Feral Cats: Managing Access databases in your organization

re: Feral Cats: Managing Access databases in your organization

RachelLevine — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 13:37:45 GMT

Hi Dick,

I'm an independent Access consultant and work with small businesses and sometimes corporate departments. Some smart IT mgrs are relieved to have me teach their people Access and "empower" them. When users are educated they give less problems to IT. In most cases the "pet" databases they create are not needed by others outside their department and don't need to be on a server. The users are taught the difference between local and linked data, where the data really resides, etc. And they are taught to back up. The urge to centralize is understandable and sometimes things swing in that direction, but in my experience (over 20 yrs) trusting your users to learn and use the software they need is always the way to go. Mistakes are made, data can sometimes get lost (& lessons are learned) but that's true even in IT departments!

re: Feral Cats: Managing Access databases in your organization

Dick Watson — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 13:41:44 GMT

p.s., "CTO of a British company who compared databases to feral cats wreaking havoc on his organization's work" -- that is so typical of the standard IT refrain: "why our job would be so simple if only these infernal users would just go away" as though they are an end unto themselves.

If my use of Access is causing some IT Manager nightmares, all I can say is now we are even.

The [insert corporation name] IT Service Pledge: We're not happy till you're not happy.

re: Feral Cats: Managing Access databases in your organization

mburns_08109 — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 16:15:36 GMT

@DickWatson,

Something tells me that somewhere along the lines, some of the Managers @ MS fail to comprehend that Gartner's reports and surveys really miss the essential nature of MS Access and its varying roles across widely disparate enterprise types.

I think your point about the resistance levels to changing technology in "empowering" users running contrary to their own management's intentions/fears is a truly excellent one. Access empowers with a small 'e' in all those places where Management does not WANT TO empower their information workers with a capital 'E'. There are many reasons for this to be the case, but somehow this rather essential real-world truth gets missed in calculating out MS's Big Plans For The Future(tm).

re: Feral Cats: Managing Access databases in your organization

Paul Miller — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 22:26:29 GMT

I would strongly recommend having a LARGE grain of salt along with anything an IT manager has to say regarding Access. The reason Access is so widely used in medium-to-large sized companies is because in-house IT departments rarely facilitate rapid application development. Business users require solutions to data challenges immediately, and cannot wait 6 months to 3 years for their internal IT folks to implement solutions.

Most IT managers in medium-to-large sized companies would prefer NOT to install Access on any business user's machine.

For honest, real-world feedback, you would be better off speaking with operations and business-side analytics managers and directors. Access has few, if any, friends on the traditional IT side of the fence.

re: Feral Cats: Managing Access databases in your organization

Dick Watson — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 02:32:34 GMT

Feral Cat here.

I'm all for manageability and all of that stuff. But IT setting up SQL Servers and empowering us users who actually understand the problems that need solved is not the real world for millions of users.

At work, it I waited for IT to make available SQL Server space that I could just use for all the little databases that are part of getting my job done, I'd be retired first. What IT departments do you talk to that want to empower users to solve problems with tools like Access? The ones that are already running Win7 and testing Win8? The ones that actually encourage users to make organic solutions in stuff like SharePoint? The ones that might let users use a centralized and managed SQL Server as a back end without 500 open work tickets, 1,000 forms, and 10,000 reviews and committee meetngs and architecture boards and so on? (All aimed to gum the idea to death and beat the user into submission.)

Maybe this is reasonable from their PoV, but once again: MS is only paying attention to the companies that are spending lots of money with Microsoft and viewing them as "typical" which I don't believe they are. (They may, of course, be typical of the kind of customers Microsoft would rather have.)

They are not considering the ones that are stull running WinXP and Office2003 and fighting introduction of newer technology to the death. (Quick: how widely used is WinXP, still?) By targeting the "best customers" as "typical" with all of this new stuff, you are ignoring--indeed disaffecting--a huge mass of companies and users that aren't anywhere near your bleeding edge. (Win8 and the MS notion that "nobody uses the start menu any more, everybody uses pinned items and jump lists" is another good example. Right--that's what all us us WinXP users are doing...) This is making the "end of the PC" a self fulfilling prophecy. The curve to get to Win8/Off13 will be SO HIGH from WinXP/Off03, many will just put us all on Citrix Server03 or 08 sessions and buy cheap Wyse boxes or similar to sit on our desks. Our 3,000+ person corporation (wholly owned by two Fortune 100 companies) is already headed this way.

The other big driving factor behind proliferation is accessability and response and the natural compulsion of many IT departments to be the exact opposite of what MS targets. Not interested in user empowerement (scared to death of it). Not interested in deploying enabling technology. If they get too worried about us "feral cats" and our scary unmanaged desktop Access databases, they aren't going to put up SQL Servers and deploy Access 2013 to use them. They're going to uninstall Access and then we'll have to use Excel.

Not to mention that tiny minority of us that use Access at home... Where is our SQL Server and SharePoint and so on going to come from?

Feral Cat Out...

re: Feral Cats: Managing Access databases in your organization

Steve Greenberg — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 16:31:06 GMT

Hi Graham,

Let me get you connected with some folks who can help.

Thanks, - Steve

re: Feral Cats: Managing Access databases in your organization

Steve Greenberg — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 16:28:41 GMT

MBurns - We are always in awe of the amazing solutions that our customers are able to provide with desktop databases, and I'm sorry the characterization of end user-developed databases as "feral cats" didn't sit well with you. Manageability can be a bit of a dry topic, and I was just attempting to inject some humor.

re: Feral Cats: Managing Access databases in your organization

mburns_08109 — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 14:50:56 GMT

"Feral cats"??!! You lead your own news about tools to help organizations deal with the proliferation of MS-Access databases and applications in organizations by agreeing with an (obviously) anti-MS-Access-biased IT Manager who characterizes them with a derogatory term like "feral cats" and use that terminology in your own thinking - to the extent of even headlining this blog article about the tools designed to help with the issue?

Really?

That really makes one wonder what you must think of those of us who choose to make providing MS-Access-based solutions as our profession then.

wow. talk about respecting oneself...

re: Feral Cats: Managing Access databases in your organization

Graham R Seach — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 11:26:41 GMT

Hi Andrew,

There appear to be no instructions with the Discovery & Risk Assessment tool or the Audit & Control Management Server. The product Help file fails to launch.

Regards,

Graham R Seach (former Access MVP)