Microsofts new direction...

[Kevin_S]

I think Access may become Microsofts Red-Headed Step Child (sorry if offended any red-headed step childern posters! ) I just went to a MS conf yesterday on ASP.NET v2 new features and the guest speaker did a 1 hour demo on MS InfoPath 2003 at the beginning of the seminar and all I can say is WOW! It really looks like a cool piece of software. The neat features was that it looks to be a faster and better RAD tool then Access is or could be. Reason for this is that Infopath does ALL of the data binding and management for you - i.e. no more recordsets, connection strings, bound tables/queries - its basically drag and drop development at the core (with the ability to tweak with vb/script if necessary. The best feature is that everything is based in XML so its truely compatible with clients/web/etc... There is a quick demo located here for those that are interested in seeing it in action PLUS there is a free 60 day full version trial edition available if you want to try it out...

Does anyone have any experience with this that they could shed further light on the subject (like I said we got about a 45min - 1hr intro on it...)

Kev

 

[Pat Hartman]

I saw the same presentation last week. I actually experimented with InfoPath 6 weeks ago. I was going to make a presentation on it to the Access Users group in my area. I found it to be difficult to work with and totally inflexible. So bad in fact that I cancelled the presentation as a waste of everybody's time. Apparently service pack 1 was a serious upgrade and many of the problems I had with working with data were fixed (at least so they say). So, maybe if I have time next month, I'll give it another try.

What I thought would be a good application was as a distributed data collection front end for an Access (or other) application. People in the field could take an order and forward it to the home office. This would eliminate a lot of paperwork and potential copying errors.

The other problem with the product is that it costs $199 and must be installed on each seat so is technically twice as expensive as Access. Apparently, corportate installations will most likely include InfoPath but retail purchases of Office will not.

 

[Kodo]

no, but now you got me REALLY interested in it too!

 

[Kevin_S]

They did mention at the beginning that there were some serious issues in the first build that were corrected with SP1 (as you said) so I think some of that was corrected potentially - it DID seem to be a pretty flexible tool as they were demo-ing it to us (like I said we got the 60 min pretty show though so I haven't had any "hands-on" with it). They were almost toughting it as an Access Killer though in the presentation so MS may have high plans for it...

The XML integration was key though - huge sticking point for anyone looking to expand applications to a web environment without using ASP (or the like) as the DAP is a hunk of crap that MS added onto Access for some unknown reason...

Pat, I'd be really interested in hearing your opinion after trying the new version with SP1...

Thanks,
Kev