Microsoft Access Team Blog

Wish I could have come.  I'm really looking forward to the upgrade.

This recorded discussion reveals a little, but leaves much more to yet be revealed.

For example:

Will it be possible to set indexes for tables kept on Sharepoint?

Will it be possible to link some of the tables locally and some to Sharepoint?

Will it be possible to set indexes for tables?

How large will the tables be? What are their limits?

Will it be possible to set relationships between tables that are kept on Sharepoint?

Will it be possible to have referential integrity between tables stored on Sharepoint?

Also, the model discussed in this recorded conversation dealt with a single Access developer developing an application to a single customer. This single customer may have several users, but still they all belong to the same client/company. But what happens if someone builds some generic solution for a particular market, with many potential customers, each one having several users? Will it be necessary to post a separate application for each customer? Or will it be preferable to post a single one that all will use, but that each will have their own permissions to their own subset of data, and in such a way that different customers will not even know of the existence of the others? A single solution is easier to deploy, but is more complex to program. Also a single solution may need to really have a lot of space for so many records. So, is that viable at all?

In general, what are the current limitations of this modal? That is also important to know in order to ascertain its current utility.

Thanks

Gilad

>Will it be possible to set indexes for tables kept on Sharepoint?

You always been able to set indexes on the SharePoint side of things (so, the answer is yes you can). I don’t believe access 2007 let you set indexing on those tables from inside of access AFTER THE table been up-sized to SharePoint. By the way, in SharePoint tables are called lists.

The Access 2010 client allows you to set indexes on those SharePoint columns. Hence you can continue to add new collums and add indexes to those SharePoint tables, and you can do so even after those tables been published to SharePoint. (so, yes).

>Will it be possible to link some of the tables locally and some to Sharepoint?

You can still link to external files that are local.

>Will it be possible to set indexes for tables?

The indexing (and even relationships) has always been set in the data file you linking to, not in the actual link. So this would be unchanged and access has always worked this way.

>How large will the tables be? What are their limits?

Hum, that is more difficult. The tables are cached locally for reasons of performance. (you really much get the performance of JET local now). However since you’re connected to the same table on SharePoint, then certain things that you want to avoid (like updating all rows in the table in one shot will cost bandwidth!).  I don’t think millions and millions of rows would work. However, tables with a few 100,000 rows should be just fine.

>Will it be possible to set relationships between tables that are kept on Sharepoint?

Setting a Relationship between two tables without any type of integrity has little meaning except for documentation purposes? I guess the answer here is no, but then it not a real big deal?

>Will it be possible to have referential integrity between tables stored on Sharepoint?

Ah, Yes. This is much better question! Yes we now have features like cascade delete, and cascade delete restrict.  So if you delete a parent record, the child records will be deleted. This was a major shortcoming in previous editions of SharePoint and access.  This is certainly big news for us access people.

>Will it be necessary to post a separate application for each customer?  

Not sure I understand the above? You simply supply the company a copy of your application. I don’t really see this changing from now how this works. Each different company would have their own copy of your application. They would then publish that application to their own SharePoint server. They not going to have anything to do with each other?

Providing them a copy of your application not a problem at all. However, providing updates to existing published applications is most certainly going to be a WHOLE new ball game, and is an issue that I not really dealt with as of yet. What approaches and strategy we use and come up with for these cases is simply something too new for me to really comment on.