Hopefully you will get several divergent views from this exersise in
crystal-ball gazing.
Specifics in-line.
--
Allen Browne - Microsoft MVP. Perth, Western Australia.
Tips for Access users -
http://allenbrowne.com/tips.html
Reply to group, rather than allenbrowne at mvps dot org.
<ja*****@bigriv er.net> wrote in message
news:11******** **************@ 38g2000cwa.goog legroups.com...
How will Access fair in a year? Two years? .... The new version of
Access seems to service non programmers as a wizard interface to
quickly create databases via a fancy wizard.
It does look as if Microsoft is emphasizing the role of Access as desktop
database, and putting in lots of effort to make it as usable as possible for
non-programmers. But they have taken away nothing from developers, and
actually given us several useful things as well.
Furthermore, why would
you even continue to use Access as a backend when you have a much
superior option in SQL express?
Nothing else is as simple as just copying an MDB and running it on a
computer. I work mostly with small business and not-for-profit groups who
have no IT staff let alone DBMAs. Nothing else is as simple and appropriate
for them. And nothing else works as well and seamlessly as the integrated
Access (JET storage.)
What about as a future front-end development tool? Let's get serious.
Microsoft continues to publish numerous articles and videos on how you
can whip up a workable datagrid with only a few lines of code (so much
for the argument for the RAD development tool). Bring XML and the
countless advantages of the disconnected dataset architecture in .NET
and I am more convinced that Access will start to die out (short of
support for legacy systems).
When something is as good as Access, it makes sense that MS and other
companies will try to make other products that have similar features. That's
great for the other tools, and it may enable them to encroach on areas
Access had exclusively, but it does not take away from Access.
The biggest limitation of Access is that the thick-client approach was never
designed to work over a slow or unstable connection. This simply means
Access is unsuitable for that market; it takes nothing away from Access's
strengths for what it was designed for. However, more and more people do
want to use their database across these kinds of connections, so the range
of scenarios where Access is suitable is narrowing.
This is a trade-off, of course. If you want to load 20 forms at once, each
with 10 subforms that each have multiple combo boxes with thousands of
records in each, you are not going to be able to achieve that over a slow
connection. So you either move away from the thick-client approach (use
something other than Access), or you give up on the slow-connection and
retain the Access flexibility, or you settle on some compromise between the
two.
Regardless of what specific choices people make on that balance question,
Access will still have a significant future both where Microsoft wants to
pitch it (desktop database) and beyond where they want it (LANs with dozens
of users and millions of records.)
It is possible that another company will create a better desktop database
one day. Unless that happens, Access will still be the best-selling database
of all time.
