps.org/access

 

[(Pete Cresswell)]

Per Neil Ginsberg:

Well, over time he's mellowed out, as he's seen the amount of work I've had
to do to keep up with his changes. But he's just one of these compulsive
"changers".

Are you getting paid by the hour? If so, maybe just chalk it up to Job
Security...

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

Jet may not be dead but do you believe that any improvements will be made
to security? Currently, anyone can break the security and I don't imagine
MS are scurrying around in a desperate rush to fix this.

As far as I can tell, no file-based application can be made totally secure.

 

[Neil Ginsberg]

Yeah, I get paid for it. But it's damn frustrating. You want to see a final
product eventually. But between continually renaming objects or redoing how
forms work, it's a perpetual development cycle.

 

[tina]

lol....when management has "control over" the developer, a database is never
finished - until it's dropped altogether for something else... <g>

 

[Steve Jorgensen]

Custom events? Haven't seen that in A2000. What are they?

In any class module you create, you can define events, and other objects that
have references to that class defined using WithEvents, can receive calls to
those events from the object that raises it. It's sort of a call-back
mechanism.

 

[Steve Jorgensen]

Agreed. I found that doing work in A2000 a form would corrupt about once a week or
so. A2003 hasn't had this problem at all.

Just one warning, though. Open a database with VBA code in A2003, then open
it again in XP, and it's corrupted for sure. If you go to A2K3, be sure to do
all users at once!

 

[Neil Ginsberg]

So they're not really events, per se, but routines within a class module
that are called, right?

 

[H]

sorry, a little naive to the correct etiquette
in a rush

h

 

[H]

It was a little too strong to suggest that jet will disappear. However, MSDE
will become the default.

They're trying to do it too NT 4 so why not jet. They did it to VB and
dropped support to English Query in the .Net IDE.

SQL Server is clearly at the heart of Microsofts objectives.

In SQL 2005 they've dropped Database Diagrams because they want you to use
case tools.

H

 

[H]

That would be lunacy of the highest sort for them to do so.

It would mean the dropping of the MDB format, since IT'S A FRIGGING
JET DB.

The format would be ADP

Furthermore, Jet is not dead at all -- it's running
ActiveDirectory's data store, for instance (this is why from Win2K
on the Jet 4 DLLs are protected OS files).

I understood that SQL Server was used in Server 2003.

Jet will never be dropped unless Access completely drops all legacy
support. It may be dropped as the default DB engine, but that would
be stupid as well, since it would mean double workset (i.e., to open
an MDB you have to have Jet loaded).

The default format will be an ADP.

Jet will (one day) disappear.

Jet's a big headach to MS.

Let's hope that MS have a momentary lapse of reason and give us Jet.Net
(Here's hoping).

 

[H]

Want to drop support for jet? Possibly. But they never will. It's in
way too many
systems now.

Make MSDE the default database engine? That's fine by me so long as it's
about as
easy to use as Jet.

Microsoft are not afraid to rip up the rule book and direct you to the
nearest Microsoft Sponsored Online Book Store.

 

[Arvin Meyer]

Just one warning, though. Open a database with VBA code in A2003, then open
it again in XP, and it's corrupted for sure. If you go to A2K3, be sure to do
all users at once!

I wouldn't say "for sure" This corruption is actually quite rare. It is
alleviated by compiling 2002 databases before saving, or not using both to
develop. I have never seen this corruption except during development.
--
Arvin Meyer, MCP, MVP
Microsoft Access
Free Access downloads:
http://www.datastrat.com
http://www.mvps.org/access