Opinion on Access 2007

[Allen Browne]

If you are looking for opinon on what's useful in Access 2007, there's a new
article at:
http://allenbrowne.com/Access2007.html

Covers what's good (useful features), what's mixed (good and bad), what's
gone (features removed), what's fixed (old issues solved), what's broken
(new bugs), configuration, compatibility, should you buy, and links.

It is opinion, so you may disagree, but hopefully it's an informative
summary.

 

[Al Campagna]

Allen,
Just great!
Really useful "meat and potatoes" information, particularly the upshot... "Should I buy
2007?"
I have to say, some of those "What's Broken" bugs are very scary...
Thanks for your contribution,
--
Al Campagna
Candia Computer Consulting - Candia NH
http://home.comcast.net/~cccsolutions

"Find a job that you love, and you'll never work a day in your life."

 

[Dave F]

Good stuff.

One nitpick: in your "what's bad" section you write a comment: "Hint that
Microsoft would like to depreciate VBA?"

I think you mean deprecate, not depreciate.

Dave

 

[Sylvain Lafontaine]

To my knowledge, ADP have not been removed from Access 2007; however, it's
appears that they are now totally screwed in term of speed. .

I have done all of my tests with the Beta version and I must repeat them
with the RTM to be sure; however, some messages that I've read in the
newsgroups share the same conclusion. See for example:

http://groups.google.ca/group/micro...6f026f0eeee/385419790b476f53#385419790b476f53

(Short story on my previous tests with the beta version: when running in a
virtual machine with 256Megs of allocated memory, I had to kill the whole
job to regain control of my PC and while running it with 512 Megs allocated,
it was a slow crawl. Profiling on the SQL-Server showed that the cause was
an incredible amount of queries made about the properties of objects on the
SQL-Server and that these queries was repeated each time the mouse was moved
from field to field and even inside a field in the case with 256 Megs of
memory allocated. No problem at all when running a MDB file in the same
VM.)

So you should move the ADP feature from the What's gone section to the
Totally Screwed section.

 

[Lyle Fairfield]

To my knowledge, ADP have not been removed from Access 2007; however, it's
appears that they are now totally screwed in term of speed. .

It's not so bad if you want to have breakfast while things load.

 

[jwm]

Mr. Browne:

Thanks for a terrific overview. Kudos!

jwm

 

[David W. Fenton]

If you are looking for opinon on what's useful in Access 2007,
there's a new article at:
http://allenbrowne.com/Access2007.html

Covers what's good (useful features), what's mixed (good and bad),
what's gone (features removed), what's fixed (old issues solved),
what's broken (new bugs), configuration, compatibility, should you
buy, and links.

It is opinion, so you may disagree, but hopefully it's an
informative summary.

Great article, Allen -- I really appreciate the work you've put into
preparing it.

Of coures, I have questions!

1. rich text: is the HTML *good* HTML, or the usual trashy, awful MS
stuff, with complex and idiosyncratic CSS? Is the HTML controllable?

2. minor spelling hint: under the embedded macros item, you mean
"deprecate" instead of "depreciate". Same for the big
"compatibility" section at the end.

3. the "features removed" section: I still object to the way people
are treating this. Security and Replication and ADPs have *not*
been removed from Access -- they were just omitted from the new
database format. Unless you're a moron, you won't just automatically
start using the new database format, right? What you mean is
"removed from new database format".

4. continuing from #3: In regard to replication, saying "Use
attached tables, connected to a database that has replication" is
rather misleading, as that's the way replication should have been
used in previous versions of Access, too, since only tables should
be replicated. I think it's misleading on all three of these issues
to not explicitly say that if you use MDB/ADB format you continue to
have all the functionality of previous versions of Access (it's only
DAPs that have actually been removed and can't be created in A2K7,
if I understand correctly).

5. Autofill: that was an A2K and later feature, so doesn't apply to
all previous versions (significant numbers of developers still do
lots of work in A97, and I barely remember the Autofill feature,
since I don't do too much data editing in table view in A2K and
later).

6. Imports: have that made it work better for Excel? That is, can
you now control the data types better than before, instead of having
to make sure the spreadsheet is absolutely properly formatted before
the import?

7. Compatibility Issues: is that an issue in converted MDBs as well
as in new ACCDBs?

8. Should I Buy section: I think that new users ought not buy it
unless they have no outside dependencies. That is, they aren't going
to share data with other users and don't have any existing
applications with a developer working on them. I just think an
unqualified "YES" is way too optimistic. Of course, I guess I'm
thinking more in terms of your second category. I still think the
first category oughn't be an unqualified affirmative, but a MAYBE. I
also just don't believe in the "learn it for the future" advice, as
that was the advice everyone gave for ADO when it was introduced in
Access. I didn't learn it, and, well, I have no regrets on that,
since Microsoft wised up and it's now deprecated in Access.

Overall, from what you've written, it seems to me that A2K7 is a
disaster similar to A95 -- much worse than A2K.

But, again, thanks very much -- I'll be using your article to try to
steer any of my clients away from buying A2K7.

 

[Lyle Fairfield]

I'll be using your article to try to
steer any of my clients away from buying A2K7.

You David? You're going to try to steer your clients away from buying
A2K7? Who would have guessed that?

 

[Rick Brandt]

Great article, Allen -- I really appreciate the work you've put into
preparing it.

Of coures, I have questions!

1. rich text: is the HTML *good* HTML, or the usual trashy, awful MS
stuff, with complex and idiosyncratic CSS? Is the HTML controllable?

I personally believe that this will be the cause of a huge number of
questions in these groups when used by people who don't understand what is
happening in the background. There are two major caveats to the Rich Text
(html) capability.

1) You are pretty much designating that no other application will interact
with the data in your field because no other app is going to be able to
properly display the text as stored.

2) From what I can tell you lose the ability in most cases to search the
data effectively. If you store "Some sample text" and make the word
"sample" display in red or bold or whatever then the following query will
not find it...

SELECT *
FROM TableName
WHERE FieldName = "Some sample text"

....because "Some sample text" is NOT what the table actually has stored in
it. It's going to be just like the lookup field problem. I would also
expect there will also be issues with trying to count characters, sorting on
the first 255 characters, parsing, etc..

I do think it's a nice feature, but as with many other things MS has done to
Access they are just foisting it on the unwashed masses who are not going to
understand all of the gotchas associated with it.

 

[Allen Browne]

Thank you Sylvain.

You are correct. ADPs are still possible, so that line has been removed.

--
Allen Browne - Microsoft MVP. Perth, Western Australia

Reply to group, rather than allenbrowne at mvps dot org.

"Sylvain Lafontaine" <sylvain aei ca (fill the blanks, no spam please)>
wrote in message

 

[Lyle Fairfield]

Thank you Sylvain.

You are correct. ADPs are still possible, so that line has been removed.

Possible = Open?

or

Possible = Create?

and

are DAPs the same?

 

[Smartin]

If you are looking for opinon on what's useful in Access 2007, there's a new
article at:
http://allenbrowne.com/Access2007.html

Covers what's good (useful features), what's mixed (good and bad), what's
gone (features removed), what's fixed (old issues solved), what's broken
(new bugs), configuration, compatibility, should you buy, and links.

It is opinion, so you may disagree, but hopefully it's an informative
summary.

Great analysis and write up, Allen. Thanks for your hard work on this!

 

[Allen Browne]

Thanks for your comments, David.
Responses embedded.

--
Allen Browne - Microsoft MVP. Perth, Western Australia

Reply to group, rather than allenbrowne at mvps dot org.

Great article, Allen -- I really appreciate the work you've put into
preparing it.

Of coures, I have questions!

1. rich text: is the HTML *good* HTML, or the usual trashy, awful MS
stuff, with complex and idiosyncratic CSS? Is the HTML controllable?

It's quite basic HTML, used to format the text, not a full HTML page.
Therefore there is no header, no CSS. Use Div for paragraphs. Not
particularly nice, but it works.

It does mean you can format text within a text box on a report, e.g.:

2. minor spelling hint: under the embedded macros item, you mean
"deprecate" instead of "depreciate". Same for the big
"compatibility" section at the end.

Thanks, fixed.

3. the "features removed" section: I still object to the way people
are treating this. Security and Replication and ADPs have *not*
been removed from Access -- they were just omitted from the new
database format. Unless you're a moron, you won't just automatically
start using the new database format, right? What you mean is
"removed from new database format".

Wording adjusted.

4. continuing from #3: In regard to replication, saying "Use
attached tables, connected to a database that has replication" is
rather misleading, as that's the way replication should have been
used in previous versions of Access, too, since only tables should
be replicated. I think it's misleading on all three of these issues
to not explicitly say that if you use MDB/ADB format you continue to
have all the functionality of previous versions of Access (it's only
DAPs that have actually been removed and can't be created in A2K7,
if I understand correctly).
Ditto.

5. Autofill: that was an A2K and later feature, so doesn't apply to
all previous versions (significant numbers of developers still do
lots of work in A97, and I barely remember the Autofill feature,
since I don't do too much data editing in table view in A2K and
later).

Correct: A97 did not have that annoyance.

6. Imports: have that made it work better for Excel? That is, can
you now control the data types better than before, instead of having
to make sure the spreadsheet is absolutely properly formatted before
the import?

I haven't experimented extensively with this, but the Import wiz in previous
versions was broken, so you could not always do things like selecting the
columns for import and specifiying the data types to use for those columns
(even though the interface appeared to offer those choices.) That's fixed.
It's certainly improved, but I'm not sure how good it is in practice.

7. Compatibility Issues: is that an issue in converted MDBs as well
as in new ACCDBs?

The specified examples are a problem across the board in A2007.
The reinstallation coffee break applies regardless of file format.

8. Should I Buy section: I think that new users ought not buy it
unless they have no outside dependencies. That is, they aren't going
to share data with other users and don't have any existing
applications with a developer working on them. I just think an
unqualified "YES" is way too optimistic. Of course, I guess I'm
thinking more in terms of your second category. I still think the
first category oughn't be an unqualified affirmative, but a MAYBE. I
also just don't believe in the "learn it for the future" advice, as
that was the advice everyone gave for ADO when it was introduced in
Access. I didn't learn it, and, well, I have no regrets on that,
since Microsoft wised up and it's now deprecated in Access.

Yes, I'm thinking a "new user buying Office" (as distinct from "existing
Office user") is buying the whole suite for the first time, not just Access.
They have no previous experience, and need to learn their way around the
ribbon, not menus/toolbars. They will still be able to read, edit, and
create documents in the old formats (DOC, XLS, MDB, etc.)

Overall, from what you've written, it seems to me that A2K7 is a
disaster similar to A95 -- much worse than A2K.

Not sure you would say that if you had done some more extensive testing,
David. There's some seriously useful functionality here, and the future of
Access includes all this stuff. Because of many of the little things that
are just "there" and don't need to be programmed, developing in A2007 will
be faster than developing similar functionality in previous versions.

I worked with both the beta of Access 95 and Access 2007 for many months
before release, and 2007 does not have the stability problems (frequent
crashes) that 95 did. I had not worked on the beta of 2000, but actually
gave up on it after it was released. Certainly 2007 is not there yet, but at
least the starting line is within view.

 

[Allen Browne]

Valid points, Rick.

We probably should point out that you can use HTML for Memo fields only. You
cannot create a Text field and format it as HTML, and you cannot set a text
box to Rich Text if it is bound to a field of type Text. Also, the Search
box built into the interface handles formatted text properly IIRC.

 

[Allen Browne]

Fixed. Thanks.

 

[Lyle Fairfield]

Lyle Fairfield wrote:

Upon further review I see that ADPs can be created in Access 2007.

 

[Lyle Fairfield]

Lyle Fairfield wrote:

Upon further review I see that ADPs can be created in Access 2007.

It seems that ADPs take longer to load and that table browsing and such
archaic activities are slow.
But forms created in an Access 2007 ADP seem to me to be as fast as any
other forms with which I am familiar. And code runs just as quickly as
well.

So tonight I learned a couple of things that may encourage me to
continue with Access 2007.

I suggest to anyone who wants to know about Access 2007, that he or she
download the Trial Version (it runs for free for two months) and
explore and test it himself or herself. The Access world was much too
full of superstition prior to Access 2007. It doesn't need any more
fairy stories.

Lyle said, Allen said, David said ... they mean that Lyle said, Allen
said, David said ... they don't mean anything else.

No, I haven't learned how to do DAPs in Access 2007. But there seem to
be some promising possiblities in saving forms as XLT and/or somemember
of the XML family that will work with ASP. Who knows? Perhaps these are
superior to DAPs.

 

[Larry Linson]

No, I haven't learned how to do DAPs in Access 2007. But there seem to
be some promising possiblities in saving forms as XLT and/or somemember
of the XML family that will work with ASP. Who knows? Perhaps these are
superior to DAPs.

Word was that you could run existing DAPs, but you'd have to keep the older
version installed to maintain them, or create new ones. I'm still waiting on
that new machine I ordered, to be able to load O2007 and experiment with it.

I've never done a DAP, but from some things you wrote, was wondering if DAPs
might be a way to create and distribute a simple application without
involving the runtime... then I read, 'way early in development of A2007,
that they were not only deprecating, but removing the capability to create,
DAPs. <SIGH>

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP

 

[Rick Brandt]

Valid points, Rick.

We probably should point out that you can use HTML for Memo fields only. You
cannot create a Text field and format it as HTML, and you cannot set a text
box to Rich Text if it is bound to a field of type Text. Also, the Search box
built into the interface handles formatted text properly IIRC.

I wonder, does 2007 include a feature for extracting just the ASCII equivalent
from a Rich Text formatted field? I suppose one might be able to create a
function using Regular Expressions that would do it. I can see cases where
people might actually want a secondary (non-displayed) field that would hold the
"plain" entry. That could server as a work-around to some of the issues I
raised as would being able to examine that on the fly even if it were not
stored.

 

[Allen Browne]

Can't see anything built in, Rick.

You are probably aware of MVP John Nurick's examples of regular expressions:
http://www.j.nurick.dial.pipex.com/Code/vbRegex/rgxExtract.htm