Future of Access (6 Viewers)

[cedar]

Very interesting conversation.

A question that came up, how did the slant against Access take root in corporate IT departments, of course has several sides to it. One I think was mentioned, that IT folk aren't experienced with Access, never understand it's strengths, but do trip over it's weaknesses; and of course Access is not great for collaboarative development. But another reason is kind of paradoxical. There was a massive proliferation of small to medium sized Access projects in organizations precisely because they were so much easier and quicker to build, and typically didn't cost and arm and a leg.

Later edit: and the multiplicity of access dbs were unmanaged, often out of date, often had taps into data sources that with various permissions that could cause issues, and were often abandoned or hard to determine if they were still relevant or not. From that perspective, it's easy to see why many in IT would wish Access had never been introduced to their org.

 

[BlueSpruce]

Later edit: and the multiplicity of access dbs were unmanaged, often out of date, often had taps into data sources that with various permissions that could cause issues, and were often abandoned or hard to determine if they were still relevant or not. From that perspective, it's easy to see why many in IT would wish Access had never been introduced to their org.

IT also doesn't understand that it is in their best interest to provide in-house Access development support to help to ensure that users who attempt to go it alone create something sort of sound instead of crap.

So why did IT's ignore those Access apps when they could've managed them from the beginning, or at least enforced a policy? But wait a minute, all enterprise editions of Office included Access. So why single out Access when Excel also has hooks into corporate data sources, and is actually less secure than Access? Have IT's been pressuring MS to no longer include Access in M365 Enterprise editions?

BTW, this is the first thread I posted when I joined AWF. I feel it's an important topic to discuss. How can we influence Microsoft regarding the Future of Access? Can we make a difference?

 

[cedar]

They're not trained that way. They tend to go top down - "We're an Oracle shop." The end users that we often deal with do not seem to be who they work for; they work for whomever is higher up in IT. The higher ups in IT are even more remote from the end users.

Meanwhile the poor end users that actually get the work done for the org are being barraged by tasks and projects and often a sense that their data operations could be handled a lot better. Knowing that IT doesn't care that much, is overloaded, and slow, they often resorted to creating their own Access db, then when it gets too complex, they hire us; or they hire us from day one, often slipping in the engagement under the radar.

At least that's how it was in the 90s until maybe this decade. I'm not sure that this scenario is so common now. But it did result in hundreds of mystery databases scattered all over the place that no one who was supposed to be in charge of the data knew about. Yeah so they didn't like that.

Of course it could have made a lot of sense to recognize the reality (that end users were desperate enough to undertake stealth databases) and either helped out or facilitated or something. But probably the most common reaction was the urge to shut them down. Since they often couldn't (line of business dbs are useful!), it became a sore spot.

You'd think that a team (the company's inmates) could do better than that. But it's kind of like one of the other conundrums we see. IT folk tend to think they are way smarter than the end users (present company excluded), and often their bosses as well; but to many of the folks outside of IT, IT barely registers, and the help they provide seems more like finger in the dike than making things a lot better. I am sure that many/most/all of the people here have high regard for end users, but not everyone in IT or management does. Maybe that too is a part of why Access can be looked down on - anyone with interest can build something useful. Doesn't sound very elite!

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

So why single out Access

Luke chung spoke about this when he visited the UK the Microsoft campus in reading Berkshire...

I went up to see him present..

I mentioned it in this thread here:-

I need some artillery against Access haters

Hey all, i need some artillery to throw back at some corporate IT folks who hate Access and was hoping to get some of the wonderful experts in this forum's opionions. i'm developing a small application in Access to basically turn a large document into a electronic version with some other...

www.access-programmers.co.uk

What I didn't mention was that one of the reasons Luke mentioned that organizations do not like Microsoft Access is because most people can use it and create something that works... Unfortunately most people create something that is an abomination that works for a time and then stops... Then they take it to the server team --- I want it sorted out! This really pisses the server team off so instead of learning how to use access or get someone like one of us in that knows how to use access they scupper it every way they can... So it's politics! The problem for the server team is often the person creating the wayward database is the boss himself, so there's a sort of tolerance, tolerances the wrong word but you get my drift!

I forgot to mention this was about 20 years ago!

 

[BlueSpruce]

So why single out Access?

Is it because Excel is so overwhelmingly popular, and data stored in corporate db's cannot be updated with Excel? I have seen many businesses and corporate departments running their operations with Excel, but God forbid they create siloed db's with Access!

 

[cedar]

BlueSpruce that's a good question. I would guess that it's because probably the majority of business users natively use Excel for tasks, they have to to crunch numbers, just like they have to use Word for documents. But Access is not in the same category - with it you can create applications that rival turnkey solutions. IT might be called in to manage someone's Excel files when they leave for another company, but just as likely some peer of the now gone employee takes over the files. You'd think that an employee would use or port to Access because it's more capable than Excel. By the same token, because Access is more complex, it'd be harder to wade in to if you had to take it over, esp if you're an IT person that has mild or no exposure to Access. Then factor in what Uncle Gizmo just said, that most home grown applications like these are a big mess inside. Not a lot of fun for IT.

The greatest mystery of all is why Microsoft, with all of it's resources, has not been able to come up with something that is just a great as Access is, that was built from the ground up to be acceptable to IT, hopefully anticipating a migration path between Access and that product. The potential for such a product would be colossal. Maybe Lightswitch could have been that, but they let it go so easily.

 

[BlueSpruce]

The greatest mystery of all is why Microsoft, with all of it's resources, has not been able to come up with something that is just a great as Access is, that was built from the ground up to be acceptable to IT...

Microsoft's answer to that is DotNet, and IT's embraced it. For years, MS has been preaching migration from Access to DotNet with SQL Server. They even created a DotNet vba_like language called vb.net, but not many developers use it anymore and MS seems like they want to deprecate it.

 

[cedar]

But .net is massively more complex than Access. Webforms tried to be like vb6/Access, not sure if those are considered bound controls. But webforms had a lot of negtives and is a backwatered framework at this point.

A corporate worker could dig in to a book or two and write a line of business application (which probably needed to be refactored by someone that was more experienced). That didn't happen much with .net - too steep of a climb.

 

[BlueSpruce]

Webforms tried to be like vb6/Access, not sure if those are considered bound controls...

Webforms operate via stateless unbound http requests.

I know some Access developers, like Albert Kallal and Jack Leach, who transitioned from Access to DotNet, but as you said, the learning curve is steep. I participated in a DotNet interop project where an Access FE was interfaced with QuickBooks Online.

 

[Steve R.]

The greatest mystery of all is why Microsoft, with all of it's resources, has not been able to come up with something that is just a great as Access is, that was built from the ground up to be acceptable to IT, hopefully anticipating a migration path between Access and that product. The potential for such a product would be colossal. Maybe Lightswitch could have been that, but they let it go so easily.

Corporations evolve. They start off as aggressive entrepreneurial innovative companies, but as time progresses the innovators leave and the corporations become ruled by lawyers and accountants. Look at Boeing's space program versus Musk's space program.

Because my memory is imperfect, I leaned on ChatGPT to provide the following answer:

That idea is most commonly associated with Murray Rothbard, an American economist and political theorist of the Austrian School and a major figure in libertarian thought.

Rothbard argued that large corporations—especially those deeply connected to regulation, subsidies, or government contracts—effectively become extensions of the state. In his view, the line between big business and government is often blurred, forming what he called a “corporate state” or “state capitalism.” He suggested that these corporations derive their power not from free markets but from their relationship with government, making them functionally indistinguishable from it.

For Microsoft, MS Access is probably nothing more than a "cash cow". Something that still provides revenue, but is no longer relevant to their corporate objectives. Consequently they don't want to invest in it.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

The biggest problem with Access is not actually scalability, that can easily be handled by SQL Server or other RDBMS but is its clumsiness as a multi-developer platform to support parallel development by multiple developers at one time because it uses a single container for all objects.

An astute observation, Pat. Not unique, not the first time it has been said on the forum, but absolutely on point. I had that issue ten years ago with my big Navy security status tracker app.