If you could, please let me know here, what you do with Microsoft Access.

Perhaps the version and the number of users? I'm curious to know how many of you are using say, the XML or 'data access pages', 'Macros', and so on.

Is Access for a business or for fun or ???

How do you see Access and its evolution - where it has come from and where it's going?

No real, real specifics please, unless you feel what you write is not sensitive to you & or your employer.

Thanks a bunch,

Gord Hubbell
Webmaster, www.UtterAccess.com

This is by no means a scientific survey or would it be treated as such - I'm just trying to come to grips with these current issues with the 2003 version, and how it may benefit / detriment you and I here at UtterAccess.

Small to mid-size applications for small businesses and non-profit organations. From one to 12 users at any one site.
I develop in Access XP. I participated in the beta for A2003 and decided I'd wait a while to add it to my toolkit. (IMG:http://www.utteraccess.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/thumbdn.gif)
I use the Office Developers Edition to package for runtime.
I've looked at InstallShield and am about to start evaluating Wise for packaging installations.

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That being said, I think the future for most developers will have to include XML and some form of web-based capabilities in their toolkits. SQL Server and VS.Net and beyond that. I think Ken Getz's article is a good preview of the future. (The one cited by Lars).

There are some contradictions inherent in what we are talking about here, I'm afraid. For example, the small private school for which I created an attendance database is not going to grow much and they are not going to push the capacity of the networked Access 2002 database for several years to come. Moreover, they have no resources to do much more, so that database is likely to be in use pretty much as it now exists, and in need of support for at least five or six years, maybe more. That means I have to keep A2002 in my toolkit for at least that long.

However, if I were to be asked to expand the attendance db to support an entire school district, I would have to migrate it to a SQL Server, web-interface design and incur a lot of additional issues, like security, which are only marginal in the existing installation. In other words, the existing db is fine, but limited to a small subset of potential clients.

I don't want to stretch the example too far, but I do think this one does somewhat represent the central dilemma facing many, if not most, of us. We have an installed base of customers at varying levels of sophistication and with varying resources. We have to support what's out there now, but we have to be ready to move on, or risk becoming irrelevant to the future. I can't afford to focus all of my attention on what I know today because the next opportunity that presents itself will require new skills and new tools.

George