DAP is a losing horse? What to replace it with?

[evanscamman]

I was planning on creating a Data Access Page for my boss. This way he could double-click and see a spending report for the month. After a bit of reading, it is apparant that DAPs are a failed experiment.

What appealed to me about them was the ability to view a live report in a web browser - without having to teach my boss how to launch Access, etc...

Any opinions on the simplest way to do this? I would like him to be able to make a single (or double) click on his desktop and see the report without any clicking around. I'm sure this is a fairly standard thing - perhaps a seperate MDB file containing just the report and underlying query?

Any ideas are welcome.
Thank you,
Evan

 

[Banana]

While I've not dabbed in web development, I do know that you can just send out a dataset in say, CSV format and whatever web application you end up using can read it into a table on webpage.

Perhaps if you asked this on a ASP or PHP forum, they may be able to suggest a very simple method of rendering this in HTMl without having to using DAP or a bunch of specialized software. I also understand it is fairly common for ASP folks to link to Access database to use it as a store for data for their web applications where SQL Server would be an overkill.

HTH.

 

[jal]

If you just want HTML format, even a regular MDB application can produce it, there is no need for web-publishing technology. I assume you already know this, but in case you didn't, here is some sample code:

DoCmd.OutputTo acOutputReport, "Report1", Access.acFormatHTML, "C:\htmlReport.html"

If you omit the last value (the Cdrive destination), Access will proabably present a SaveAs file-dialog to the user so he can save the HTML file wherever he wants.

 

[wazz]

If you omit the last value (the Cdrive destination), Access will proabably present a SaveAs file-dialog to the user so he can save the HTML file wherever he wants.

it's actually an Output To dialog, but same thing, you can pick a location and file name.

few things:
- outputting to most of the formats is good but formatting is not good for most. outputting a query is actually pretty good for simple queries (formats a simple table).
- outputting to snapshot format is pretty much the same as viewing the original report. user needs the (free) snapshot viewer installed.
- you can output the files to a location/file of your choice and the user can just open files, but the data is NOT live. if changes have been made to the data, the output-files will have to be updated.

 

[jal]

Some good points, Wazz.

As far as the live data, I am thinking that if he sets up to display the report on form_Open (and the form is set to open automatically on startup), the data would always be current. After all, the user has to click on SOMETHING, so it might as well be an Access file which then opens either a HTML page or a SaveAs dialog.

 

[wazz]

After all, the user has to click on SOMETHING, so it might as well be an Access file which then opens either a HTML page or a SaveAs dialog.

true, true. it might as well be.

but... which report opens when access opens?

could be that the only form that opens (with access) would be one that lists all the reports. but then we're back to opening access. still, why not? one user form and a 'close access' button.