Who originally designed MS Access and What happened to the initial core team? (1 Viewer)

Lightwave

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Ok the question is in the title.

Have been struck a number of times by the really great design of Access as an integrated design environment. I have heard that some went on to help with the design of SQL Server - no idea whether this is true or not.

I've looked up Wikipedia and there doesn't seem to be any significant information on my title question.

I was wondering whether any of the very knowledgeable individuals here can shed some light on things.
 

Galaxiom

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I have heard that some went on to help with the design of SQL Server - no idea whether this is true or not.

I have always assumed it was a very different team. Access tables have "fields" while SQL has "columns". But maybe that was because the later SQL Server followed the wider already established terminology.
 

JHB

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In the start before year 2000 it was very common that developers included some "Easter Eggs" in programs they've developed and I remembered that MS-Access had some included, so a search for it gave that, (I still have some old versions of MS-Access installed on an older computer, but I've taken it down, so ...)

http://www.techrepublic.com/pictures/looking-back-at-microsoft-access-easter-eggs/13/
 

AccessJunkie

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Hi,

Very interesting question.

I believe some stayed with Access for many years, some moved to different teams over the years, some went on to different companies, some retired, etc. That was a very long time ago so a lot can happen in 25 years.

However, one of the original developers is still on the team! I'm completely serious. He's an amazing individual and has an incredible depth of knowledge about the product as you can imagine. I work with him all the time concerning Access features since my team works on the Access help content. I'll see if I can talk him into answering your post here.

Incidentally, five years ago this month I attended the 20th anniversary celebration of the Access launch held at a local winery nearby. There were people from each major release and they took group photos of everyone on the release (or releases) they were a part of. It was quite an interesting event. My friend that I mentioned was of course in each product release photo taken that day. :)

--------------------
Jeff Conrad - Access Junkie - MVP Alumnus
Senior Content Publishing Manager - Modern Assistance and Support Experience - Microsoft Corporation

Author - Microsoft Access 2013 Inside Out
Author - Microsoft Access 2010 Inside Out
Co-author - Microsoft Office Access 2007 Inside Out
Access 2007/2010/2013 Info: http://www.AccessJunkie.com

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Pat Hartman

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Hi Jeff, Does anyone actually read the comments left with the help entries? Based on what I find searching via help, I got the impression the MS had gotten out of the help business entirely since I rarely get actual MS help entries any more. I would love to have a conversation with you regarding help if you'd like to talk with someone who isn't too proud to use it.
Pat
 

Lightwave

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Hi,
However, one of the original developers is still on the team!
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Hi AJ

Yes I investigated the names listed in the picture linked to by JHB and I think you are probably referring to Shane Groff - I found some replies to questions about Access 2016 from him.

As you might expect over a time period like that of those that I could find they have gone on to a complete variety of things.

Very interesting.
If they do read this then thanks to all involved both then and now. It would be great to talk to anyone on the Access Team.

Not unsurprisingly I'm seeing them doing a lot of consultancy in MS Access and creating quite a few really nice applications. Nice to say this dogfooding is happening after they left the original team.

https://djhconsulting.com/projects/database/

I really like the way David has documented his applications there.

M
 
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AccessJunkie

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Hi Pat,

Access help, just like the other Office applications, has separations of ownership based on different areas. All developer focused content that is part of the VBE window is hosted on MSDN and owned by the Dev Docs team. I don’t have any control over that content. Our MAX group owns and oversees end user focused content (content that comes up in the Help viewer/pane), admin focused content (think setup, install, etc.), video training, and templates. My specific team oversees just the end user content for Access, Excel, OneNote, Visio, Publisher, InfoPath, Microsoft Forms, Sway, Office Lens, and Docs.com. This content lives on support.office.com and is visible on the web and within the help viewer/pane.

To your question of, “Does anyone actually read the comments left with the help entries,” yes we definitely look at comments on our help articles. There are over 1,140 help articles in my Access landscape and we got over 2,400 comments on that content just in September alone. Due to the sheer volume of comments, we tend to try and focus on themes that we see and of course try and just weed out the noise – there’s a lot of that.

My team has focused our Access content efforts on these areas:
1. Keeping up with new features coming out of the product team. The main entry point for seeing that is on our main ‘What’s new in Access 2016’ article: https://support.office.com/article/76454345-f85d-47af-ace1-98a456cb3496
2. Bringing down context sensitive help (CSH) error rates.
3. Raising the overall SAT rating across the content set through continuous improvements.
4. Massive work on content consolidation and cleanup.

Comments are just one area we look at. We look at page views, SAT ratings, comments, search queries, null search queries, CSH errors and trends, referrers, video play rates, click through rates, locale specific issues, and other key data points. It’s a mountain of data to look at.

It may surprise you to hear our biggest problem with Access end user content (and our other Office apps content too) is that we have too much content. I’m serious. To be more precise, we have too much duplicated content. Here’s a classic example. Compare these three articles (one is for 2007, one is tagged for 2010, and the last is tagged for 2013 and 2016):
https://support.office.com/article/8465b89c-2ff2-4cc8-ba60-2cd8484667e8
https://support.office.com/article/d055f259-9655-49a5-a071-f08cae458310
https://support.office.com/article/aa10cbb3-1a0e-4f22-a07e-ccc448519e3c

They are nearly identical. Why do we need three separate articles for four versions when one that covers all four versions will work just fine? We have *hundreds* (literally) of examples like this. It completely muddies up search for our customers. A generic organic search in your search engine of choice will nearly always land you on the 2007 articles in these cases because they have the most search history. Try it. Type “Access make summary data easier to read by using a crosstab query” into a Google/Bing search and look what is the first entry – yep the 2007 article. Most users aren’t on 2007; they’re on the later versions so they land on the older one and get frustrated since that’s not their version and the steps could be different. Our data shows this is our biggest challenge.

So our big focus has been consolidating this content into what we call ‘evergreen’ content – content that spans multiple versions – and getting rid of the duplicates. In this way, we’re vastly improving search results to get customers to precisely what they need and comments/ratings, etc. aren’t spread out over multiple duplicate copies of content. Just this week I finished a massive five-week cleanup on all of our import, link, and export content. We had over a dozen duplicated articles. There is now one, and only one, article for each intent and they span multiple versions. The new landing page just went live with links off to all of this evergreen content:
https://support.office.com/article/08422593-42dd-4e73-bdf1-4c21fc3aa1b0

The ratings across the entire content set (33 articles) has already jumped over 10% and I just made these changes. We’ll continue to watch the data to see how the revised content performs.

Every month I send a detailed content report to the Access product team (and the main other products my team supports) showing what work we are doing and each report includes detailed Power BI dashboard content metrics. I also periodically share some of this content data with our Access MVPs in the private group. They’ve seen the vast improvements in the metrics too.

I’d be happy to continue the conversation if you’d like. Send me a private message first and then we’ll continue over email.

--------------------
Jeff Conrad - Access Junkie - MVP Alumnus
Senior Content Publishing Manager - Modern Assistance and Support Experience - Microsoft Corporation

Author - Microsoft Access 2013 Inside Out
Author - Microsoft Access 2010 Inside Out
Co-author - Microsoft Office Access 2007 Inside Out
Access 2007/2010/2013 Info: http://www.AccessJunkie.com

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AccessJunkie

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Hi Lightwave,

Yes, Shane is the one still on the team. He's a walking encyclopedia of knowledge. I'd love to hook up a CAT-5 line from his brain to my brain and do a data transfer.

--------------------
Jeff Conrad - Access Junkie - MVP Alumnus
Senior Content Publishing Manager - Modern Assistance and Support Experience - Microsoft Corporation

Author - Microsoft Access 2013 Inside Out
Author - Microsoft Access 2010 Inside Out
Co-author - Microsoft Office Access 2007 Inside Out
Access 2007/2010/2013 Info: http://www.AccessJunkie.com

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Use of included script samples are subject to the terms specified at
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Pat Hartman

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Hi Jeff,
I appreciate the problem of accurately documenting features. I'm pretty old school having grown up in the main frame world with COBOL and I really like the separation of syntax and usage advice. I believe that both have their place. Personally, most of the time when I'm searching for something, I want syntax. Intellisense is very helpful but not quite good enough in certain cases to explain the various options for functions. When I'm looking at something new, I would also be interested in usage advice. The original Access documentation followed this model and it was excellent. All Access help has deteriorated significantly since A97. There is no longer a coherent "manual". All you can ever find (if you can even find that) is related to very narrow topics. The problem with this, particularly for newcomers, is that they have NO CLUE what search term to use to get to what they need. That is why the table of contents in the manual was so critical. It could be used as a framework. A guide to the section that would lead to answering the question they don't know the words to ask. I can't tell you how many new features I discovered from simply perusing the table of contents. In my first training class in programming, the instructor emphasized the need for being able to FIND an answer rather than attempting to know everything there was to know. The field simply grows too fast.

The third part of help is problem resolution. Sometimes syntax specifications will provide the answer and sometimes advice will provide a clue but, problem resolution is where the internet is most helpful. It isn't really practical to include trouble shooting details in every help entry and it is hard to envision what stupid thing someone is going to do so I'm quite OK with leaving this to the internet. It's too bad it is so difficult to filter out the bad answers.

I think syntax and advice should always be local and problem resolution can go to the internet since it is most volatile. I would prefer that local help be updated periodically so that it stays as fresh as possible. This should be trivial given the subscription model since updates are pushed out quite frequently. This separation also ensures that the MS answers are always displayed ahead of the random dreck you get from Bing and the less random dreck you get from Google. I'm pretty sure you are not involved with the actual "search" code but that should ALWAYS bring back official MS documentation ahead of any random stuff from the internet.

I read through one of the sections that is most near and dear to my heart because I help people with it almost weekly and that is importing from text files. If you don't mind some criticism-
1. The article is too long.
2. It takes too much reading to get to the heart of the question.
3. Your recommendation to avoid using the Advanced button and instead to use the "new" style of import should be qualified. It is one thing if the import is NEVER, EVER going to change and quite another if you need any flexibility such as the ability to change the name of the import/export file (VERY common requirement) or even to update the spec itself - can't be done using the suggested method. In my opinion, the "new" method hid some of the issues caused by the original method rather than exposing them so they could be more easily worked with. There was no need to add a new import/export function. It would have been better to clarify the existing one and perhaps make the detail section where you go field by field a little more user friendly. No where have I ever seen an explanation of how to change an existing spec. Keep in mind that some of these have dozens of fields and no one wants to recreate one if they don't have to. I’ve created a lot of import/export specs to communicate with other applications. I don’t get to define the format. I just have to do what they want and if they want a stupid fixed width layout, that’s what I have to give them. The export spec in particular makes this very difficult because if I miss a column, I’m stuck and have to delete from that point on. I can’t simply insert a column and have the subsequent locations automatically adjust. Anyway, that’s not your problem. You just have to document the process so that people can actually implement it.

I would make it clear at the start that there are two different methods and which should be used depending on the requirements because as someone who must do this in pretty much every application, I would NEVER, EVER use the new method. I know it is there so you can coddle inexperienced people but I put it with the abomination data types as more trouble than it is worth. One of my clients has “power” users who sometimes develop apps. Usually for themselves but sometimes they get shared or handed off to other people and I get called in to “fix” them because their imports/exports always break if they’ve used the new method due to different folder layouts on different computers!!!!!!!!!! Invariably, I change them to use the old Transfer methods so I can control the paths and file names.

Also, a comment on format. I personally prefer the old square screens and it was quite a PITA for me to modify dozens of applications to look decent on the “new” wide monitors that everyone wanted so they could watch movies in cinemascope on their computers. But since it is virtually impossible to even buy the old square monitors, why not adjust the format of the help entries to be wider. That would eliminate a lot of scrolling (one of my pet peeves with Web apps) and give a better overview of articles. You’re wasting 2/3 of the screen with dead space. Personally, I also hate the faint font. I find it more difficult to read than black. Dark text on gray or beige background is much easier on the eyes than faint text on WHITE background. Don’t visually impaired people complain? I can see but it is very tiring to squint to see the text as it is presented.
In a former life, I spent about two years as a part time proof reader for IBM manuals and I currently provide the same service for a friend of mine who publishes bridge books. My deal is one read only. I don’t know who reviews the help entries but you might consider running them by the MVP community.
Pat
 
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The_Doc_Man

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Just to amplify one part of Pat's answer:

All Access help has deteriorated significantly since A97. There is no longer a coherent "manual". All you can ever find (if you can even find that) is related to very narrow topics. The problem with this, particularly for newcomers, is that they have NO CLUE what search term to use to get to what they need.

It is frequently the case on this forum that our best answer is just to inform the original poster what question to ask. I.e. supply a topic name, because there is usually a perfectly good name for what someone wants to do... but beginners have no way of knowing what that is. I wish I had a nickel for ever case where all I did was point someone in a direction and step away when they "ran with it."

I've been around Access since Access 2.0 and have done projects in many flavors of the beast. I've watched the help system fall away because the "local" help content just isn't there, and that is a crying shame. Switching to a more on-line style of Help content might seem like a great idea, but you ARE trusting the user's default browser AND the preferences of the individual user's ISP. That ISP might have sponsored stuff that will come up first and totally confuse or frustrate the beginner.

Just an observation from a 40-year industry veteran and former Microsoft MVP.

By the way, Pat... still playing bridge much?
 

Pat Hartman

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Tomorrow I'm helping out at a Learn Bridge in a Day seminar. I'll be assigned to a table of four people and help them work through the mechanics of bidding and play. It's a program that the American Contract Bridge League (acbl.org) helped develop to teach the game to newcomers. Most of the local clubs offer various classes but they generally require multi-week commitments and if you don't even know if you're going to like the game, it's hard to get people to sign up. This is a 6 hour commitment, it includes lunch, we supply partners, and at the end you'll know if the game even interests you at all. Bridge is a card game that can be learned in a couple of hours but it takes a lifetime to master. I've been playing for 40 years and my objective when I pick up a hand is to make fewer mistakes than my opponents.

As far as Access help goes, it is really the missing table of contents that is the most serious lack. People can drill through an outline and if it is organized properly, find what they need even when they don't know what they are looking for.
 

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