Pro Access 2007 : Book Review

I have been very much enjoying reading Martin WP Reid's new book, Pro Access 2007.

In fact, for me, it is just what I need at this time.

As an Access developer who has acquired a reasonable level of skill and knowledge of earlier versions of Access, I have nevertheless been feeling a little intimidated by the scale of the learning curve ahead, to come to terms with the new wave of changes in my industry.  I bet I'm not the only one!

Martin Reid is easy to read.  He has a slightly informal, shoot from the hip sort of style.  Very personable.

He wades into all the key areas where Access developers have to take notice.  The Ribbon UI, what's new in Access 2007, SQL Server 2005 Express, Windows SharePoint Services, to name a few.

It's a relatively short book, less than 400 pages.  It isn't an in-depth coverage of everything you would ever want to know.  It's not that sort of book, nor does it pretend to be.

On the other hand, it is not a trivial work.  It is written for the professional developer, and the content relates accordingly.

What comes through, is the author's passion for Access, and his understanding of Access's continued position at the cutting edge of database application development.

Martin Reid's skill here, is in identifying some of the core concepts, demystifying them by explaining them in straight-forward language, and illustrating them by superb examples.  All this at a comfortably manageable pace.

So as you see, I like the book, I learned heaps from it so far, it got me over a hump, and I will no doubt be referring back to it again.

Technorati tags: Microsoft+Access, book+review

Real World Access (27)

One of a series of articles about where Microsoft Office Access applications have found a real-world niche.

 Thomas Möller's Mutual Funds

I have developed an application for a bank. With this application, commissions for mutual funds are accounted. The payments of the investment companies are verified and the payments are distributed to various clients.

From the beginning we have used Access as the front-end system. The data was stored in Access (JET) tables.

With time, the business grew. We accounted for more mutual funds and we increased the number of clients. In addition contracts with further societies were secured. These factors led the volume of data to grow fast. This was the reason to migrate the data tables to IBM DB/2. Microsoft Access is still in use as the front-end system.

Technorati tags: Microsoft+Access, software+development, MVP, mutual+funds

Real World Access (26)

One of a series of articles about where Microsoft Office Access applications have found a real-world niche.

 Al Campagna's Commercial Weaving

An application designed to control, track, and evaluate all aspects of fabric manufacturing, in a modern weaving facility with 34 mechanized looms.

The Weaving System application handles all aspects of a modern commercial weaving process, from raw material to finished product.

Due to the application’s large size (172 Forms, 170 Reports, 67 Tables), it now occupies three individual front ends (Sales, Production, and Archiving) and two individual back end databases (Sales, Production).

The Sales module provides the ability to track, quantify, and evaluate Sales, Fabric Products and Styles, Raw Material usage and prediction, Fabric Inventory (with Bar Coding), and Shipping and Receiving.

Remote sales personnel can access the system to determine current stock levels, quote product pricing, and determine delivery schedules.

The Production module monitors and evaluates the production process. Automating complicated calculations necessary for Loom Setup, monitoring Yarn Usage, Weaver and Loom performance, Loom Maintenance/Repair/Labor and Parts, Grading, Inspection, and Quality Control.

All aspects of the Weaving System are fully ISO 9001:2000 compliant.

The application provides the client with the ability to accurately monitor, control, and evaluate the commercial weaving processes, through a combination of “real time” and “historical” data.

Technorati tags: Microsoft+Access, software+development, MVP, weaving

Real World Access (25)

One of a series of articles about where Microsoft Office Access applications have found a real-world niche.

 Mark Davis's Print Shop

A small print shop in Indiana wanted a new database to replace the one they were using. At the time, they were using an ailing DB4 database that had, over the years, been written and modified by several different independent developers. Needless to say it was in rough shape for further tweaking. The shop owner asked me if a new database could be written with a newer development tool and handed me a brand new package of Clarion.

After fumbling with an initial interface for about month, the pressure was mounting to derive even the simplest of interfaces. All the shop needed was a tool to track print jobs as they came in the door and be able to track them through the entire printing process. It was then that Microsoft Access made it's welcome appearance in the form of a 'beta' invitation. Within 8 hours of it (Access Beta 0.9) arriving, it was installed and able to easily generate the first interface for their application - the 'job information screen'.

Within just a few weeks, a complete print job tracking application was built, in place and helping to smooth operations at that print shop. Before this project, I had never looked at or touched a database development tool of any kind.

The print shop owners were so pleased with what was done so quickly, and with what appeared so flexible, they pressed me into furthering their application's abilities by adding some Point Of Sale features. That was quickly followed by a request for an Accounts Receivable addition. Then Accounts Payable, followed by a General Ledger and then Payroll. Finally, they wanted their "simple job tracking" program to be able to roll up all of their monthly, quarterly and annual reports for their tax accountant, who provided the tax and chart of accounts info. And of course, there had to be an annual "Clean Up" button that would roll up the previous year's information & balances and do the proper carry-overs, so their tax accountant could enter in just a few lines of beginning balances to start the new year of business.

That was late in 1991 through 1992, and that print shop is still using the same application written in Access 1.0, now migrated (through the years) to Access 97 where it still works for them today.

Technorati tags: Microsoft+Access, software+development, Microsoft+MVP

Real World Access (24)

One of a series of articles about where Microsoft Office Access applications have found a real-world niche.

 Rick Brandt's Document Management

Handling documentation creation and submission for a large field organization. These people previously had many paper documents that they had to mail or fax to the corporate office.

The application has a database for each document type. This allows for all of the control typical of such an application for error checking, duplicate avoidance, and status tracking.

Once "documents" are created in the application they can be submitted to the corporate database over the internet using HTTP requests to web service programs running on the corporate web server. The same HTTP mechanism is used to download data from the corporate databases down to the client program. This is used for lookup table updates, retrieving records lost to hardware problems and for initial security setup.

This provides a good combination of a local database that is useful even when internet connectivity is not available, and the ability to leverage the internet for data interchange.

One of the "cooler" features in this app is for the document that must accompany parts returned to the factory for repair or warranty replacement. Previously a paper document was attached to the part. Now that record is sent in over the internet and the application allows for a small barcode label to be printed and affixed to the part. At the receiving facility they just scan the barcode and the appropriate electronic document is immediately referenced and the data made available.

Technorati tags: Microsoft+Access, software+development, document+management, Microsoft+MVP

New Access Blog Launched

Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP, has just started a new blog, focussed on Access.

Looks like it will be technical tips and tidbits and links.

A welcome addition to the sparse stable of Access-related blogs.  Thanks, Tony!

You'll find him here.

Technorati tags: Microsoft+Access, blogging, MVP, community

Wellington Office User Group

Change of Life

After quite a lot of thought and consultation, we have decided to reduce the frequency of WOUG meetings.

In a nutshell... With the available resources (speakers, venue, support staff, convenor's time), we have been pretty stretched to try and maintain a monthly meeting schedule.

However, there are plenty of people around who are committed to the value of the user group.  So, we will be better able to meet the needs of the Office user community by holding bi-monthly or quarterly meetings.

Next meeting 20 June

So, if you're a Microsoft Office user, in Wellington, mark off Wednesday 20 June, 6:00-7:30 pm.

Amongst other things, Jonathan Stuckey (Microsoft) will be giving a presentation about making the most of the Office 2007 Ribbon, details of how it differs from the Office 2003 toolbars, and how to transition from one to the other.

Further details in due course, or visit the WOUG website.

Venue change

But it's not only a change of schedule happening.  We also have the June meeting sponsored by New Zealand Post, at the initiative of regular group member Aniela Mackiewicz.  So I am excited to announce that we will meet at New Zealand Post House on Waterloo Quay.

Sponsorship

We also have received some sponsorship from ESET.  Those attending the meeting will be in with a chance to win a copy of NOD32, professional strength, award-winning anti-virus software.

Future schedule

Following the June meeting, we will be planning on two further meetings to take us to the end of 2007.  Probably 15 August and 21 November.  If you have an Office-related topic that you would like some input on, please let me know.

 

Technorati tags: Microsoft+Office, User+Group, computers, community

Whistling in the Wind

Is proliferation of American spelling inevitable?

I am prompted to write this from 3 angles:

• a focus on the social effects of computer technology
• a long-term personal interest in language and psycho-linguistics
• an "attention to detail" personality that has me noticing this stuff

First of all, let me clarify that I don't think there is anything intrinsically superior about "colour" over "color".  I admit I do have a preference, but I recognise it is because of my cultural heritage.

But this isn't about good and bad.  It's about the process of change.

So, fact #1 is that in Australia, and to a slightly lesser extent in New Zealand, the English language in common usage is becoming Americanised (or should I say Americanized).

And I know it is not a particularly profound observation to suppose that the American dominance of the computer software industry is playing a part in this.

For a start, even though spelling checkers often provide "proper English" dictionaries, for some reason they often seem to magically revert to US, and people tend to just give up trying to configure it how they want.

What is most interesting to me, though, is to notice what is changing, and what is not.  Here are a few casual observations and random comments:

• We are seeing the greatest degree of change in less formal writing - emails, blogs, local documents.  This is not surprising, I suppose.
  
• Magazines and newspapers tend to still adhere to New Zealand spelling.  I think the most frequent exceptions to this are in the use of -ize rather than -ise word endings.  I am curious as to why this is changing before other changes.
  
• One of the changes that has spread like wildfire is the use of the word "gotten".  This is a real word listed in American dictionaries, but has not generally been accepted outside the U.S.  But in the last week, I have seen it used by 8 Australians and New Zealanders in blogs or mailing list posts.  At a User Group meeting recently, I tried to make a joke about the speaker saying "gotten", and he didn't even realise it's not an English word!
  
• I think we are seeing "center" rather than "centre", but these same writers are still often sticking to metre and litre.  Curious.
  
• It is not surprising how often we now see "licence" misspelled as "license", what with software licences in our face all the time.  More interesting is seeing "practise" (verb) increasingly misspelled as "practice".
  
• One of the amusing technology-related misspellings these days, is how often you will see people write "site" when they really mean "sight".
  
• Here's a funny one... Americans commonly misspell "lose" as "loose".  We are increasingly seeing people in the Antipodes catching this affliction.  Why this one?  We used to mainly get it right, and now we start to copy others' mistakes.
  
• Here's one that is close to my heart, pronunciation rather than spelling.  "Data".  I work with databases.  The name of my company is Data Management Solutions.  Seems to me that the American pronunciation "day-da" is now in the majority.  I recently attended a meeting of the Wellington SharePoint User Group.  Ari Bakker was one of the presenters.  It was a great session.  But one of the things I really enjoyed was that Ari still pronounces data like tomato.  (Well, come to think of it, I think the Americans get tomato wrong too.)
  
• I also understand that the Canadians, who obviously have been more closely exposed to American spelling for a long time, because of their geographical proximity, have managed to preserve their own spelling of a lot of words.  So I am just fascinated to see what eventuates here.

 

Technorati tags: language, English+spelling, computers, software, community

Great Interview - Teresa Hennig

I have just read through a fantastic article, and I enjoyed it so much I just had to reference it here.

It is published on the Canadian Information Processing Society site. Stephen Ibaraki interviewing author and Access MVP Teresa Hennig.

It is a fairly lengthy piece, so grab a coffee first.  A real good read, covering a number of topics, including:

• Microsoft Access and VBA
• Database application design
• Principles for running a User Group
• General thought on IT industry
• Some personal sharing

I had the privilege of meeting Teresa at the MVP Summit in March.  She is a wonderful and exciting person, which comes through loud and clear in this interview.

I am looking forward to getting my hands on a copy of her new book "Access 2007 VBA Programmer's Reference".

 

Technorati tags: Microsoft+Access, Teresa+Hennig, software+development, VBA

Come to the Edge

I recently posted here about Kevin Roberts' recent talk in Wellington, on the subject of social trends.

A transcript and video of his very interesting presentation is now available on his website.

 

Technorati tags: kevin+roberts, lovemarks, GTD, micro-ISV