Microsoft Access - 2010 Demo

Posted By: tina10 | Oct 19th @ 3:58 PM | 33,168 Views | 21 Comments

This is the first episode of The Access Show with Ryan McMinn and Clint Covington. They have a big announcement for us—Access Services is new functionality as part of SharePoint 2010 that allows users to create new databases with forms and reports that run in the browser. Ryan takes us through a quick tour of the new Access design tools to create a donor tracking app and publishes it to Access Services and SharePoint.  Check out the Access 2010 Intro series at the Access team blog.
Rating:
3
0
#Oct 19th @ 4:25 PM
rgruchalski
rgruchalski

Great to see Access alive. I'm using Access for last two years to browse data from linked database and this is what I would vote for:

 

  1. When linking tables from ODBC datasource Access asks if I want to save the password. The problem is it asks for every table. And I have 60 tables. Painful. Would be great to have an option "Save for all".
  2. Data modification security option is annoying, give me the option to turn it off in Access settings.
  3. Next to the query design option on Create tab give me SQL view straight away. I write my SQL by hand. Clicking Cancel on Show Table and the right click on the tab to switch to SQL View is just awkward.
  4. Why can't I indent SQL code in SQL area with TAB?
  5. Results view when query is executed, please do it like in MSSQL Management studio, keep the SQL code visible all the time. If I have to modify the query I have to again right click on the tab, select SQL View and then to run the query switch to Design view (not always) and hit Run again! Why it has to be so painful?
Other than that I don't need anything else. It is just small usability glitches.
Keep up the good work!

#Oct 19th @ 5:06 PM
AbigailW
AbigailW

rgruchalski: As a workaround for #3 above, you can do the following in Access 2007. Click on the dropdown arrow to the right of the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) -- that's just to the right of the Office button. Choose "More Commands...". From the "Choose commands from" dropdown, choose SQL Statement Tools | Design Tab. Click on the "SQL View" item in the list below. Then click on the "Add > >" button to add it to the list on the right. Click OK. You should now have the SQL view button in your QAT. It's still an extra button click (open from the nav pane first, then choose SQL view from the QAT), but at least you save yourself the right-click.

#Oct 19th @ 6:57 PM
Grover Park Geo
Grover Park Geo

ACCESS on SharePoint Rocks. Thanks, Team.

#Oct 20th @ 10:25 AM
USArcher
USArcher

This Access/SharePoint synergy looks to have the makings of a big hit.  You'll get some fantastic consumer/professional exposure if this could be leveraged on Office Live Small Business and Office Live Workspaces as well.

#Oct 20th @ 11:36 AM
robh71
robh71

This is awesome.

 

What version of SharePoint is going to be required? Also, would we be so lucky as to get this functionality in SharePoint Services? SharePoint is a bit pricy for my customer base.

#Oct 20th @ 3:37 PM
joshbooker
joshbooker

robh71,

 

It really is awsome!  I'm not aware of official release info, but it's expected that sharepoint server license will be required for Access Web Services.  I agree that some support for access services should be in wss (sharepoint foundation), as it will surely show small businesses the power of moving Access Apps to the web.

 

On a positive note, it appears that External Lists in sharepoint 2010 may be available in sharepoint foundation 2010. 

 

Keep up the great work guys...nice hat!

 

Josh

#Oct 21st @ 9:07 AM
ivan_
ivan_

Small businesses can hardly afford Share Point. It needs it's own infrastructure and IT support, which is pricey.

While in big enterprises Share Point is so lockdown that hardly anybody can do anything with it. While the idea is great it would be a hard push.

 

About Access, I still didn't see nice SQL editor, kind of like in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS).

When my customers ask me to give them a specific ad-hoc query that they can paste in Access, I always have problems. I do not like Access SQL Editor, it is soooo bad, so I write my queries in SSMS. But Access is not SQL spec compliant. For example it does not have FULL OUTER JOIN, and has a bunch of it's own syntax different from T-SQL. If you could somehow unify this, it would be great.

But we probably wont see Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 in our corporation for several years if at all. So we are converting everything to .NET and SQL Server in the mean time. So it is a great opportunity for Access to loose it's market share to competing technologies.

 

 

 

#Oct 21st @ 12:52 PM
Brice It
Brice It
Email Brice

Great time watching this demo......I'm floored in a few ways but not in the way you might think. I'm an Access developer and have been for almost 10 years......

 

A few comments and opinions on the "new" Access 2010.....

 

1) If ever there were a truth about a Microsoft product, it certainly holds true for Office 2007 and beyond....which is, that THIS PRODUCT HAS JUMPED THE SHARK......Microsoft has OVERPRODUCED it.....the ribbon sucks, the new application facelift is virtually unnavigable, and relative to MS Access, you've removed the data window and jacked around all the data filter commands....WTF?

 

2) MS Access 2007+ is virtually unusable for a developer. It is cumbersome to work in at best. I cannot work in these versions and I REFUSE......I REFUSE to develop a solution in MS Access 2007+ USING MS Access 2007+. For the FORSEEABLE future, I will continue to develop MS Access apps in 2003 and test them on later Office platforms when necessary. If you are going to retard the product with a useless ribbon, could you at least have some sympathy for the f*^&%^ing developers of the product (also known as your LOYAL user base) and provide a user option to return to a "classic version" configuration?

 

3) Macros have always been a joke (in my opinion). If you are going to develop an Access application for a business, you should be working directly with VBA not macros.....with rare exception the only macro necessary to use in VBA for Access is the AutoExec macro which kick starts the application with the opening of the main form. But in Access 2010 you've REFOCUSED efforts to further dumb down the app by employing all that * interface for macros? It's an overproduced waste of time......

 

4) It's great that you want to reincarnate MS Access from a WinForm solution to a hybride WinForm+WebBased solution.....I'm ecstatic that Microsoft is not going to deprecate Access from the world at large since quite frankly, it's the only damn product that Microsoft ever TRULY got right.....(you could argue that Front Page was another extraordinary MS product but where is it today?) That's right, Microsoft has shitcanned that app for a clumsy version of VS Web Developer........again, another product that jumped the shark....back to the point....MS Access 2010 has been reincarnated to work seamlessly with SharePoint.....great.....give me an add-in that I can use for MS Access 2003 and I'll use it....otherwise that shitball of an application is useless....

 

I hate to be so hard on the hard-working efforts made by MS devs who have contributed to this product but, I have to tell you that you are developing this application IN ALL THE WRONG DIRECTIONS......

 

AS an aside, VISUAL STUDIO devs could learn a few things by employing some of the elegance and simplicity that comprises user navigation and UI in MS Access 2003. Let me see, let me develop an app using VB.Net and try to connect to a database, develop FLEXIBLE reporting and then hand it off to the user.....let me do the SAME thing in MS Access 2003 and the entire effort is about 70% less work.....VS 2008 database connections include *ing adapters, binding sources, datasets, table adapters, etc.

 

Let me SCREAM AT THE TOP OF MY *ING LUNGS for some functionality pieces in MS Access that developers around the world are looking for......it's another waste of keystrokes here though because no one at MICROSOFT IS LISTENING....but if this rant doesn't get canned from the Channel 9 site at least it will show some semblance of freedom of expression here as well as openness to L I S T E N.

 

SOME OF THE MOST POPULAR MS ACCESS FUNCTIONALITY THAT THE ACCESS DEVELOPER WORLD REALLY WANTS:::::::

 

1) Ability to convert mdb or accdb into EXECUTABLES

2) Ability to encrypt and/or lock tables separately or all of them simultaneously

3) INCREASED SELECTION OF CONTROLS FOR MS ACCESS DEVELOPMENT

4) Increased file capacity from 2GB to say 100GB

5) Better documentation tools integrated into the VBA Editor (Ex: ability to export COLORIZED VBA code documents)

6) More datatypes added to enrich what can be stored in Access tables

7) Better (MUCH BETTER) graphing capabilities for charting data

8) Increased VBA language capabilities that parallel VB.Net

 

There are many more needed improvements but the aforementioned is a start.

 

Now, MS decision makers, go back to your development shacks and forget these opinions were ever expressed...

Microsoft Communities