Question Is MS going to continue to support Access? (1 Viewer)

Mr. SLP

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My school district is having all of its special education audited. I recently made, and I’m continuously tweaking an building upon it, an Access DB to track/document everything for my department. I had to meet with the woman doing the audit today and the 2 things that she had to say to me, without ever seeing what I’ve made or the functionality of it, was 1: “I heard years back that MS was going to stop supporting Access. Did you do your research before jumping into this and wasting your time?” And 2: she implied that Access is a very complicated program and that there is no way any of my coworkers could operate it so why would I bother to make this system?
My coworkers are not tech savvy at all (which is ironic since it’s the assistive technology department) which is why I have done my best to dummy proof the system and make the forms as intuitive as possible. I even went as far as adding a button on every page that hyperlinks to a YouTube video to walk you through how to use that page. UGH!


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pbaldy

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There is an Access team at Microsoft diligently working on improvements to the next version. Rumors of its demise have circulated for years.
 

The_Doc_Man

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We have heard the "Access is going away" rumors for YEARS. However, you COULD advise this person (whose concern is actually legit, just incorrect) that when MS started to move towards a web-oriented system several years ago, it didn't work out and they moved back to a product line where their competition doesn't nearly have the market penetration that they do. Thus, it is still economically favorable to use Access.

As to the "too complex" complaint... I can be a bit acerbic sometimes. I would have commented that for a technology oriented department, if people can't handle modern Office products, why are they still employed? But then, I have so many tooth scars on my tongue that a couple of more probably would go unnoticed.

Seriously, educate her in this way: It is NOT that Access is difficult. It is how difficult the app builder made his/her app, because in a well-made app, you aren't "running" Access - you are letting Access run the app. Ask her if she can use cell-phone apps. Because it is the same concept.
 

Mr. SLP

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Thanks Guys. She caught me so off guard that is was kinda speechless and pissed off. Tomorrow should be interesting. My department has a focus group meeting with her. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if she asks the 60 something year old woman on my team, the one that has seriously asked me what I meant when I said Home button on an iPad, to walk her through how to use it. (which isn’t fair to her because she’s only had 1 day of using it). I guess we will see. At least I have some good talking points/arguments to go in there with.


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pbaldy

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And as you pointed out yourself, an Access front end can be made very simple and user friendly. The average user doesn't need to know how it runs under the hood (bonnet for some out there :D), just how to drive it. That's on the developer.
 

Mark_

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For myself, I'd start by asking her for solutions. If she doesn't think Access will be around, what is she suggesting? Can't rely upon paper, after all paper is easily destroyed or otherwise made illegible, can't be updated when there are changes, can't be stored off site for immediate retrieval, and most certainly won't do any work for you.

Then ask your coworker (same one you think is going to be asked to do the walk through) if she can calculate the metrics for successful graduation and project future numbers based off of existing growth trends. I'd also look at the same person who thinks Access is going away and ask the same question.

Be ready for the response of "I am putting together the specification. Once added it will be displayable at any time."

Not sure of your relation to them or theirs within your organization, but this sounds like someone who wants to protect their own job at your expense.
 

Mr. SLP

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Not sure of your relation to them or theirs within your organization, but this sounds like someone who wants to protect their own job at your expense.


Well considering this woman that’s doing the audit is being paid to find problems and offer solutions I feel like you might be right. She might be coming at it with the mindset of “if I say something is working well then I haven’t done my job”.
My coworkers, don’t get me started. This is my first school year working with them directly and it has outright sucked. The level of passive aggressiveness coming from them is insane! I have always worked with women, and it’s never been an issue, but these ladies will sit around talking about “what cut pant are you wearing today?” And never get any work done. I’ve manage to build this entire access system and they have not made a 1 page (paper) form that they were tasked with to give to campuses for data collection for equipment use by students. It’s ridiculous.
Good thing is that my boss it totally aware of it all and feels the same way as I do. Bad thing is that it’s a public school and it’s next to impossible to fire anyone, even though I feel like they are asking for it often.


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Pat Hartman

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If you can put together a project cost of what was spent developing the application, you might need that at some point. People who don't know anything about anything think that if it's new and shiny it must be better so they will push things like web apps because they are cool and can be made to run on a phone. Of course, no one actually works on a phone so I'm not sure what the point of building this type of app for one would be but it is "cool". Not to mention that the cost of developing a web app compared to an Access desktop app is a factor of 4 or 5 which makes Access a really good, cost conscious option if you don't need web capability.

I almost got into a fist fight with the SQL Server manager of Microsoft's New York office a few years ago when I went there for a meeting. He assured me that Access was dead. I assured him it was not and in fact I had recently been to Redmond and seen a demo of the new release. What was "dead" was Jet. It was being replaced by ACE which would now be controlled by the Access team rather than the SQL Server team. The latest rumor if the demise of Access was again caused by Microsoft itself when it released a press piece about how AWA's were being discontinued which sounded very much like "Access" was dead when it was only the web app that was being discontinued.
 

Mr. SLP

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If you can put together a project cost of what was spent developing the application, you might need that at some point.


How do you even figure that out? I’m a speech therapist not a software designer or anything like that. I often look at things in regards to the cost of materials but everything needed for this was already in house. The true cost here has been time. To get where I am today I’ve been working on this pretty much nonstop for at least 3-4 weeks straight, most of that on my own time since I find it fun learning how to do all this. I’ve never worked on making anything in access since I was in high school, and even then it was a simplistic project/assignment, so I know that this took a heck of a lot more time than someone more skilled would of needed.




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gemma-the-husky

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Well, tbh, I think the auditor has a point, and it's worth asking the question.

1. It's reasonable to ask whether Access will be around for a long while
2. It's reasonable to point out that access is hard.

BUT with respect to 2 -
a) they probably wouldn't even enquire what language a third party app was written in
b) most of your users also wouldn't have a clue about about any programmng language. Access is definitely hard to use. It's a complete programming environment. But its far easier to do stuff in access than in most compiled languages. Excel is actually hard to use well, but it's realtively easy to use "at all". Access just isn;t easy to use "at all".
 

Lightwave

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She is talking pure nonsense

MS Access engine is the 7th most popular database engine in the world
https://db-engines.com/en/ranking
and it looks from that source that it is actually getting more popular.

Visual Basic ranks amongst the top 20 most popular languates in the world
http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2017/06/08/language-rankings-6-17/ and that study looks like it is measuring popularity rather than usage. Usage is probably higher.

I would suspect there are more VBA developers than any other language in the world with nearly every IT support person able to do basic VBA support and many are very good. VBA along with C# have absolutely massive number of forums from which you can obtain support. Utter access and this one included. The experience in VBA and C# around the world probably completely outstrips most other languages put together. The language is stable as hell libraries rarely change and it is likely you could open an Access 97 database on a 2018 machine and it will probably 90% run. Holy hell your lucky if a web framework lasts a year. If a web framework changes it often requires almost a complete Application Re-write. The only other language as stable is probably SQL and that's the second pillar of Access anyway.

Microsoft is one of the major players in the IT industry and Access has an unbroken track record of support for 2 decades. It doesn't look like they are going bust.

Access is the most popular desktop database in the world.

Yes its not easy to pick up someone elses project and run with it. But if someone writes a book or writes a document or creates an excel spreadsheet or god forbid trys to create an application (in whatever IDE) no one wants to pick it up and run with it after its complete - The fact that the domain is complicated and you are the only one that knows about it is NOTHING to do with MS Access - thats a policy decision to create such a crazy administrative system by management.

I assure you there are a lot more people able to pick up a second hand MS Access application than there are able to pick up a second hand web application.

OK but the CLOUD
The CLOUD has a lot of potential if you want to design one system between multiple buildings that aren't networked but why if you have spent a decade or more putting networking into a building do you suddenly abandon that bought and paid for hardware and pay Amazon or Microsoft to rent a duplicate in their clouds. Seriously these people really don't think too deeply sometimes.

the argument is usually there is an app out there that if you rent will mean that you don't need IT support and that's potentially a good saving.

A lot of these apps are so bespoke they often cost 5k or more per year and often designed by very few people - these app companies go bust all the time often because they have so few customers that their business model really struggles. This will leave you back at square one.

The best solution is nearly always a hybrid - yes use bought in apps - but really be careful about it - choose your battles carefully - do some in house development for no other reason than it gives you an indication of what is difficult and easy to do. Work with outside contractors for real value added services but don't be afraid to try and develop things yourself especially if absolutely nothing exists. Always be flexible and ready to adapt and don't go all out for the cloud or all out for internal.

If you have assets you SHOULD Sweat them:)
 
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Lightwave

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I almost got into a fist fight with the SQL Server manager of Microsoft's New York office a few years ago when I went there for a meeting. He assured me that Access was dead. I assured him it was not and in fact I had recently been to Redmond and seen a demo of the new release. What was "dead" was Jet. It was being replaced by ACE which would now be controlled by the Access team rather than the SQL Server team. The latest rumor if the demise of Access was again caused by Microsoft itself when it released a press piece about how AWA's were being discontinued which sounded very much like "Access" was dead when it was only the web app that was being discontinued.

Unfortunately I've seen Brent Ozar a well respected SQL DBA / developer completely criticizing MS Access, unfortunately for the wrong reasons - (he completely ignored the front end form designs available in MS Access). It was disappointing because he seemed to be trolling another forum at the time and he continues to be a very high paid consultant that few could afford on here, mainly working on projects at scale for big companies. He is completely out of the price range of 90% of this forum and generally focuses on companies that have a sys admin and dbas.
 
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The_Doc_Man

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I'd love to talk to Mr. Ozar, then. I worked for the U.S. Government as a contractor and we had more than one Access database. We had separate and dedicated sys admins (I was one of about 25-30) and a staff of at least 10 DBAs, some of which were for ORACLE and some for SQL Server. And we used Access. Further, the biggest Access FE we had (with SQL Server BE) was a MEDICAL RECORDS system and still was compliant with all the HIPAA baloney!

It takes a narrow, closed mind to not see that Access has more going for it than just the Microsoft imprimatur.
 

Pat Hartman

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I find that most criticisms of "Access" are really criticisms of Jet/ACE. People insist on comparing "Access" to SQL Server and there simply is no comparison. SQL Server cannot create an application. That is what Access does. SQL Server is a relational database and that is what Jet/ACE is. You CAN compare Jet/ACE to SQL Server because they are both database engines. With that comparison, Jet/ACE generally comes up short because of its much more limited scale but the detractors completely overlook the fact that "Access" which is a RAD tool, can use ANY RDBMS that supports ODBC. Access is not tied to Jet/ACE except as a place to store its application objects.
 

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