Access 2010 Web compatibility checker

Hi,

I have posted this question previously but I think it went unnoticed so I am asking again: Is it possible to publish an Accde file to Sharepoint, or only Accdb files? Thanks Gilad

Hi! I found a template that requires 2003 version of Access-I have 2007 installed on my pc-do you know if I can download a trial of 2003 since it is not working with 2007?

Thanks!

Nic

Wouldn't it seem to make more sense to do the checking at design time and not allow you to add incompatible features in the first place? To have to run this check after you have already spent time making an incompatible design seems rather inane. The alternative would seem to be to run it after every little design change, which seems equally inane. It all seems rather sloppy and half-baked. Surely, I'm misunderstanding something here? Also, Clint, you still haven't posted information on ballpark costs of actually being able to use this web functionality. Your ongoing silence on this point makes me suspect it's only an option for the large enterprise with deep pockets and an IT department.

Gilad--I'm checking with feature owners about ACCDE support for more information. The area owners are away for the holidays--so it might take some time... I want to be sure to give the right answer. Let me get back to you. Nic--Access 2007 should work with the the 2003 templates. You probably need to enable the database. There is a yellow security message bar under the ribbon that should get you started. Cyrus--We haven't disclosed pricing options that target small businesses and enterprise costs are worked out with local account managers. That said--you can "rent" a SharePoint 2007 from Microsoft Online Services for as little as $5.25 per user a month. Here is a link for more information about in-market products www.microsoft.com/.../sharepoint-online.mspx.

Cyrus--you asked about not limiting things at design time. Great question. The primary job of compat checker is to help people move legacy apps to the web. It iterates over legacy tables and provides information about table expressions or constructs that won't work on the web. It also is the last stop checker for things that might have happened that we couldn't block such as forms generated via VBA. I will update the post with this information.

Hi, I like reading your posts about Access 2010. But, where I live, I can not put confidential medical records of my patients in a hosted version of Sharepoint 2010. Can I expect in 2010, a light affordable version of Sharepoint 2010 for a small workgroup (8-10 PC) that I can do one click install in a in house server? Joao Santos

NEHA, great post . . Edwin Blancovitch

happy Holidays . .

Joao,

Years ago I went on a customer visit to an accounting company that was hosting their audit project management data with the QuickBase service from Intuit. I spent the day talking with a partner of the firm. I asked him about security and concern for storing this information on a third party. He explained his company’s core competency is not security—they are great accountants but not security experts. He personally trusted the security and confidentiality of their data to a third party. Here is a link to a case study from GlaxoSmithKline. They chose to replace the Lotus Notes, Domino, and Postini services with the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite – including Microsoft® Exchange Online, Microsoft® Office SharePoint Online, Microsoft® Office Communications Online, Microsoft® Office Live Meeting and the Microsoft® Deskless Worker Suite to deploy to all of its employees worldwide. Everything would be hosted by Microsoft at Microsoft data centers around the globe. www.microsoft.com/.../Case_Study_Detail.aspx The Microsoft Online services group takes security, confidentiality, reliability very seriously as it is a core competency. I encourage you to read this article about Microsoft Online Security for background information on the topic. www.microsoft.com/.../details.aspx. We do provide a free light affordable version of SharePoint Foundation for Windows Server + SQL Express that provides base collaboration functionality but there aren’t plans to expose Access Services in that SKU.

Hi Clint, I'd still like to see how web databases scale out. I am currently working on converting the back end of a large Access 2003 db to SQL Server and then continuing to use the existing Access FE. The DB has approx. 25 connected users in different states and it's largest working table is >100 fields & 200K rows. While there are alot of other variables I won't detail here, I am wondering what you'd recommend if I had Access\Sharepoint\Access Services currently available....still go the SQL route or could the Access Services handle this ? I'll be honest, this scenario is my biggest and most frequent headache. Quite often I write a lovely database that runs lickity split until I put in on the network which is where seemingly well thought out database go to die... :( Thanks !

Keep up the good work...

Hi Clint, Thank you for your clear reply about my options regarding MS Access in the near future. I am going to read the articles you mentioned. Joao Santos

Neha,

Thanks for this post.

You wrote, "Note: Web compat checker doesn’t check compatibility of data in the application." Would you explain this ia bit more. What sort of wrong data might get past the compatibility checker, please?

Alan- One example is the date ranges. I once tried to upload a table that contained some dates saved as 9999-01-01, which is legal in Access, but not in Sharepoint and those dates got converted to null. Sharepoint's date data type has a slight different range... I once saw the number but now it escapes me. Anyway, that's one example of where data may not be compatible.

>seem to make more sense to do the checking at design time and not allow you to add incompatible features in the first place? I shall add bit more here. In the case of forms, reports and designs and even writing code, you ARE in fact feature restricted. This is rather amazing since you can develop without a database server, without the web server, without the reporting system. You can develop 100% stand alone on your little cute desktop with the correct set of features. I am not aware of ANY other system that allows this type of development paradigm on the desktop without the server parts in place. You can’t add illegal controls or events to a web form as the features simply don’t appear for the developer. You can’t make illegal forms or reports. You ARE allowed to enter illegal expressions in code and into text boxes (Access has always allowed this). The compatibility checker will check and inform one about even expression types of errors. The new macro code editor will also show most of these warnings as you write code. Like all developers we often ignore warnings on purpose. So in addition to migration issues, the compatibility checker will find these errors in functions and expressions. You can’t publish until errors are corrected (including errors you ignored DURING the development process). The mid() function in VBA/macros has 3 parameters. The 3rd param of length is optional on client applications. My habit for years is to leave the 3rd parameter blank. If I cut + paste that code into a web application, then I will see a red dot on that line of code in the code editor. The code actually runs but until I fix that line of code, I can’t publish. The compatibility checker is much like an final check compile (like an mde). In most cases during development you not permitted to do illegal things but some expressions are not legal. The checker does an amazing job of informing you about these issues. Publishing can take time so this checking feature is certainly needed.

Gilad: I can speak to the AccDE question. AccDEs are not blocked from publishing, but because we cannot read the VBA code from an AccDE to store it on the server, the published app would lose its VBA completely. I'm curious to know more about your scenario where you'd be interested in using publish to distribute AccDEs. Where would you use this?

I'm having a rather frustrating experience with publishing to Sharepoint. I have published two web databases to Sharepoint and the basic functionality fails in both in Sharepoint. The web compatibility checker found no problems.

Both apps's main functionality consists of forms with one or two subforms. The forms show one record at a time (in order to minimise data coming across the ether) with the record showing being based on the selection from a combobox at the top of the form. This is a method I have been using for years in normal Access databases and it works well in the web database in Access 2010 beta. However, in Sharepoint, though I can maintain the record in the main form OK, nothing appears in the subforms. In fact the subforms have become read-only in Sharepoint apart from being able to enter the letter "t" as many times as I like (but no other letter). In addition on of the subforms generates an error message saying it can't find a particular field, i.e. the link field (both Master and Child Link field have the same name)

As things stand my published database is unusable. Alan