Microsoft Access Team Blog

Despite all the talk about VBA and whether or not it will be in the next version of office, is the message

Can a bit more be said about the integration of .Net in Access?

In the last release of VSTO and Visual Studio 2008, Access is conspicuously absent from the project templates.

To this day, there is no easy way to integrate .Net (and especially controls) into Access.

Will there be any work toward better integration, at least to a level matching that of the other office apps?

Access' use of VBA is here to stay -it would make sense when you look at the amount of legacy code out there-, but migration to .Net seems pretty slow for the application that would benefit the most from it, I think.

"To this day, there is no easy way to integrate .Net (and especially controls) into Access.": I disagree. I am tickled to death about the new integration capabilities, which will allow our clients to gradually move up to .NET.  See http://groups.google.com/group/comp.databases.ms-access/browse_thread/thread/78d8c3a80cca3cc1/c4c77f430c7402db?lnk=st&q=#c4c77f430c7402db

I didn't know you guys were superstitious - what happened to 13?

Hi, mr Convinton,

Office is pointed to a smart user, but I think that Access must see plus developers than users.

Give us tool for better developing.

Tks

MAssimiliano

What about migrating class modules that have been built in Access?  Can they also be relocated as a com add-in?

roverturf

Oh My God... who gives a rat's bottom about Office 14, or Office 13.  How about putting all effort into getting Access 2007 to work.  How about putting some thought into ensuring that Office 2007 SP1 doesn't completely mess up the Access 2007 runtime.  No wonder... now I understand.  Main focus has moved on to an Office edition 2 years out and no thought has gone into how much damage SP1 has done to developers regarding the runtime.  I don't believe it!  And yet... I do.  Office 14... who gives a damn!

David

clintc: I've written down a document with some notes for Access 14 and I'd like to e-mail it to you or Zac Woodall. My e-mail address is chewingun1 at yahoo dot ca.

In Access 14 will be allowed to insert SubForms in Continuous Forms?

and the creation of new controls at Run-time (not only at Design-Time like previous releases)?

Office 14, in MS intention, will be a 64 bit platform?

DAO will still be supported?

Bye

roverturf: If you want to use VB6, you might try creating an Access add-in (library database) instaed of a COM add-in. Unfortunately, Visual Studio doesn't have support for the VB6 language anymore, so any COM add-in's you create for Office 2007 using VS 2005 are going to be in C/C++, or one of the .Net languages.  

David K: I'm sure you have good reasons for being frustrated.  Can you please send us an itemized list of the issues which are blocking you from being able to build your app?  We'll need complete details for each issue so that we can build a database from scratch that exhibits the same behavior.  

For the runtime, I assume you're referring to the fact that the runtime doesn't run database files compiled with Access 2007 SP1.  The dev team has fixed that issue and it will be rolled in to the upcomming SP1 Runtime release.  As I've explained to a few other people, the are no other engineering tasks to be performed by the Access team for that code, and the runtime update has moved into the standard Office release pipe.  The release process contains some overhead, as there are a number of things that have to be done to the file before it can be posted to an external web site.  The team is doing everything we can to get it to you as soon as possible.  

Rose: Thanks for the feedback!  We can't comment on what new features we will be doing in 14 just yet, but we will take your requests under consideration.  As for DAO, yes we will continue to support DAO.

Re COM Add-Ins. If VBA will continue to be supported, then you can use VB6 to create the COM DLL. Create your modules in Access, export the code to VB6, then create your GUI/forms in the VB6 project using the Access COM add-in template/designer for VB6.

Sorry Zac, but telling someone to create an MDE/ACCDE  library/add-in is of limited value if you  need the tool to work in the VBA Editor - only a COM  add-in can do this - ever since Access 2000...

This whole sorry story reinforces the lack of consultation with developers on the direction of Access since Access 97.  COM Add-Ins are a pain to implement. How many of the great 3rd party tools built for the integrated Access 97 VBA editor made the migration to Access 2000 - virtually none - not even the MS ones.

As for VB.NET, how many developers in the real world, where you need to deliver applications at a reasonable cost, use it?

Ya tenemos, como un pastel en un escaparate, sin tocar, sin oler, sin probar, sólo ver, las primeras