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dp
I've been a big access fan for years. It suits my needs, and despite the
ribbing from the rest of the database community, I've found users, as well
as my bosses happy with the projects I produce with it. I have never had
the need to produce any web applications, and the amount of data, or number
of users has never gown to the point where Access' Jet has become slow to
the point that it became unusable. Very little speed degredation throught
the last 4 years of up-time. I won't pick at the "is access a decent
back-end database" scab anymore.
However I believe it is time to move on, at least for the backend database.
I'm porting my data to SQL, sometimes quickly, moreoften, very slowly. I'll
pick a table here, or a table there, and feed it in, and re-link it, and
continue using the regular MDB as it was, except with those few tables moved
to SQL. Now comes the time to write new applications. My feeling is that
we should now make the break, and use either VB.Net or go to Access ADPs.
I've used the ADPs a little bit, and found it to be significantly difficult
to grasp even coming from an Access background. DAO is gone, and you don't
seem to be able to link to any MDB sources within an ADP, even via ADO.
Other issues exist, like the inability to display update queries
graphically - nothing seems to fix that. There seem to be many barriers
here. Nobody seems to be praising these ADPs in any way at all. I produced
one application that was a simple report. It reduced the time to produce
the report from 45 seconds in Access Native Jet to 2 seconds using SQL
backand, and ADP as a frontend. All that really did though was show the
power of the SQL server. I imagine I could have written a passthrough query
in an Access MDB somehow and gotten the response I wanted back from the SQL
server just as quickly.
I see Access beginning to show it's age. They've retrofitted VBA to do ADO,
and there are still things I genuinely like about Access, but I'm beginning
to think that the majority of the computer world cannot be wrong, I hear
them whispering in my ear:
Access is for kids! Even the ADP portion! If you want to do it the
way the rest of the world is doing it, use VB.Net!
Maybe that's just Bill Gates. I do hear everyone jumping up and down
yelling about how great .net is going to make their lives. I don't hear
anyone jumping up and down about the power exposed through Access ADPs.
Someone give me a reality check here.
-Brian
ribbing from the rest of the database community, I've found users, as well
as my bosses happy with the projects I produce with it. I have never had
the need to produce any web applications, and the amount of data, or number
of users has never gown to the point where Access' Jet has become slow to
the point that it became unusable. Very little speed degredation throught
the last 4 years of up-time. I won't pick at the "is access a decent
back-end database" scab anymore.
However I believe it is time to move on, at least for the backend database.
I'm porting my data to SQL, sometimes quickly, moreoften, very slowly. I'll
pick a table here, or a table there, and feed it in, and re-link it, and
continue using the regular MDB as it was, except with those few tables moved
to SQL. Now comes the time to write new applications. My feeling is that
we should now make the break, and use either VB.Net or go to Access ADPs.
I've used the ADPs a little bit, and found it to be significantly difficult
to grasp even coming from an Access background. DAO is gone, and you don't
seem to be able to link to any MDB sources within an ADP, even via ADO.
Other issues exist, like the inability to display update queries
graphically - nothing seems to fix that. There seem to be many barriers
here. Nobody seems to be praising these ADPs in any way at all. I produced
one application that was a simple report. It reduced the time to produce
the report from 45 seconds in Access Native Jet to 2 seconds using SQL
backand, and ADP as a frontend. All that really did though was show the
power of the SQL server. I imagine I could have written a passthrough query
in an Access MDB somehow and gotten the response I wanted back from the SQL
server just as quickly.
I see Access beginning to show it's age. They've retrofitted VBA to do ADO,
and there are still things I genuinely like about Access, but I'm beginning
to think that the majority of the computer world cannot be wrong, I hear
them whispering in my ear:
Access is for kids! Even the ADP portion! If you want to do it the
way the rest of the world is doing it, use VB.Net!
Maybe that's just Bill Gates. I do hear everyone jumping up and down
yelling about how great .net is going to make their lives. I don't hear
anyone jumping up and down about the power exposed through Access ADPs.
Someone give me a reality check here.
-Brian
