Access 2003 and Visual Studio 2005

[Dan Heidel]

I currently work in a small development group that maintains an Access/SQL
database application. We have a large amount development time put into the
VBA scripting, reports and forms for this application that we cannot discard
in the short-term. (although we are planning on eventually replacing the
entire Access front end in the long-term)

We would like to migrate to using VB.Net and C#.Net for the extra
flexibility and power this would give us. I have talked to MS tech support
about this and have been told the following:

- MS Visual Studio Tools for Office is an add-on toolkit which requires a
previous install of Visual Studio to operate.
- Tools for Office gives complete VBA-like programming interfaces to Access
so that we can continue to use our legacy code.

My general impression of the tech rep's knowledge level was rather poor and
subsequent investigation on MSDN seems to sharply contradict both of the
previous assertions.

Can anyone on this forum give me a pointer as to whether:

- VBA is at all compatible with .Net. Specifically, can a VBA Access
application call VB.Net and C# routines written in Visual Studio?

- Does Tools for Office support Access? I know it supports Word, Excel and
Outlook but no mention is made of Access. If Access is not currently
supported, are there plans for MS to do so in the near future?

- Bottom Line: is there any way to use Visual Studio to develop routines and
modules which can be integrated into a pre-existing Access 2003 VBA
application? Or will we have to create a brand new application from scratch?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[George Nicholson]

The only thing that VSTO 2003 provides Access Developers is the Access
Developers Extensions (ADE): a Packaging Wizard and a royalty-free license
to distribute Access Runtime with apps you have developed.

The rest of VSTO is inapplicable to Access. That may change down the road,
but I bet the product name will, too.

Note that ADE comes in the retail box *with* VSTO 2003, but is not part of
the "Office Tools", per se. Via MSDN subscription, ADE is only available at
the Univer$al level while the rest of the VSTO toolset is available at more
inexpensive tiers. (and you're not alone if that makes absolutely no logical
sense to you...)

My general impression of the tech rep's knowledge level was rather poor

Your impression is hereby confirmed, but "rather poor" is putting it
mildly...


HTH,

 

[Dan Heidel]

I talked to another MS rep today that was more knowledgable and what he told
me matches up pretty well with what you just told me. Thanks George.