Your outlet for keeping abreast of what's taking place in the world of Microsoft® Office Access directly from the members of the Access Team.
Chris Downs has revised topic IIf Function. The changes were in response to customer comments—the topic has been expanded to include more examples as well as information about using the function in queries.
Hi Clint,
Chris included the following quote under "Remarks":
"IIf always evaluates both truepart and falsepart, even though it returns only one of them. Because of this, you should watch for undesirable side effects. For example, if evaluating falsepart results in a division by zero error, an error occurs even if expr is True."
This isn't true according to Allen Browne:
"(Note: JET's IIf() is much more efficient than the similarly named function in VBA. The VBA one wastes time calculating both the True and False parts, and generates errors if either part does not work out (even if that part is not needed.) The JET IIf() does not have these problems.)"
Source: http://allenbrowne.com/QueryPerfIssue.html
Perhaps I missed it, but I didn't notice Chris making a distinction between the JET and VBA IIF functions.
A tricky way to exclude IIf from some of your numeric calculations:
instead of
IIf(SomeXpression; SomeValueOrField;0)
use
Abs(SomeXpression)*SomeValueOrField
I use it very often for numeric calculations. But it can't be used always, eg. string calculations.
Since Runtime Deployment Questions blog has been closed (can't understand one, most blogs on the net don't expire) - I would like to respond to Gilad's comments about balancing A2007 for developers and End Users.
End Users don't understand Data normalization, thus cannot understand RDMS.
End Users don't understand Visual Basic, just cannot grasp programming concepts
End Users don't understand OOE, thus cannot grasp Event Management concepts
Who are you kidding? Access is not an End User Tool. If it was, developers wouldn't use it cause End Users wouldn't need developers to develop their solutions for them.
Do you see developers writing word documents for end users?
Do you see developers writing Excel spreadsheets for end users?
Do you see developers creating power point presentations for end users?
NO, NO, and NO. WHY? because those are end user tools that end users can grasp.
A2007 is not an end user tool. - The resultant developed solution is for end users, but the A2007 object model itself is NOT FOR END USERS, and you cannot convince me otherwise.
I think lastly, a lengthy discussion is indeed needed. Maybe it will open some Microsoft eyes. but alas, since the blog discussion must be started by Microsoft, we cannot have a lengthy discussion.
How about maybe, Microsoft create a nice 2 hour interactive webinar with its development community. How about you sit down in a virtual round table with developers (and your so called end users that I fail to see exist) in a webinar where we can all hash this stuff out.
Maybe you will see the consensus is coming from the development community which should tell you that A2007 is obviously a developer tool.
It shouldn't' even be part of Office. Maybe your intent was to create something the end user could use, but they can't use it, its not in their grasp. End users are bankers, lawyers, small business men, teachers, police officers. They excel at their jobs. They are not developers. You need to realize that.
Lastly, Is it so much to ask that the Microsoft Access Development team just maybe, possibly, would fix the access corruption bug that has been in existence for as long as I can remember.
I'm honestly tired of loosing hours of work and having to resort to a backup simply because when I save a module, it corrupts something making the whole freaking database worthless.
If you want to do something for the development community, FIX THE DANG BUG - PLEASE!!!!!!!!! Its not that much to ask. The corruption bug is ove 10 years old. how can you keep adding features when you can't fix whats already a problem.
You can't imagine how many copies of Access I have seen left on the shelves, unused...
All that potential - gathering dust !
Garry
M. David Matney:
Thank you very much for spending your time here. I second all your thoughts. And I hope Microsoft will listen to developers... finally.
Garry said on July 16, 2008 5:13 AM:
"You can't imagine ..."
I can!
Access is a dev tool... no doubt about it. MS starts developing template Access databases for end users since end users can't develop anything. End users have no idea about relational databases. Niether they can develop any Access aplication themselves. I completely agree with M. David Matney.
I'd like to point MS Access team to remove old bugs and make Access real RAD system. We can't talk about RAD in connection with navigation pain, ribbon, missing classic database window, missing tools to help developers easily search for a simple string... not talking about other things. Poorest help system ever seen, poor error handling, etc., etc.
OTOH, I like Access report designer, one of the world's best. I like many other features as well. But I'd like MS Access team to make developers's life easier & make Access a bug-free application, see http://www.volny.cz/cvajniga/MSAccess14.doc.
This is a document that I sent to Clint Covington a while ago; 10 pages, 1 455 616 B. I have already mentioned it in the closed thread.
Many topics on this blog are aimed at users not developers.
Let's face it MS is dropping (has dropped) Access as developer product.
Some might argue it never really was a developer product as far as MS was concerned.
Our first major development was for London Underground back in 1993 which was subsequently reviewed by MS Consulting and they tried to push SQL Server and were quite astonished that Access (1.1/2.0) could be taken that far.
Indeed the central database that we created in Access 2.0 had to be modified to cater for the 32 index limit in Access 97 (because of Rushmore).
Microsoft (as a whole) never really understood what a ground breaking product Access was. However to get the best out of it you need to understand how to design relational databases. I came to Access as a relational database designer initially using it to prototype systems earmarked for large scale DB2 installations.
END USERS KNOW LITTLE OR NOTHING ABOUT RELATIONAL DATABASES - In the early days few developers had a clue either.
Thanks for all your feedback about developers.
WRT - the corruption bug. We have fixed any corruption bug where people give us specific repro steps. In Access 2007 we did do work to allow people to recover from a series of corruption bugs by clearing out the VB Project and recompiling the database. As of right now, I'm unaware of any repro steps that corruptions a database for a bug we haven't fixed. Love to fix any corruption bug--the hardest thing is getting repro steps.
WRT - end users/developers. We have those kinds of conversations and discussions on a regular basis. We also reach out to end uses and talk to them every week. Last year we had 5.7 million downloads of Access templates. These templates have a survey form in them. People on my team call and talk to the people taking that survey on a regular basis. The demographics of it ranges from end users who just need to add a field to developers looking for a better starting point. The wide range of folks that use the product for development is amazing.
Developers that use templates are just end users who are playing at being a developer.
Let's talk about developers who make a living in software development as opposed to the sort of chappie that does not know his R* from his elbow.
The professional developers are the ones complaining about this release of Access.
And the point about certain things (you must know by now to what we refer) being optional rather than imposed is the most important point about this release and any future one.
* R stands for Relational Database Design.
Why dont office team make Excel as a end user product (not to offend excel guys) and provide lots of template for them. Access does not even come in a Office Standard version.
On this blogs how many End users are coming and commenting, its safely to say NONE. The people who are commenting are serious developers who either working as a Access developer or has company to provide software and Access as their main tool.
Though I disagree with many guys trying to run down Access 2007 completely. Access 2007 has lot of learning curves but its way forward at the same time I would hastily like to add its not enough. One of main reason we decided to move to Access is the Reporting.
Vladimir/M. David Matney and many other guys have mentioned many points which are really faced by all the Access developer during their projects. I want to add to that list is why Reports if opened as PopUp its open only as Modal. If a user wants to open a multiple Popup report for comparision how they can do it.
When Access team can start providing info about the version 14, that will help many to make decisions.
regards
Khuzema
And please dont read too much into that 5.7 million download. I download most of the template to see what they contain and delete them, and download again if I need them, many times instead of search on my computer. I have never used them as standalone project.
Some of those irate comments are just wrong. 'Developers' do indeed exist for both Word and Excel. Many many businesses use word and excel for crucial business operations, and complex workflows that manage word and excel docs do exist. Because Mr and Ms Officeworker are productive with word and excel, a lot of important things get put into those kinds of documents. Not everything will ever be managed by geeks writing 'systems'...you can't cut out Mr Officeworker because he has the domain expertise to actually get some work done for the company! So Microsoft comes up with a workflow and document management tool, Sharepoint. Sharepoint can be complex but non-geeks can get around in it too.
It's a good thing if the new Access helps users to be more productive (if they are?). It's also a good idea too to try to leverage Access into a tool for working with Sharepoint.
As far as end users building anything complex that really works...it's unlikely, because the concepts are still hard unless you're geared that way, or have the time to learn. But people will try, and some will eventually call people like us to get them out of the mess. Access has always been good for that!
The MS dev group has a very different perspective and agenda than we Access devs do. They have to follow marching orders from above. The primary goal of the brass at MS is reaping $ for Microsoft over the long haul. I *do not* think the Access team gets a big kick out of ignoring most of the explicit and even urgent requests of the Access developer community (despite appearances <g>). It's just that we Access devs are just not the driving force, as far as they're concerned. Some other agenda that fits the MS uber-plan and revenue stream is the priority. Obviously.
I think the Access team knows what we devs want. But they mostly did different things with 2007, like the sharepoint stuff, because of the reasons above.
But I'm not at all sure it's a success, even as far as sharepoint goes. I got curious after what Albert wrote and checked out using sharepoint with Access 2007. I couldn't get either the individual table export to sp to work, or the 'move to sp' thing either. So that looks bad in a sp1 version product...though apparently there is a way. Probably kill all relationships in the db, then export tables one by one to sp.
Thus I immediately hit brick walls with Access-Sharepoint. What really opened my eyes was trying to find any kind of support for Access 2007 with sharepoint. Kind of like nothing is out there. No Access newsgroup for sp, no sp newgroup for Access. Search the access and sp newsgroups where you might expect to see something; there is almost no discussion of Access and Sharepoint. So it's a strategy that has not gotten a lot of traction, as far as I can see.
Sharepoint, being non-relational, would never ever be my choice for a backend anyways.
BTW pummeling the Access dev team does not seem to produce result much in the way of results; some chilling out might be in order (prev thread mostly). It is frustrating when they don't seem to have the ability to answer the concerns of the Access dev community, yeah.
michaels: "Sharepoint, being non-relational, would never ever be my choice for a backend anyways."
Database developers won't even think of Sharepoint due to that reason.
What I really miss is a dialogue between MS Access Team and Access developers. MS people don't seem to be willing to talk to devs before they release a new version. It's a counterproductive philosophy:
MS may add unwanted stuff again... the stuff that makes things much more difficult. Additionally, they say: you, developers, wanted the stuff and that's why we are not going to change it to better. What happens then? Developers will tend to change their professional tool since they are stuck...
The first 2 comments on this Blog were interesting
The rest is rubbish and irrelevant
Someone should start up a Bitter and Twisted blog !
Peter Marsh: This is because all threads (interesting & non-interesting) get closed after one week. We had a nice conversation at http://blogs.msdn.com/access/archive/2008/07/08/runtime-deployment-questions.aspx.
See you there... and back here as soon as you're done. :-)
Vladimir,
We do have the conversations with Access developers about future development just not in a public forum. We also have conversations with end users, administrators, and business decision makers. All of the customer research helps us form the business strategy.
Clint C said on July 17, 2008 10:34 AM
Then I don't understand why so many developers keep asking you to remove navigation pane & ribbon or, at least, to enable classic toolbars & menus & database window. Navigation pane & ribbon are less ergonomic than classic toolbars & menus. So is A2007 object window (on the left side) compared to classic database window.
Clinc C; Access developers wants to compile access app into a single exe like RBase or VFP. To Avoid all those runtime issues.
Developers want's to have like linked table technology to MS SQL. Alpha Five has that technology.
That's the real Developer's issue. Not SP!
