This article was published in PC Plus issue 153 (Jul 99), and is reproduced here for information purposes only. This is the original copy which was sent to the magazine, not the subbed version which appeared on the page. |
Microsoft Access 2000This is a section from my review of Office 2000.
|
|
|
|
[BEGINS]
In 1991 Microsoft, a company with no previous in-house database experience, shocked everyone by launching Access, a completely new package that combined heavyweight data management with a slick point-and-click user interface. Close examination revealed a hidden complexity that made it less suitable for end users than it initially seemed, but over the years Microsoft has papered over most of the pitfalls with code-generating Wizards, and the package has become the world's most widely used desktop database, largely on the strength of Office sales. Access is nothing if not versatile. It can manage local databases in its own .mdb format, act as a client to back-end servers such as Microsoft's SQL Server, and even create virtual databases using tables drawn from local and multiple back-end sources. It has a full set of WYSIWYG design tools for databases, forms, reports and queries, plus a full Visual Basic-derived programming language and development environment, yet also allows you to create new data tables by simply typing into a spreadsheet-like grid. Meanwhile its Wizards create functional multi-table databases complete with documents and program code to link them together. Its two major drawbacks are the complexity of manually programming anything that isn't covered by a Wizard, and the fact that it's heavily oriented towards multi-record query datasets, rather than individual groups of related records, so is awkward at handling transaction-based applications such as order entry. Access 2000 offers a fair range of improvements for end users and developers alike. Its contribution to Office 2000's Web-orientation drive is Data Access Pages, which let you design HTML documents containing fully interactive, updating links to Access databases. The pages are created in Access using a rather awkward special-purpose design tool, and use the data binding mechanism introduced in Internet Explorer 4.0. Unlike the Excel Office Components, users don't need an Office licence to use them. You can, however, include Office Components in Data Access Pages if you wish, for effects such as a Pivot Table crosstab of an Access table. Detail enhancements include Name AutoCorrect, which propagates object and field name changes to relevant documents, and spreadsheet-like conditional formatting, which allows you to display negative numbers in red, and your best customers' order totals in gold. New sub-datasheets pop up over Access's tabular datasheet displays, showing the children of the current record, and you can now drag and drop data straight to Excel. Access's form and report designers, once state of the art, haven't quite kept up; neither display live table data in design view, although they do at least have modeless (always open) properties sheets. One rather overdue improvement is the ability to group form controls and apply style changes to them en masse. You can now send report snapshots to disk, an email recipient or a Web page. Access's .mdb file format has changed to accommodate Unicode data encoding, but the program can also create Access 97-compatible files. Back-end server compatibility - especially with SQL Server - is enhanced in a number of ways. A new Access Project (.adp) file format presents the user with the standard .mdb file's interface and contents, but connects directly to SQL Server 6.5 or 7.0 data tables instead of internal .mdb ones. You can perform SQL Server 7.0 admin tasks (such as backup and replication) directly from the Access interface. Access 2000 comes with the Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE), a cut-down version of SQL Server. This doesn't replace Access's Jet database engine, which comes in a new row-locking, Unicode-compatible version 4.0 - instead, MSDE allows developers to create and test local databases which can then be transferred to a full server without conversion. Finally, Access at last gets the same Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) development environment as the rest of Office, in this case version 6.0, accompanied by a mass of extra development tools in the Developer Edition which many Access programmers will use (see page xxx for more details). Office 2000 Developer also includes royalty-free runtime versions of Access plus the Jet and MSDE database engines. Verdict - Even better at client-server, no less intimidating for end-users who stray from the Wizards. Rating 7/10.
[ENDS] (C) Paul Stephens 1999. All rights reserved.
|
|||
