Microsoft Access Team Blog

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I really have to give the office team some credit here, especially when you come out with some of these tools for us developers. MS access straddles such a wide range of developers from users who just know about wizards, all the way down to some of us hardcore developers that develop commercial quality applications around office and ms-access using very sound software methodologies.

I used VSS 6.0 with access, but of yet not tried Team server. I been meaning for some time to setup a trial project to develop a application via people collaborating on the web.

It could even be fun, and I think during the month December I will get a couple of a hardcore access guys together and will build a pac game in access during our spare holiday time ( if their ever is such a thing as spare time).

Furthermore, we could also see this eventually extended to people building and collaborating on some of the office/access templates that are available for download.

I really appreciate the fact that you folks are working hard to keep source code control available in MS access.  While very few of us use source code control with access,  I honestly believe that the numbers of us will actually start to increase now that source code control can work with ease via a web portal.

Thanks for sharing this info with the access community…it is appreciated.

Albert D. Kallal (Access MVP)

While there are users like Albert that know what are you guys talking about, i will like to say the contrary. . .

Not a "Dummy" but maybe disoriented

What advantage will i have if i use Team Foundation Server or source code control in access.

I have been developing access apps, since 1996 and never need the use of those utilities.

But, i will ask again.

What advantage for my developing tasks everyday?

Clint . . .

I need to say this, great work, I cannot imagine how is going to be, to maintain this blog, and keep your daily work, and I need to say, your work is a great work.

I love the new office, and I love the new access 2007.

But I have some questions. . .

I have not seen your re-post on the feed you created, “Tell me about how you are extending the Ribbon”.

Sorry to write it here, but I received no response from the email I send you to your gmail account . . . and I have not seen any update on that blog, and furthermore not any other blog have been created in that topic.

So, what happen from that feed?

What were the results?

And excuse, me but I need to comment on some posts I saw from Clint blogs, the blog was “How to improve the visuals of Access applications”.

Clint, I saw a lot of good comments in a blog you posted long ago. . .

Things like

- add native functionality like tree view and listview  to access

- add support to images and row customization to lists

- add sort by click at row header

- add support to formatting across multiple forms, like css

- fix the tab control

- add gradient colors support

- round corners to controls

- add gif/avi/flash/mpgs native support

But the one I saw a lot of times when reading the blog.

Update access conditional format to be like the excel 2007 conditional format, access is using the office 2000 conditional format while excel have a very improved version of conditional format.

At least show us some code, how can we do that, maybe an APi or dll call . . .

What do you think. . .

I will really like to know what will happen with all those ideas that were submitted to you guys from the access community.

Is that going to be taken care of, are you guys listening and taking notes . . .

What is going to happen?

can you please, respond in detail to this comment, this is very important to the access comunity.

is there is some way to specify font for ribbon text, please.

>What advantage will i have if i use Team Foundation Server or source code control in access.

Great question!

For the most part source code control is not a huge advantage if you only have one developer on your project. However, even with one developer, there are some advantages of using source code control (SCC).  One significant advantage is what’s called versioning. This simply means that you might spend a day and a half making changes . You can consider these updates a slightly new improved version of your software. ( and you can give it a version number, or often what we would call the build number).

Ok, some of your clients need this software. You deploy, and then find out that there’s a serious bug. At this point you’re in trouble, because you’ve added features, but you might not have the resources and time to fix the bugs and problems. So, with versioning you can go back to a version from a few days ago and say create the application I had back then.  

Other advantages are “list of tasks” for each of your developers to work on. And, you can then track who’s done what. While you might be the only developer, it is nice to have a list of tasks and requests and updates and features that you plan to implement in your software.  

At a certain point, you want to start formalizing your software development approach and not do everything by the seat of your pants. It’s like when you first started writing applications, and you tended to design  forms and writing all kinds of code. As you become a better software developer you’ll spend a lot more time gathering requirements, making the designs, and figuring out how things are going work BEFORE YOU ever open up ms-access and start writing code and building the forms.

This brings me to the next advantage as to why you want to use source code control:

Multiple developers

What happens if your product needs you to bring in an extra two or three developers to work on this project? How are you ever going to scale your products and your company to grow larger than one person? How can you build applications that require more than one developer? SCC means you can grow your company into a ten or twenty person operation.

You can have many developers working on many of your products at the same time.

It’s been quite a few versions in ms-access since you could actually even risk having more than one developer working on code modules and forms at the same time. With source code control you could have three developers working on the application at the same time. Furthermore the systems tracks who has what piece of code and what part of the application checked out.

So if one developer is working on a form and checks out that form + code, then other developers WILL NOT be able to modify that form and code module. Most systems also give you some mechanisms to tell you who owns or has that piece of code checked out.

I could probably go on for a lot more about software methodology here, and why source control is really a useful tool for any developer, but this post is way too long as it is.

Albert D. Kallal (Access MVP)

Edmonton, Alberta Canada

kallal@msn.com

It's worth pointing out the Source Code Control addin for 2003 will also work in Access 2000 for those of us stuck using antique technologies.