Well, there is absolute millions and millions of spreadsheets on the planet
earth. They all use VBA.
And, it should be known that word macros have been for a very long time also
VBA.
So, in effect, ms has to figure out a way to make all this stuff work. I
mean, if a company is going to dump Excel, who says they are going to use
Excel next time around?
MS is that not that stupid. They HAVE to provide some VBA ability. There is
NO way around this problem. I rest easy at night on this issue. If they make
VBA work for Word and Excel...then ms-access comes along for the ride also.
I have more then once mentioned here that MS has the best track
record in the industry when it comes to software updates and
long term use.
Apple computer has forced their whole user community
MORE THAN ONCE to throw out ALL of their software. None of the original
apple mac programs from the 1980's worked with the new MAC that came out in
the early 90's. I sure you remember the first Mac Paint programs!
However, you can't run those old programs. All those users were left high
and dry!
Apple did this again recently with the new OS X, and again
forced out tons and tons of software.
With windows, we can still run old software from the 1980's. MS has never
forced a upgrade here by design. I have clients in town running old DOS
FoxPro code from the 1980's on brand new win XP pc's. Ms-access is
celebrating its 11 anniversary right now (or is it now 12?). Fact is,
you can still run and use the ORIGINAL ms-access version 1.0 (that
is from windows 3.1, 16 bit environment) on brand new 32 bit pc windows
box today. (MS had to do a LOT OF work to make old windows 3.1 code still
function. Just dealing with 16 bit libraries vs 32 bit was a huge
challenge). Fact is that MS had the money to spend on compatibility and
they did, where companies like Apple is make you fork out the money for
new versions. As a result, with MS your software investment has been
protected better then anyone else in the last 20 years.
There is not one company, I repeat NOT ONE company that comes close to the
track record of MS. In fact, one the reasons why MS is so successful is
because IBM, Apple, Atari etc, and even SUN can not even come close the
compatibility that windows has maintained over the years. MS likes you
as a customer, and thus having compatibility keeps you!
I was talking to some one the other day, and they say they are going to
upgrade from VB to .net? I asked why? If you want to develop with very OLD
very of VB5, you still can.
Fact is, from a compatibility point of view, there is not a vendor in the
industry that even comes remotely close to the continues compatibility
Microsoft has offered over the last 20 years.
You can actually go a web site and download the Original version of
visi calc and run it on your pc today (that download is less then 32k
which is smaller then a web page with graphics!). Imagine that, a
whole spread sheet that fits easily in 32k of ram! Note that this
is a program for the original dos based IBM pc from 1981. You
can STILL RUN this software on your new pc.
So, even if ms-access was being dropped, you likely could use it for
the next 20 years!
However, we got a new version access 2003 a few months ago. They are
now hard at work on the next version.
Since MS is so eager to win market share, and win customers, then why
on earth would they dump the most popular database program in the
world? You mean they want to chase customers away back to Linux and
apple after all this work to win those customers? really, do you
think the company is that stupid?
I have little doubt we will see new versions of ms-access for the next
10, or 20 years.
I have little doubt we will be able to keep the VBA. The whole thing
likely will be wrapped as a whole .net "vba" object...but they do have to
provide some set of stairs here, and that means we will be able to
use VBA. MS cannot risk loosing so many customers. They are one
of the best companies in the world at keeping customers.
--
Albert D. Kallal (Microsoft Access MVP)
Edmonton, Alberta Canada
pl******************@msn.com http://www.attcanada.net/~kallal.msn 
