Happy 20th Birthday MS Access - Access 2013 (1 Viewer)

[Rx_]

http://www.daaug.org/
I will be attending tonight. Have known Kevin Bell for 15 years and could be talked into writing a report for tonigh's meeting if enough people request it. If it is all already known elsewhere, then won't reinvent the wheel. - Rx_
Microsoft® Access is 20 Years Old!

Access 20th Anniversary "World Tour"

The Denver Area Access Users Group (DAAUG) is having a special guest speaker at their November 2012 meeting on Tuesday, the 6th. a former DAAUG member and current member of the Microsoft Access team in Redmond, Washington will be coming to Denver.
Join us for this special evening to take a look back at the origins of Access, how it evolved and where it is going. He will start by looking back 20 years ago at the first release of Microsoft Access, and how it has evolved over the years into a robust client server front-end. Then explore the 11th release of Access, the new Access 2013. Access 2013 takes a dramatic new approach to creating database applications and he will explore its new architecture and features. Kevin will also discuss how your existing Access skills can be leveraged with Access 2013.
A testing software engineer on the Microsoft Access team in Redmond Washington. Prior to joining Microsoft in 2008, he spent 15 years running a consulting practice that specialized in creating custom client server applications for small businesses. presenter has been working with Microsoft Access since version 1.0 and SQL Server since version 4.21.
For more information, see the Denver Area Access Users Group website.

 

[boblarson]

 

[Khalid_Afridi]

I am using Access since 1998.
Great & Congrate Access to its 20th anniversary!!!
Access V Love You!

 

[nanscombe]

Crikey!

I remember buying a copy of Access 2, mid 1990's I guess, at a computer fair at the RHS halls in London.

I was using at home before I ever saw it at work. Before that I was using the database part of Psion Xchange and dBase.

 

[Rx_]

You actually bought yours? Oh yeah, I forgot, yes I actually *bought* mine too. LOL
Got my first certification in Access 95 I think it was.
First project with VB / Access/ SQL Server 1.x / AS400 and the first RAS Server (dial-up) certified for 255 dial-in. MS showed up to say "we advertised 255, glad to see someone proved it".
SQL Server replicated to the AS 400 for Stanley Tool Coporation. My kid was knee high then, now he is off at the USMMAcademy in Kings Point, NY 19 years old.
The birthday kind of puts it all back into perspective.

 

[nanscombe]

Yes, I bought it. I wasn't doing it for work and it was way too early for any friends to already have a copy.

 

[Rx_]

It was a great presentation from an Access insider. Kevin works on the test team with the developers. So much was covered in 2 1/2 hours. I think he is going to take this presentation to Ireland/England soon.
Microsoft brought back a lot of the old original developers. The group photo looked like... Remember the Northwind employee photos? Around the MS campus are the paver bricks with many of the accomplishments. The building where pure new MS Access is created is shown from the courtyard photo across the pavers.
After covering the 20 years of Access memories, the new version was demonstrated.
I personally thought of all the income Access, VB, and SQL Server brought to my family.

The presentation was nothing short of Stellar.
Access 2013 is a much bigger change (upgrade) than Access 2.0 was to Access 97.
This massive change is exciting and scary for an old programmer like myself.
It is hard to sum up a two hour rapid fire presentation. But here are my personal Action Items:
1. Embrace Windows 8 enterprise. It has a Virtual Machine included to run SQL Server
2. The new Office 2013 will be adopted by your company / customers much, much faster than you expect. Why? The new Power Point is so impactive and cool, management will want it *tomorrow*. Expect to come to your workplace and learn that you were super-sized to Office last night.
3. Get ready for a Dual use MS Access. ADP is dead, replication is dead, ... , the new interface to Sharepoint web is very powerful. You can do a lot of work in MS Access 2013 and then push it over to the Cloud or private Cloud.
4. As an ancient relic who just loves VB, VBA - adding VBA functions into queries - using action queries... The move to SQL Server will be very important. Expect to use triggers instead of action queries. The new Access interface to SQL Server is really powerful for beginners. That said, the need to really take SQL Server TSQL to the next level will be important for larger databases.
5. There will also be a Microsoft Mart where Apps (not little programs - but entire applications, content, and more) can be posted to the cloud for people to purchase. MS will take a percent. This is personally exciting to me, but the details are yet to come.
6. I must admit ignorance about MS Surface. Some new device like a tablet? But, it is something to put off any immediate purchase and look into.

This by no means covers a fast-paced two hour demonstration.
My recommendation is that a new general category with sub categories be set up for Office 2013. This is really going to be very different. It is not the old Office 2000 to 2010 upgrade anymore.
Hopefully the MAP (Microsoft Partners) will provide some realistic assistance for those of us who want to leverage existing skill sets into this exciting new release.

 

[boblarson]

It was a great presentation from an Access insider. Kevin works on the test team with the developers.

Now that you've experienced the excitement generated from their sharing of their "positives," your excitement may wane a little when you realize that

1. You will have to rewrite a good portion of your database in order to port it to 2013, especially if you have written a Web database in 2010.

2. They implemented all kinds of "looks cool" stuff but many of those items are just like the previous "looks cool" stuff which developers and, those who support people on the forums, are going to find as not following best practices and will be causing problems for users as they get deeper in (much like lookups at table level do).

3. While they have made strides in the web arena, they have failed to move far enough, so users who expect good, robust apps on the web, are bound to be frustrated and disappointed.

Sorry to sound so negative, but I've used the 2013 version and have had demonstrations and explanations from the Access Team program managers why they did what they did and why they didn't fix developer annoyances or even straight out bugs. They want the new user. They need the revenue. So, flashy wins out over sound in many cases.

 

[Rx_]

As an old hack, I won't disagree with any of that.
It is a new generation of sales managers who drive this wagon.
Your comments are not negative, they are very realistic.

My summary of Sharepoint is that it was never a programming language. The Web waste a lot of end user time because of the lack of a rich user interface. Something Access provided for years in a cost effictive way.

With another three to six years of programming left in me, I don't know if the current version of Access will get me through my lifecycle. Or, if I should invest the time to adopt it.
Questions such as: do I just get back into SQL Server Reporting Services or invest my resources in a vastly downgraded user interface application?

It is going to be a difficult decision. By no means is Access 2013 a perfect solution to utilize the existing Access skill set. If MS doesn't support Access 2013 skillset migration, Access revenue is small enough Microsoft could just drop Access alltogether.
I didn't mention - there is no Reporting in the new version.

A Access 2013 forum would be really helpful for those of us who need to make important decisions on our career direction.
Many of us need the postive and the negatives to make the right choices.

 

[Rx_]

http://dmoffat.wordpress.com/
See October 13th posting, I had missed it.
Worth reading about Access 2013

 

[boblarson]

http://dmoffat.wordpress.com/
See October 13th posting, I had missed it.
Worth reading about Access 2013

Pretty much says what needs to be said. And, the part about "Cue Chirping Crickets" is pretty much spot on too.

sarcasmOn- MS Research shows that the developers and power users don't know what they are talking about and the casual user is more in tune to what they should be doing. /sarcasmOff

 

[Lightwave]

Its my opinion that software houses are increasing straying from the plot.
Rather than being in the business of reducing costs for businesses increasingly they focused on maintaining revenues.

For a long time they have made great steps in reducing costs for organisations reducing the need for duplication increasing speed of transactions and transmissions and reducing deterioration of information while improving distribution. Weren't computers created to hold information that can be copied essentially for free with 100% accuracy? Isn't data and software held on them a complete analogy to bacteria? What else lasts for significant periods without change through thick and thin maintaining their information with low levels of maintenance and error while their environment expands and contracts.

Surely then software has the potential to become ubiqutous, expendable 100% maintainable and awkwardly for software houses immortal.

I argue that the objective of a software house should be to put themselves out of business. To make a product that is so good that they can move onto a different arena and create another product that is so good that it cannot be beaten. I am also of the opinion that the founding fathers of software created the discipline with that in mind.

Up until now many houses have been doing a good job of this as well.

Present day the easy wins are away new products regularly focus on usability and distribution and reimplementation of features which for older hands were always there (albeit in different guise).

Neither is it just a Microsoft problem I constantly see software houses trying to transform themselves into service providers.
ESRI (ArcView)
Adobe
Alpha 5
and its not just software houses either IBM have significant income from services on demand section.

I maintain that when this is marred with software provision I think this is in direct contradiction to why software was originally created and therein lies the problem.

Service provision is an erosion of customer rights and not an increase in it. It is making the landlord into a tenant no wonder it’s a difficult sell.

Why else is open source gaining ground? Because those with intelligence inherintely recognise the fact that although they are power users the products being offered to them just aren't doing what they want. What's more sometimes increased usability in one feature may be at the expense of reduced functionality in another. They don't want to be a tenant and would prefer to be the landlord.

I appreciate the work that Microsoft has done and many of their brilliant tools. I just think if Microsoft want to make money out of software hone their products then get those developers to build software specific applications out of their environment. Its not as if sections of the organisation aren't trying to do this. XBox and Kinnect have all been great demonstrations of the benefits of essentially that. At some point the marginal improvements from polishing will only serve to focus demand for open source solutions rather than towards their products.

Who knows exactly how this will pan out but one thing I am convinced at - at some point secondhand software will be as valuable as new software as the incremental improvement in usability will be minimal and because of the immortality of everything digital there will be for all intensive purposes no age difference between either.

I look forward to supporting microsoft in the future and see no reason to stop that using tools that continue to be excellent. I will however be very cautious about becoming their slave.

 

[RainLover]

I look forward to supporting microsoft in the future and see no reason to stop that using tools that continue to be excellent. I will however be very cautious about becoming their slave.

With all the unpaid hours you spend teaching others you are already their slave.