Porting from Access to VB

[Peter]

I have an application written in Access 2000 that I
distribute to a number of organisations who use it on a
variety of platforms, ranging from a P75 running Windows
95 to modern XP machines. It has about 40 forms and
reports and 25K lines of VBA.

I would like to distribute it over the Internet, but I
have to send Access Runtime with the application. This
makes the distributable much too big to download over an
ordinary modem, which is all most of my customers have.
So I am thinking of reworking it in pure VB6, using an
Access (Jet) database connected through ADO.

I have two questions that I wonder if anybody can help me
with.

Will I still be able to use Access forms and reports
without Access Runtime? Or will I have to port all of
these to VB forms and Data Reports?

If I am going to all this trouble, would it be better to
move to VB.Net? Apart from the worry of learning a new
language, are there any other disadvantages of VB.Net? I
am worried in particular about speed of execution on
slower machines and clients that have not got the .Net
Framework. If I have to send .Net Framework as well as
my application it will negate much of the advantage I
hope to gain.

Any comments and suggestions would be much appreciated,
as would any pointers to useful articles or books.

Peter

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[Steve Jorgensen]

On 12 Jan 2004 11:19:22 GMT, Peter <an*******@devdex.com> wrote:

I have an application written in Access 2000 that I
distribute to a number of organisations who use it on a
variety of platforms, ranging from a P75 running Windows
95 to modern XP machines. It has about 40 forms and
reports and 25K lines of VBA.

I would like to distribute it over the Internet, but I
have to send Access Runtime with the application. This
makes the distributable much too big to download over an
ordinary modem, which is all most of my customers have.
So I am thinking of reworking it in pure VB6, using an
Access (Jet) database connected through ADO.

I have two questions that I wonder if anybody can help me
with.

Will I still be able to use Access forms and reports
without Access Runtime? Or will I have to port all of
these to VB forms and Data Reports?
Basically, no. Access forms and controls have unique features and attributes
that onl Access supports without some kind of conversion. There are tools
that are supposedly for converting from Access to VB, but I'm not sure how
good a job they do, or could even theoretically do.
If I am going to all this trouble, would it be better to
move to VB.Net? Apart from the worry of learning a new
language, are there any other disadvantages of VB.Net? I
am worried in particular about speed of execution on
slower machines and clients that have not got the .Net
Framework. If I have to send .Net Framework as well as
my application it will negate much of the advantage I
hope to gain.
In my opinion, if you're going to reimplement the app in somehting other than
Access, then VB.NET or C# is almost certainly a better choice than classic VB.
On the other hand, there would also be a myriad of platforms you could
consider including Java, Python, ColdFusion, etc., ad infinitum.
Any comments and suggestions would be much appreciated,
as would any pointers to useful articles or books.

I don't know your exact situation, but I'm guessing a full-blown conversion
from Access to something else will -not- be cost effective.

What if you were to support 2 versions, the full featured Access version, and
a stripped-down, reimplemented version in another language? Over time, you
could grow the second version if the demand justified it, but with broadband
rapidly becoming ubiquitous, it could be that you'll just use the stripped
down version as a stopgap until speeds catch up with download requriements.

Oh yeah, you could also make downloading easier by zipping the package using
file spanning across several files, so at least, if it takes several sessions
to download the package, the user doesn't have to start over each time. Also,
look into an installer that can make use of a highly efficient compression
algorithm such as bzip2 to get the size a bit smaller. I think I've heard
some installers can do this now.

[MacDermott]

Steve Jorgensen's points are all well taken.

One point he didn't mention is that I'm pretty sure .NET won't run on
Windows 95.
OTOH, I understand that SageKey can produce an Access Runtime of about 21MB.
That's not too bad to download over a broadband connection,
and you can always offer to mail a CD to users who are still using
dial-up.

HTH
- Turtle
"Peter" <an*******@devdex.com> wrote in message
news:40***********************@news.frii.net...

I have an application written in Access 2000 that I
distribute to a number of organisations who use it on a
variety of platforms, ranging from a P75 running Windows
95 to modern XP machines. It has about 40 forms and
reports and 25K lines of VBA.

I would like to distribute it over the Internet, but I
have to send Access Runtime with the application. This
makes the distributable much too big to download over an
ordinary modem, which is all most of my customers have.
So I am thinking of reworking it in pure VB6, using an
Access (Jet) database connected through ADO.

I have two questions that I wonder if anybody can help me
with.

Will I still be able to use Access forms and reports
without Access Runtime? Or will I have to port all of
these to VB forms and Data Reports?

If I am going to all this trouble, would it be better to
move to VB.Net? Apart from the worry of learning a new
language, are there any other disadvantages of VB.Net? I
am worried in particular about speed of execution on
slower machines and clients that have not got the .Net
Framework. If I have to send .Net Framework as well as
my application it will negate much of the advantage I
hope to gain.

Any comments and suggestions would be much appreciated,
as would any pointers to useful articles or books.

Peter

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[Steve Jorgensen]

On Mon, 12 Jan 2004 13:21:55 GMT, "MacDermott" <ma********@nospam.com> wrote:

Steve Jorgensen's points are all well taken.

One point he didn't mention is that I'm pretty sure .NET won't run on
Windows 95.

Yeah, it turns out you're right. You can run mono (open source implmentation)
on Windows 96, though. Version 0.15 for Windows 95 is available for download
at http://www.go-mono.com/download.html. Presumbly, newer versions are also
compatible with Windows 95, but no one bothered to make a package that can
install on it. One could ask in the forums there about what it would take to
compile and package a newer version.

[Larry Linson]

There are, at this point, still size issues in deploying .NET Windows
applications. The user must have the same .NET framework for which the
application is created, and, to assure that, you'll need to distribute the
framework with the application.

From what I read, the "Whidbey" release of .NET may overcome some of my
strong reservations -- e.g., just too much code required to do simple
things.

I think, in your situation, I'd seriously consider investing in the
third-party installer and scripts that MacDermott suggested.

You can't use Access forms and reports directly in VB, and it's a job of
work to recreate them or, we hear, to complete the modification that
translators begin for you. And, I am not aware of any translators to VB.NET,
only to classic VB (e.g., VB 6.0). And, don't forget, although they are
smaller than the runtime support generated by Access' own wizard, there are
runtime libraries that have to be distributed with classic VB packages, too.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP
"Peter" <an*******@devdex.com> wrote in message
news:40***********************@news.frii.net...

I have an application written in Access 2000 that I
distribute to a number of organisations who use it on a
variety of platforms, ranging from a P75 running Windows
95 to modern XP machines. It has about 40 forms and
reports and 25K lines of VBA.

I would like to distribute it over the Internet, but I
have to send Access Runtime with the application. This
makes the distributable much too big to download over an
ordinary modem, which is all most of my customers have.
So I am thinking of reworking it in pure VB6, using an
Access (Jet) database connected through ADO.

I have two questions that I wonder if anybody can help me
with.

Will I still be able to use Access forms and reports
without Access Runtime? Or will I have to port all of
these to VB forms and Data Reports?

If I am going to all this trouble, would it be better to
move to VB.Net? Apart from the worry of learning a new
language, are there any other disadvantages of VB.Net? I
am worried in particular about speed of execution on
slower machines and clients that have not got the .Net
Framework. If I have to send .Net Framework as well as
my application it will negate much of the advantage I
hope to gain.

Any comments and suggestions would be much appreciated,
as would any pointers to useful articles or books.

Peter

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