Microsoft Access is fun, but it’s also powerful and more importantly, it has a place in the development community and in the real world of production applications. What follows are the top 10 reasons why Danny Lesandrini believes this is still true. When this 20-something programmer-kid who reports to me happened to notice the title of this article on my screen he said something like, “You aren’t really going to write that article, are you?” His attitude is exactly why I am writing this article. Don’t get me wrong. This kid is a programming genius who can do anything and I’d be lost without him but his comment encapsulates the perspective of most “real” programmers who believe that Microsoft Access is just a toy. Well, I’ve been “playing” with access for over 15 years, since version 2.0, so I guess I won’t argue with calling it a “toy.” It’s fun, but it’s also powerful and more importantly, it has a place in the development community and in the real world of production applications. What follows are the top 10 reasons why I believe this is still true. 1) The price is right
Access is freely available … to everyone who has Microsoft Office Professional. This philosophy is what got my career as an Access developer launched. The father of a good friend was on the SQL Server team at Microsoft back in 1994 and he told his son to learn Microsoft Access. His reasoning was that Access is bundled with Office and since Office was selling like hotcakes, it would only be a matter of time before Access programmers would be in great demand. It proved true in the 90’s and the reasoning hasn’t lost any validity for the 2010’s. 2) Landing pad for data
A number of years ago a Microsoft representative gave a presentation at the Denver Area Access User’s Group where he used the expression “landing pad for data.” While I felt that this characterization promotes a “dumbing down” of Access, it is none the less accurate. I regularly copy and paste data from Excel and Notepad directly into Access tables. One can suck email messages out of Outlook or Exchange into a table where it’s easier to analyze. While I have 10 years experience with SQL Server, I only recently learned how to use SQL Server Integration Services (formerly DTS) because Access is easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy when it comes to importing and exporting data from relational databases like SQL Server and Oracle, not to mention DB2 and virtually all others. Read more: Database Journal
Access is freely available … to everyone who has Microsoft Office Professional. This philosophy is what got my career as an Access developer launched. The father of a good friend was on the SQL Server team at Microsoft back in 1994 and he told his son to learn Microsoft Access. His reasoning was that Access is bundled with Office and since Office was selling like hotcakes, it would only be a matter of time before Access programmers would be in great demand. It proved true in the 90’s and the reasoning hasn’t lost any validity for the 2010’s. 2) Landing pad for data
A number of years ago a Microsoft representative gave a presentation at the Denver Area Access User’s Group where he used the expression “landing pad for data.” While I felt that this characterization promotes a “dumbing down” of Access, it is none the less accurate. I regularly copy and paste data from Excel and Notepad directly into Access tables. One can suck email messages out of Outlook or Exchange into a table where it’s easier to analyze. While I have 10 years experience with SQL Server, I only recently learned how to use SQL Server Integration Services (formerly DTS) because Access is easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy when it comes to importing and exporting data from relational databases like SQL Server and Oracle, not to mention DB2 and virtually all others. Read more: Database Journal