I am the general manager and potential owner of a cabinet shop. I have been using access for a few years now and am pretty comfortable developing with it, including VBA.
Our ERP system is one that is for my industry. While it is "out of the box" software, it is not too bad, because it's built for my industry. However, I've seen a need to add my custom "apps" in certain cases where the information is not available at the right time and place to make good decisions in the office and on the floor. This has enabled us to become a 99% paperless manufacturing facility. However there is much more work that could add value.
The reality is I really like Access for these custom applications. They are running through linked tables directly to our ERP systems sybase SQL db.
My concern really is two fold; Am I programming in a languauge (VBA), and a development platform(Access) that will be around for years to come? Is there any valid reason to invest time and money learning some other platform? Please keep in mind with your answers that I will never be devoted to programming 100%. I also may go 3-6 months without even developing at all because of other duties. As the person heading up day to day operations, I can assure you I'll never have the time to learn a truly professional platform such as C# in visual studio, etc. I really need a rapid application development platform. Should I be concerned long term that I chose access as my platform? I'm hoping to utilize my apps as long as I can.
Our ERP system is one that is for my industry. While it is "out of the box" software, it is not too bad, because it's built for my industry. However, I've seen a need to add my custom "apps" in certain cases where the information is not available at the right time and place to make good decisions in the office and on the floor. This has enabled us to become a 99% paperless manufacturing facility. However there is much more work that could add value.
The reality is I really like Access for these custom applications. They are running through linked tables directly to our ERP systems sybase SQL db.
My concern really is two fold; Am I programming in a languauge (VBA), and a development platform(Access) that will be around for years to come? Is there any valid reason to invest time and money learning some other platform? Please keep in mind with your answers that I will never be devoted to programming 100%. I also may go 3-6 months without even developing at all because of other duties. As the person heading up day to day operations, I can assure you I'll never have the time to learn a truly professional platform such as C# in visual studio, etc. I really need a rapid application development platform. Should I be concerned long term that I chose access as my platform? I'm hoping to utilize my apps as long as I can.
