Hi All

In conjunction with Smart Access Newsletter, Peter Vogel and I are collecting ideas for the next version of Access and beyond to send to Microsoft.

Add your ideas and read those of others at
http://vb123.blogspot.com

or read the editorial in August at
http://smartaccessnewsletter.com

Garry Robinson
Editor of vb123.com and Contributing editor to Smart Access

Several people are going to disagree with me on this point, but I think the datasheet view of tables in Access is very confusing in that it makes the data look as if it is in a spreadsheet. This gives users the false feeling that they should use Access the way they would use a spreadsheet. This leads to all kinds of bad design decisions including atrocious normalization problems and the like. I know it has been done for userfriendliness, but too much userfriendliness I think has lead to a kind of "familiarity breeds contempt" attitude in computer users.

I think lots of people plunge into Access with no clue about data design, normalization and other subjects that any decent DBA has to know and then they get stuck halfway through their project because behind all that userfriendliness there is still a database there, not a spreadsheet. If MS could build in the smarts to normalize the data in spite of the bad decisions the users make, then dumbing down the user interface may not be a bad idea, but given that that is not the case, I don't see any point in trying to pretend that using a database is so easy that you don't have to know the basics of data design or SQL or anything.

Comments welcome.

Haven't used 2003 yet, but:

Support for theta-joins and Union queries in the query design window.

AND

Currently, when you switch back and forth between SQL view and Query Design view, any formatting (line breaks, etc.) you put into the SQL view disappear. If formatting in SQL view could remain, it would be much easier to use the SQL view.

-AJ

On the SQL editor, wouldn't it be great just to be able to do a find and replace and a few other normal text editor features.

Garry

I wish they would go back to the A97 help system instead of the separate help files for Access and Visual Basic. A complete index (including every single function that is available in VB, for example) would also help.

Colors on command buttons and tabs would be a good improvement. Being able to format text in a text box with different parts of it being bold, italic etc. using some system like html tags would be a great improvement.

Inclusion of more MS Excel functions in VBA would be useful. Addition of more statistical functions (such as those for median, mode etc.) would also be welcome.

An improvement to the autonumber system so that on compact all the holes are filled in would be wonderful. Obviously, this would require cascading updates in all tables linked to each other through the autonumber field.