"lyle fairfield" <ly************ @gmail.comwrote
TTBOMR Access 2003, unlike Access 2002, allowed
a report's recordset to be set to an ADO recordset. I think
this was an enhancement.
But, not having that capability has not been a major drawback for most of
us -- that is, we haven't been hanging around weeping, wailing, and gnashing
our teeth because we couldn't use a disconnected recordset as the Record
Source for a Report.
That would mean ADPs weren't enhanced in the
last version of Access (only). Unless of course one
included the enhancements that are in MDBs, like
the ribbon. Is the ribbon an enhancement to an mdb (accdb)?
There are many who do not consider the Ribbon as an enhancement to any
flavor of Access -- they contend that the Ribbon was the answer to a
cluttered, confusing user interface in Word and was forced on all the other
Office software. They point to a long presentation by Jensen Harris, the
lead Product Manager for the Office 2007 UI changes, at the PDC(?) as
confirmation. I don't have the cite for the video, but I've seen the video
on the Internet, so it might be findable with a search on "Jensen Harris"
and "Ribbon".
Do ADPs have a ribbon? What, yes, the SAME
ribbon? So the accdb ribbon is an enhancement
and the adp ribbon is chopped liver?
Who are "We"? The strongest detractors of ADPs
in this newsgroup have been those who have never
used them.
I spent a few months enhancing an ADP. I didn't find it as onerous as some
had led me to believe, but neither did I find it a significant improvement
over using an Access MDB/MDE with ODBC to a Server.
Using stored procedures and views are good things of course.
How convenient is it to create and maintain stored
procedures and views in an MDB linked to an SQL-
Server db with ODBC?
Most of the paying work I have done with Access used Access as a client to a
server database. In only one instance would the client allow anyone but
their DBA to create stored procedures. In a few other cases, because the
DBA thought I knew what I was doing, I was allowed to create Views.
But most of those client-server applications used something other than MS
SQL Server, so ADPs were not even an option. And, in the majority of cases
that did use MS SQL Server, the company wanted to preserve its option to
change its "corporate standard DB" and insisted that the client application
be easily adaptable to another DB... thus MDB/MDE and ODBC was a good
choice.
If we selected at random a 100 mdbs/accdbs
linking to an SQL Server database via ODBC
how many of then would use the enormous
power of T-SQL?
Good question, considering circumstances as I described above. Of the Access
developers in this (Dallas - Fort Worth) area, and other areas as well, who
I know personally, very few use ADP as their tool of choice.
In fact, I thought you had given up on them for (in-)security reasons -- did
I misunderstand?
And, I do know that the Access team at Microsoft now recommends ACCDB -
ODBC - Server as the method of choice, not ADP as was the case for several
years.
Larry Linson
Microsoft Office Access MVP
