Take the Access survey

No question about the use of Access 97 or 2000? You might not have liked the answers.

Enable us to use third party controls like DevExpress Developer Experience, Enable us to compile the finish product to a single exe. Improve integration to backend database server like mysql,postgreSQL, 1 click web convert! if possible

Some of the choices in the survery are not particularly relevant to independent Access developers and there is no n/a available. I suppose I could have given answers based on my customers' companies.... However, you do get to select from a list of things you would most like to see added to Access (and presumably which MS think are possible) as well as explaining why you want it.

I agree with Alan. The choices for independents weren't very good. Also, as Alan mentioned, there was no n/a (or none) choice. I forget which ones now, but there were a couple of questions where more than one choice would have been approiate. Sco

I long for a real SQL-Server backend with identical features like Jet but more than 32 indizes per table! and better multi-user performance. MS-SQL-Server is too big, complex and there are tons of functions I do not need for my customers. Access is an excellent frontend, but a > 10 years old fileserver-backend is not useful. Better controls like sevGraph or solutions:::schedule (gantt) would be great, but leave Internet to LAMP.

Alan Cossey: Totally agree with you. I won't participate in the survey.

You know... I used to love Access . If I can help the guys to get the software back on track again then I am willing to participate, but, hardly any of those questions are relevant to what I do or have done with Access. Garry

Yeah...the questions were not well-suited to consultant' needs, also the free-test answers areas were far too small (1024/2048 characters would have been a MUCH better choice as test length limits!). Dan Steele, I asked a question like that of our LinkedIn.com's group "Microsoft Access Professional Developers Network" members a little while back about the use/adoption of Access 2007 -vs- earlier versions. The answers were quite interesting...or perhaps I should say, distressing for the MS Access 2007 enthusiast crowd at MS (and elsewhere). MS: I would think the greatest thing Microsoft could do to "enhance Access' appeal" to the business/IT community is to create a REAL, USEFUL path to evolve/code-generate MS Access prototyped applications to *REAL* .Net / ASP.Net applications suitable for actual production use in WAN/Remote-office situations - with all the requisite security and connectivity/synchronization layers included! ...Yeah, I know - I'd also like new clean, unlimited energy supplies for the USA to free us from the foreign energy political and economic entanglements we now face too...call me a dreamer if you want. :-)

Mark Burns: Could you pass a link to LinkedIn.com's group - discussion about A2007, please?

1) Add VSTA similar to InfoPath.

2) Make deployment easy, consistent and cost effective. Management wants IT to solve business problems not spend money on deployment.

3) Make SQL features such as Stored Procedures a more integrated part of Access.

4) Re-brand Access as “SQL Desktop Designer”. Access is a great tool, but has such a bad perception that most developers probably do not want to deal with the “politics” around using Access.

5) Add the ability to save Access reports as SQL Reporting Services reports so one can design one report.

6) Add the ability to use any .NET control in Access with easy deployment.

7) Add spell check to the Runtime.

8) Create a better Expression Builder with IntelliSense. Check out AlphaFive for an example. The Expression Builder is very old.

9) Add the ability to create .NET user controls from Access forms or control groups for better code re-use.

10) Add native web browser control with full DHTML DOM and spell check for AJAX style Access development.

The survey was not well laid out for independents like me. I really like Derrick's idea about SQL Desktop Designer.

Obviously the questions are designed to get the answers you want. Aimed primarily at corporate losers. Only saw questions 1 to 6 because on some questions no options applied to me or my clients. In fact in the multi-choice one none of the options applied and in some of the single choices more than one applied. Very poor survey indeed. BTW Access 97 is still widespread. Obviously the questionaire simple and brief as it is is yet further proof that "developers" are not the target of the lastest and future versions of Access.

BTW Better integration with DB2 Viper would be nice but very unlikely as even integration with SQL Server is worse on the LATEST (as opposed to lastest) version.

I agree. Questions are not geared to the developer/consultant. I answered the survey questions based on how my average client uses Access. I guess you guys really don't know who reads this blog. Suprise! Access Developers read this blog. I have never read a comment here that was clearly coming from a user of Access. Most are clearly devs who have plenty of suggestions for improvement. A single dev can provide many times the user experience than a single Access user can provide. We work with hundreds of them all the time. We read this blog because have a business stake in how the product evolves so we want to know about what's on the way for devs(or often what's not on the way). Anyway, I'm looking forward to v14 and hope to see Sharepoint integration with SQL Server tables exposed as SP lists. It would be a shame if this is not top priority in both Access and sharepoint teams for the next release. 2007 export to Sharepoint is nice but very few of my apps have tables with under a few thousand records. I assume exposing SQL server tables as SP lists would remove the performance issues limitation on the number of 'items' (records) in a SP list. Any chance of a Access-WSS Developer toolkit that would allow locked down version of Access Web Services to install on WSS without having to purchase MOSS? I see the cost of MOSS being a big hurdle for many of my small business clients. I also think such an option would allow devs\consultants to expose companies to Access Web Services who would otherrwise most likely overlook the new features. Seeing it in action would help them to understand how purchasing MOSS would benefit their users. Josh

It's quite indicative that Microsoft has no idea about the user base. Access has been in development already for several decades, and Microsoft still thinks it's being used by ordinary users as "personal productivity tool". This would be amazing if it was not so sad. This is why with very rare exception, all developments we see in the products that are not explicitly developer-oriented, have been having zero correlation with what the actual users want. Be it Office or Microsoft Money - do a simple experiment: go to groups.google.com, find any of the newsgroups dedicated to these products, search for messages dated, say, 5 years ago, and in 10 minutes you will gather 100 wishes from the real users. Now compare that to what actually has been done. Good luck finding one common issue. I guess Microsoft is gathering their ideas from so called "focus groups" consisting of the people they gather from 3rd party survey providers, and who answer the questions already geared towards specific answers, such as we just saw in this survey, and who are rewarded for the survey with a product worth hundreds of dollars. How I know? I participated once, after which sold the reward on eBay for about $300. Yeah, sure, very, very objective results can be obtained by this method. Speaking of Access, I have been submitting wishes during every beta of every MS Office since I think 2000. To no avail. Some remarkable ones: 1. provide version signature in the adp and ade, so the product could be upgraded by standard deployment practices. 2. stop hardcoding developer's machine name in the connection string of the adp, so every user appears in sql server connecting from that hardcoded machine. 3. speaking of the deployment, put administrative sequence in the installation of Access Runtime, so these hotfixes you are issuing could be actually applied. Once there, run ICE validation of your installation and eliminate those hundreds of red violations. If you don't know what is administrative sequence and what is ICE validation, ask MCI team, they happen to be in the your own company, maybe in your own building. Though of course, all that makes no sense if Access is thought as "personal productivity tool", lol.