Future of Access

[The_Doc_Man]

In my early days as a Navy Contractor (and with a now-defunct SQL engine as the back-end), we used Crystal Reports regularly.

 

[Pat Hartman]

I remember FOCUS (scary isn't it) as well as Crystal Reports.

Access reports are generally superior and easier to build plus they are integrated with Access. I think Crystal had some good features though that never made it into Access.

It’s weird because I never hear this kind of criticism with other similar products. There’s always this cloud hanging over Access sometimes it’s the community, other times it’s the perceived lack of interest from the Microsoft Access team. It’s all very confusing.

This is actually due to internal MS politics. Most of the rumors of Access' demise can be traced back to the SQL Server team. They resurface every time certain types of changes are made to Access. One of the problems revolves around Jet. Jet was the original database engine that shipped with Access. It is the engine associated with the .mdb format. This was a separate product and was actually used internally by Windows to hold certain types of data so the Jet engine was normally installed with Windows. It wasn't until Access 2.1 ~ 1993 that Jet was actually bundled with Access. Jet was under the control of the SQL Server team so in their mind it was a competitor to SQL Server because it was a database engine. Since Jet was intended for local use and small databases, it's engine worked very differently from that of SQL Server and so to their mind was inferior. And, they were correct to a point. Although the "inferiority" had nothing whatso ever to do with Access the RAD tool. It was all related to the lack of security of the Jet engine. But that's where all the bad press originates. The SQL Server team always thought of Jet as a competitor to SQL Server but no where near as good and that is what they told everybody.

When MS was working on O2007, they spent a ton of money on "upgrading" (in quotes because not all changes were an upgrade. Random excellent features bought the dust at this point in time) MS wanted Access to have a better integration with SharePoint so Access could build forms that ran on SharePoint but to do that, they needed to change Jet to include the necessary abomination data types. To accomplish this, they took the Jet code base and made it into ACE (.accdb format) and now the Access team owns ACE rather than the SQL Server team so that Access is better placed to modify how the database engine works if they need to. This particular event set off a whole new round of ACCESS IS DEAD rumors and that was totally because the SQL Server team though Jet was Access and Jet was being replaced by ACE and so Access was DEAD. As it happens, I went to Redmond in 2006 to a meeting where some Access users were shown the beta version of A2007. It was clear that whether we liked what we saw or not, MS had spent a ton of money on the changes. The month after I came back from Redmond, I went to a SQL Server event held at the MS office in Manhattan where I met the branch manager who was slightly tipsy and was telling me how Access was dead. He had no idea who I was so I told him where I'd been a few weeks earlier and how Access was very much alive and well. He didn't believe me. He KNEW Access was dead. There was no talking to the man. But, he was tipsy so I didn't try very hard.

 

[BlueSpruce]

33 years since Access debut, and it's still alive and kicking!.. This defies MS logic. I think that Microsoft is just not making the kind of money they'd like to make from the millions of Access applications out there. Throughout the years, Microsoft has tried to persuade migration to DotNet, Access Web Apps which I actually liked and miss, and now PowerApps. I am now concerned that MS is going to restrict VBA's ability to interact with the Windows Filesystem because of security concerns. They already started with removing Outlook automation.

 

[sonic8]

That was main reason for Classic Outlook being replaced with webmail Outlook.

No. If that were the reason, they could have just disabled or removed VBA/Automation in/of Outlook.

The primary reason is that there are three different editions of Outlook (desktop/web/mobile) with completely different code bases. For calendar and tasks there are even more. This creates huge maintenance overhead.
Microsoft want to unify all these applications in one single code base and thus minimize the maintenance effort.

 

[gemma-the-husky]

I always preferred AWF to utter access but I can't believe it has just closed. Does anyone know why?
On my phone, it's just hanging with no information.

 

[BlueSpruce]

Microsoft want to unify all these applications in one single code base and thus minimize the maintenance effort.

And vba got left out because it's not compatible with web applications.
Excel, Word and other Office components also have desktop, mobile, and web versions.
Is MS also going to deprecate their desktop and mobile versions to maintain a single web code base?

 

[BlueSpruce]

I can't believe it has just closed. Does anyone know why?

There was no explanation, no advance warning, not even a landing page, it just suddenly stopped working.
Perhaps some of the UA ex-admins that are AWF members can elaborate?

Shortly before UA went offline, I offered to start a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for improvements and ongoing maintenance, but it was apparently already slated for the chopping block. The last developer who took over UA upgraded it to version 4, but shortly after made no further improvements and it remained like that for several years until it was abruptly retired. They should have at least left it readonly so anyone could access its knowledgebase.

 

[sonic8]

Excel, Word and other Office components also have desktop, mobile, and web versions.
Is MS also going to deprecate their desktop and mobile versions to maintain a single web code base?

I'm not aware of any plan for this.
I'm sure they would like to do that. However, VBA usage in Word and Excel is probably a thousand times more common than in Outlook. So, for now they cannot do anything like this without antagonizing a huge number of their customers.

 

[amorosik]

Does anyone remember Crystal Reports? Microsoft used to bundle it with Visual Studio 2003 and then they replaced Crystal with SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS).

I've used CR from version 5.0 onward on projects created with Visual Basic 6.0.
Even recently, when it entered the SAP umbrella, I used version 2020 to print reports and allow the end user to edit them independently
In my opinion, it's an excellent tool, superior to Access's native reports

 

[Steve R.]

Hello Everyone,

I had recently joined the UtterAccess forum, but unfortunately that site was permanently shutdown without any advance warning. I am a team member of four Access developers and we are concerned about the stability and future of Access.

MS Access was a go-to database. That's where I got my database experience. Time however marches on, things evolve. The apparent shutdown of UtterAcess may or may not be an indicator that MS Access relevancy is waning. Don't get me wrong, MS Access is a good database. Nevertheless, open source databases, such as MariaDB integrated with Apache, PHP, and HTML offer excellent state-of-the-art alternatives to MS Access.

Since you expressed concern "about the stability and future of Access"; you may want to examine continued reliance on MS Access and compare that to other state-of-the-art database solutions. As a quick note, using and implement open source solutions is "free".

PS: When I was doing MS Access database development (years ago), a major roadblock, was (unbelievably) the IT Department. The IT Department kept trying to stamp-out the use of MS Access where I worked!!! This lack of support by some IT Departments is a concern "about the stability and future of Access".

 

[Pat Hartman]

Nevertheless, open source databases, such as MariaDB integrated with Apache, PHP, and HTML offer excellent state-of-the-art alternatives to MS Access.

Really? If so, we would have all switched to PHP or HTML years ago when the push to go web got serious.

 

[AccessBlaster]

Access is fantastic if your organization supports using it. But, alot of us fall into a different category. We see an issue that Access is perfect for solving, but IT and management are skeptical of it, creating the classic Access struggle.

 

[Pat Hartman]

Access is fantastic if your organization supports using it. But, alot of us fall into a different category. We see an issue that Access is perfect for solving, but IT and management are skeptical of it, creating the classic Access struggle.

You can thank the SQL Server folks for that. They are the group that constantly say how bad "Access" is but they don't mean Access at all. They mean Jet/ACE.

 

[Isaac]

That is exactly the problem the SQL Server people see and why they perpetually bad mouth Access. They think of Jet/ACE as competitors and never understand that Access is a RAD tool that builds interfaces and is NOT a database engine. Jet and ACE are database engines. I know you know that but even you equate Access the RAD tool with SQL Server.

As far as SQL Server is concerned, they should be thinking of Access the RAD tool as a complementary tool and not as a competitor. The fact that they don't tells us that MS doesn't market Access, the RAD tool correctly.

Yes, Access FE with SQL Server BE is powerful, versatile, and just all around great.

 

[Isaac]

I wrote a mini-article once that was partially about "why IT hates Access", and it wasn't all "bad IT" type of stuff, a lot of it was "bad Access programming" type of stuff. I still thin it's good reading, even for me to remember. I think of each point carefully and then ask myself if I'm contributing to why IT hates access

Tips For Newbies

Hi, I have been an enthusiastic amateur for about 5 years & a keen forum follower for the past 12 months or so and thought I may be able to pass on some tips that I’ve learnt from a newbie’s perspective. For background, my first exposure to ‘databases' was at a company I worked for, where they...

www.access-programmers.co.uk

One of the biggest things, IMO, of why IT hates Access, is that MANY Access developers (I can't emphasize how common this is after cleaning up processes at 10-12 companies) - Many Access developers create a new database every time they turn around.

That complicates the problems exponentially. Strive, instead, to make ONE database for an entire department, maybe two, but you get the point - there are a myriad of ways to separate work, queues, widgets, in such a way that the right people only see the right stuff.
I've made several databases that I'm sure my predecessor would have represented in 50 different Access files. I've even seen people create different databases for each different report! Isn't that crazy(?) IT sees it as a ridiculous amount of spawning and something that can't possibly be monitored or supervised.
Paint an easier picture for them - create FEWER DATABASES and learn how to get good at tab control and permission-based visibility

 

[Steve R.]

Really? If so, we would have all switched to PHP or HTML years ago when the push to go web got serious.

Well, you have a point. It becomes a question of thinking outside the box as the expression goes. Microsoft "controls/owns" the desktop environment. As such, the Microsoft environment is perceived as being the one and only approach for many people. Follow that up with the fact that Microsoft goes out and sells its products. Contrast that with the non-advertising for Linux. Overall the populous is blissfully unaware of open source software as a valid alternative. They are just happy using MS windows and are not thinking outside the box for superior solutions. MS Access is still a good and useful product. This website serves a very valid and useful purpose.

 

[AccessBlaster]

Just don't use a Debian version, it doesn't support most laptop WiFi adapters, while Ubuntu has everything you need built-in.

Edit: I added the word "laptop" for clarity. Debian does support generic WiFi Dongles,

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

I think MS will never retire Access because many government agencies and private enterprises have Access applications running for several decades,

And the same is true for some of the first iterations of programming like cobal... I understand many bank applications are built on incredibly antiquated software..,..

 

[The_Doc_Man]

And the same is true for some of the first iterations of programming like cobal... I understand many bank applications are built on incredibly antiquated software..,..

It is by now lost in the annals of anecdotes and worthy only of a good laugh, but during my college days, we found an article about someone who had critical software for his business running on an old IBM 650, which as time advanced, he ported to an IBM 1620-based 650 EMULATOR. (Didn't upgrade the program... just upgraded the emulation!) A few years later, he upgraded again by moving that mess to an IBM 7094 running an IBM 1620 emulator running the other emulators and the original code. And the article came out when that same company decided to upgrade to an IBM 360/50 running an IBM 7094 emulator, which ran the 1620 emulator, which ran the 650 emulator, which ran the original program. ALL of that was before 1970. Sheesh, and some folks get all worked up about VBA being emulated!

 

[jdraw]

And the same is true for some of the first iterations of programming like cobal... I understand many bank applications are built on incredibly antiquated software..,..

What is the popularity of cobol programming today?

From copilot
COBOL might not be the hottest language on the block, but in 2025, it's having a bit of a renaissance—especially in sectors where reliability trumps trendiness. Here's the scoop:


Popularity Ranking

• According to the TIOBE Index, COBOL currently ranks #22 with a 0.83% share of global programming language usage.
• While that’s far from the top, it’s still ahead of languages like Ruby, Lisp, and Prolog.

Where COBOL Still Reigns

• 43% of banking systems still rely on COBOL.
• $3 trillion in daily financial transactions touch COBOL code.
• 95% of ATM swipes involve COBOL.
• Government agencies like the U.S. Social Security Administration and IRS run millions of lines of COBOL code.

Job Market & Demand

• Job postings for COBOL developers have surged 300% since 2020.
• Salaries are competitive, with some roles offering $150k+ annually.
• The demand is driven by a shortage of COBOL programmers, as many are retiring and few new devs are learning it.

Modern Adaptations

• COBOL has evolved to run on cloud platforms like AWS and Azure.
• Some companies are integrating COBOL systems with APIs and microservices for gradual modernization.