Microsoft Access 2010 review

Wrong Price?

Access for £76???

It is £199 on the Microsoft website!!

By mactapes on 10 Jun 2010

Pricing...

Just to clarify, the £76 exc VAT price (£89 inc VAT) is from Amazon.

By JonBray on 10 Jun 2010

Rivals?

It would be nice to know what the "easier to use rivals" are.

By mikerussell999 on 10 Jun 2010

Rivals?

It would be nice to know what the "easier to use rivals" are.

By mikerussell999 on 10 Jun 2010

Filemaker easier?

Not in my experience, but then I never felt Access was that difficult

By Higgs on 10 Jun 2010

Rivals

To quote
"For small businesses in the web-aware world, the burden of implementing SharePoint can be an onerous one, and that will undoubtedly turn many to its easier to use, easier to learn rival, FileMaker Pro 11."
Nuff said

By Japester247 on 10 Jun 2010

Rivals

To quote
"For small businesses in the web-aware world, the burden of implementing SharePoint can be an onerous one, and that will undoubtedly turn many to its easier to use, easier to learn rival, FileMaker Pro 11."
Nuff said

By Japester247 on 10 Jun 2010

There is tons of new developer features

First of all you not being clear here, and the SQL view remains in place as it always been. The only restriction here is when building a WEB query object. So the SQL view is not removed or modified or changed in any way for the Access client.

As for the issue of SharePoint? Well, you can always purchase hosting like everybody else does for most of their websites. For the many companies that have already adopted SharePoint, then you're home free. Trying to build and set up a web server with so many different technologies that is required for an web (database) is very daunting. Using Access makes this oh so easy, and considerably easier than the competing products by a country mile. The fact of SharePoint means that you always know that you have the correct bits and parts.

If you don't have a seamless integrated platform, then putting together the bits and pieces to make sure you have what is needed to make your application publish the WEB would near impossible . You'll have to make sure that you have the right web server such as Apache, or IIS, or WebSphere or who knows. Then determine what database server (MySql, SQL server, oracle etc). Then figure out what report writing system you're going to have. You get one part wrong and your whole development process you've used is completely not going to work for that particular website.

With Access all the above technologies are completely and seamlessly integrated into the simple development paradigm that we've had from day one. All you need is to ensure the correct version SharePoint and you're off to the races. So, between hosting your own or purchasing some hosting, this is an absolute country mile ahead of your suggestion the alternatives is a simpler approach to solving this very complex task.

While you mentioned the new trigger feature you fail to mention that there's also stored procedures for the data engine. And those store procedures can be called by Access forms AND ALSO from those table trigger routines. And those triggers + store procedures are available and run without any type of server at all. In fact, to my knowledge there's no other database product in the marketplace that has both triggers and stored procedures that work without needing ANY type of server database engine at all (not even the compact edition of SQL server has triggers and store procedures). So virtually none of the competing products in this market space have triggers and stored procedures when you're running Access without any kind of server on your desktop. And those procedures and trigger run even in multi-user mode (and once again can be done so without any database server or even any type of server at all).

In addition to the above mentioned feature that you botched, there's also a new navigation control. This navigation control again is beautiful for WEB based applications you build, but is also considerably better for building your navigation in longtime client (VBA) applications. Again you've left this out as a feature that's great for developers .

And perhaps the best feature you've missed out on is the new native web browser control that you can insert into client forms. This is a bound control like any other control object. This eliminates the issues of what kind of browser does the person have installed . From displaying photos or things like weather or even catalog parts from web sites this control is probably one of the best new features to hit access in a long time. Again this new control work for bull WEB applications and longtime client applications.

The other really terrific feature is addition to themes support (based on the concept of style sheets), but even better is forms now support transparency for pictures and controls. So in place of being limited to the old fashioned square buttons you now can build desktop applications with a really nice rich looking interface. Built in is a huge new array of options for round, oval buttons etc. And, there also a whole new bunch of mouse over and button effects.

So buttons have shadows and glow effects and mouse over effects. We talking about non web based applciations here.

Another terrific developer feature is what is called application parts. This allows you to turn parts of your applications such as say a calendar form or perhaps some type of log on form into a reusable template. This can then be inserted into any application during development from nice gallery option on the Ribbon. A real nice feature for developers again.

I really barely scratched the surface of the new developer features, but clearly the editors and the review is here have not spent any time at all actually looking into what's been changed and what's new in Access 2010.

Also another big feature you fail to mention is the fact that you can now share images within an application. So if you insert a image such as a corporate logo on 15 or 20 forms, then before you would have to go one by one and change them. Now since all graphic images can be re-used (shared) throughout the application, if you change your corpoare logo then all of the forms and reports will instantly be changed since they all using the one same image. (no need to modify or do anything to the rest of the application). This feature also makes the database considerably smaller. Needless to say any issues of images bloating the application have been completely fixed and eliminated.

My post is already too long so I shall stop here. To stand here and tell me that there's no new features in this version of Access when I think has about the longest list of new features EVER for a new edition tells me that either the editors here have it out for this product, or they just simply didn't put the time and effort it to write a credible review.

Albert D. Kallal
Edmonton, Alberta Canada

By AlbertKallal on 15 Jun 2010