I spent a couple of hours yesterday playing around with Access 2007. For the
last 6+ years I have only taken a passing glance at Access (Access 97 was the
last version I actually built anything with). Driven partly by the desire to
better understand the product produced by my Access comrades and to improve a
'non-business' process I fired up Access 2007 and ran it through it's paces. I
should note that I didn't RTFM (public or internal resources) - I simply fired
it up and built a solution.
The ribbon UI used by Access is reasonably well executed. Iconography and
layout were good (and I ran it on a 1024 x 768 monitor). Ribbon performance
could do with a bit of work as sometimes it didn't adjust to context shifts in a
timely fashion. This 'ribbon' lag was noticeable but not a barrier to
productivity. Another area of frustration was the near side (left hand)
navigation pane. When you have a small number of things (tables, queries, forms
etc) it is a nice easier way to find stuff. However when you have 10+ tables it
starts to become very cumbersome and I found myself missing the other 'tabbed'
view of the older versions of Access. The deliberate duplication of queries was
also annoying (if you have a query referencing two tables - it will show up
under both tables in the navigation bar). This duplication just exacerbated the
clutter.
The table and query functionality was a nice evolution from previous
versions. I was surprised to see that there still isn't a GUI editor for union
queries - so you do need to write a little Access SQL here and there. The
external data binding stuff is second to none. They did a good job on the
SharePoint integration, mail merging etc.
Forms and Reports I found more than a little frustrating. The 'layout'
editing functionality is great for simple forms - but moving a form from layout
mode to the full designer hasn't been well thought out. Lesson: Decide up front
if you want a complex form and if you do - avoid the layout editor. Reporting
also had similar constraints. The Access 2007 forms designer definitely left me
with a few thoughts on how to handle similar problems in my own feature areas of
CRM.
Macro programming is a pleasant experience with it's useful ribbon command
filters. Kudos to the Access team for making something so historically painful
so pleasant to use. That's never an easy task. VBA is a pretty much the same as
other versions - but fortunately you don't really need to do this very often.
Finally the most shocking part of the app was the Switchboard manager. It
appears that they have been shipping the same code since Access ninety
something. I was hoping for some cool new automatic menu system (maybe with a
user generated ribbon etc).
In summary: I really enjoyed the new version of Access. I was able to
automate a relatively complex Excel based solution in just few hours (adding
more features and reducing user process time by 50%). In business terms - that's
pretty decent ROI. I'm not sure I'd recommend Access for a full scale line of
business solution (CRM is a
better bet for relational needs or
SharePoint for document/list collaboration). However for a workgroup
solution I think it's a pretty good offering.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Tags: microsoft