10 Successful Access Commerical Programs

[Sorrells]

Greetings,

I need some help, so where else would I come? My client is concerned that development of a commercial program in Access is impossible. I disagree. She asks for proof.

I've sent her a link to DababaseCreations (www.databasecreations.com) and their "Yes! I Can Run My Business".

But after that I am running short and this is not overly impressive. So can you kind folks add other access software applications being sold with their web addresses?

Is there 10 successful Access applications on the market place? Are there 20? Let's see what we can come up with!

 

[Sorrells]

HR Software

2003 Hemmingway Technologies Inc.
http://www.hemmingway.com

Stated as written in MS Access

 

[Pat Hartman]

Here's another:
Asset Management

I'm not possitive about this one:
Mailing list cleaner

 

[Cosmos75]

Environmental Management Systems (EMS)

http://www.ktcullen.ie/services/environmanage.html

http://www.weboptrix.com/DDS/test2/software.html

http://www.nbenvironmental.com/services_information.htm

http://www.geodata.soton.ac.uk/geodata/muldbase.html

http://www.earthsoft.com./products/datasheets.asp (I think some of the products listed here were done in Access)
Related News - http://www.environmental-center.com/pressrelease/press11.htm

 

[Sorrells]

Cosmos97,

Hi, I finally got to look at these links. Thanks for adding them in. Most interesting for me as I have a natural science background in forestry (U. of Idaho). I also was in the process of creating a MSDS viewing application in Access when I got laid off from a manufacturing company 2 years ago.

Interesting to me is the number of products that require Access to already be resident on the customer's computer. As I have been having a devil of a time creating an Access application that can install on any PC configuration, I can appreciate this constraint!

 

[Cosmos75]

Cosmos97

It's Cosmos75, You must be thinking about Access 97?

Hi, I finally got to look at these links. Thanks for adding them in. Most interesting for me as I have a natural science background in forestry (U. of Idaho). I also was in the process of creating a MSDS viewing application in Access when I got laid off from a manufacturing company 2 years ago.

No problem. I think there are others that are built using Access but could find no documentation as to what was used to create their EMS version. I even found one that was an online system using asp (http://www.enviance.com/).

Interesting to me is the number of products that require Access to already be resident on the customer's computer. As I have been having a devil of a time creating an Access application that can install on any PC configuration, I can appreciate this constraint!

A lot of these are targeted for individual facilities rather than for an entire companies Environmental Program. Mostly to help each individual facility to comply with applicable State and Federal Rules (Air Quality, Water Quality, Hazardous Waste and so on.)

As for requiring Access on the user's computer, you could always go the runtime route.

Just out of curiousity, what kind of application are you wanting to develop in Access?

 

[Sorrells]

ASSETSonTRACK

Pat, your link to the Asset Management software was also interesting. It looks like these folks feel pretty confident with their product!

"ASSETSonTRACK gives you a powerful control centre for your whole asset monitoring and maintenance operation, incorporating extensive features with system operator simplicity. With ASSETSonTRACK you will be confident in the knowledge that things are 100% under control.

Increase reliability, reduce running costs through regular preventative breakdown maintenance scheduling, as well as the ability to track asset breakdown history and repair costs will pay dividends many times over."

Again, perhaps because of the many problems creating a fully deployable, stand along application in Access, this product requires that the customer have Access pre-installed. Their minimum system requirements are stated as:

Windows® 98, or later.
Pentium 300 MHz with 128 Mb RAM.
20 Mb free HD space. Requirement will depend on image files stored.
Display adaptor capable of 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 resolution.
Microsoft Access 2000® or later.

It looks like we may get to 10 commercial applications but one might also contend that they constitute a drop in the bucket when compared with the total number of software programs. Thanks for your interest and help!

 

[Pat Hartman]

I think that you should estimate the cost of development with Access versus VB or C++. That should convince your client that Access is worth pursuing.

I believe that if the app is one for "corporate" use rather than "personal" use that there is no problem in requiring a specific version of Access to be installed. If the app is for personal use, I would offer a runtime package as an option. Also, people here report that the Wise installer creates better installation packages since they have much less trouble dealing with existing Access installations.

 

[Sorrells]

Pat, I certainly agree with your comments. I found the use of Access on a corporate network extremely cost efficient and beneficial. With full employee access and a standard infrastructure, Access was a wonderful tool to fill in the gaps of the ERP system.

Moving from that environment to one where the user could have one of a multitude of hardware/software configurations is a major stretch. And while there must be thousands of Access writers and a myriad of programs within an organization, how many are available retail, "off the shelf" with minimum constraints? One percent perhaps?

Can I then infer that creation of a commercial program in Access is much more difficult than in other languages? I'd like to but I don't have the statistics to draw any reasonable conclusions. I agree it would be most informative to have some comparison of development costs in the more popular languages for a database application. Where would one find such information? I know that my ability to estimate development compares with Abraham's ability to count the stars!

To be honest, I don't know what is the most popular development language for database applications. Are there more retail programs written in Delphi or FoxPro? Got me! But it would be interesting to know!

 

[Pat Hartman]

Can I then infer that creation of a commercial program in Access is much more difficult than in other languages?

- it's not the creation that is more difficult, it is the installation. The installation package needs to be smart enough to detect any Access version currently installed and not trample it. That's why I think the Wise installer works better. I have no personal knowledge though. Micosoft is of course partially to blame for this since it is not easy to have multiple versions of any of the Office products loaded on the same PC under the best of circumstances. Each version seems to fight over custody of the registry and since Microsoft wants you to upgrade every time they release a new version, they have no incentive to resolve this issue. The biggest installation problems occur if your Access app needs an older Access version than the one installed.

The most popular package for developing "small" database applications is Access by a mile. I believe the second most popular is FileMaker Pro. They have the Apple market and they also have a PC product which is supposed to be pretty good.

Here's another product that I know for a fact is in Access even though the ad doesn't specify. I "know" because I had to actually review the .mdb as part of another project for Pitney. Smart Mailer

I would guess that there's a lot more out there that can't easily be found because their marketing material doesn't mention Access. Notice that very few products actually specify on their web page what they were developed in.

 

[mdemarte]

QuickDoc

Here is a link to an Access Database for Mental Health services

http://www.helper.com/products/quicdoc/