Integration

J

John Vinson

How can Access be integrated with other programs?
Click to expand...

Using appropriate VBA code. Several books have been written on the
subject; the 2400 page Access Developers Handbook has about
three-quarters of an inch thick of pages on the subject.

If you have a more specific question, someone can probably give a more
specific (and less spiky) answer.

John W. Vinson[MVP]
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A

Albert D. Kallal

That is certainly a tall order, since you don't mention what kind of
programs.

However, the general approach is:

a) Export the data to a format that the other program can consume. So,
you export as tab, or comma delimited, and if you are using the latest
version of ms-access, then you can export data as XML.

b) Have ms-access "communicate" with the other program. This concept is
referred to as automation. Automaton is a really cool concept. Most good
quality commercial programs do allow automaton. For example, you can write
and create emails with outlook express. However, if you move up to using
Outlook (which is part of ms-office), then you can automate outlook. What
automaton means is that a program can launch another program and TELL that
program what to do!. So, ms-access can launch Outlook, and then make some
appointments in the appointment book. Or, you can put a reminder in the
appointment book to follow up on a client..and send out a email using
Outlook. You can't automat Outlook express in this way..but you certainly
can with Outlook.

c) Have ms-access consume a .net web service. While you can't create web
services in ms-access, you can certainly consume web services via the soap
ad in tool kits.

So, what approach you use will often depend on the application at hand.
And, you might use a mix of all of the above ideas.

For example, I have a working example of a ms-access to ms-word merge. This
allows you to be looking at a customer form in ms-access, and then press a
button and launch word. Word then merges the data and has all of the
customer data (from that ONE customer) filled out into a word template. You
can grab this code example here..and it even has some sample data for you to
try to send to word.

The fact of merging some data to word is not a big deal, however the fact
that I have ms-access TELLING word what to do in this case makes the whole
word merge process a super easy brain dead simple process. So, that is power
of automaton.

This whole process of automaton and allowing one program to tell another
program what to do is one secreted as to why windows programming is such a
cool environment to develop. Automaton means that as a developer I can take
different programs..and make them work together.
 
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