A developer's thoughts on Microsoft Access 2010

As you might remember, one of our most highly trafficked posts of 2008 was "A developer's thoughts on Iron Speed 6.0." That post's popularity, as well as the tracking of any subsequent Iron Speed posts we did, made it pretty clear to us that you truly value the thoughts and opinions of your fellow developers. That's why whenever we publish e-mails or testimonials from developers and customers, we're sure to give you the totally unfiltered version. We don't muddy them up by injecting any of our own thoughts, and we always post them verbatim.

That said, I've been exchanging e-mails recently with Martin McSweeney, Head of Development at CMITS.net. Martin is currently using Alpha to revamp an extensive and complex case management system for members of the British Parliament. And the e-mails we've shared have reminded me of some of the thoroughly written reviews we'd gotten from Jim Dusoe last year: "A developer's thoughts on Iron Speed 6.0," "It's way more than RAD," and "A developer's thoughts on Iron Speed 6.0, redux."

Martin, as he says, is by experience a Microsoft Access developer. But throughout the years, his experiences in application development have brought virtually every development platform to his desk, including Iron Speed, FileMaker, ColdFusion, and Flex, to name a few.

But Martin recently made the switch to Alpha Five Version 10 because of Microsoft Access 2010's limited Web capabilities and overall "lack of beef," shall we say. Martin needed a platform with tremendous flexibility to handle his case management solution, that helps members of Parliament manage mission critical information relating to their constituents.

What a wonderful brain to pick. And pick we did! It all started when Martin joined in on an internal conversation we were having at the Alpha office about what we saw to be some of the major flaws of Access 2010.

Again, this is reproduced exactly as Martin had written it to us.

Richard

The comments are exactly right. I push Access development to the outer envelope and have done for some time. Integration with the Office Suite has enabled me to allow users maximum productivity for minimum input. The problem with Access is that it's ole connectivity can be unstable at best and if MS Exchange is having a bad day it can cause havoc. With Access 2007, MS have targeted would be developers with few skills in an effort to encourage template based solution delivery. This has effectively left true developers out in the cold. Try developing a comprehensive search function in Access, it leads to frustration heartache and pain. Do it in Alpha 5 and there you have it without even breaking sweat. Their answer to providing online connectivity is via SharePoint Services and anyone who has ever tried to deliver an
efficient user rich solution to the desktop will tell you it's a non-starter, although to be fair I haven't seen SharePoint 2010, so I can't comment on that.

I have been looking at alternatives for the past 18 months and have looked at absolutely everything. Alpha 5 is without doubt the answer to the dreams of Access Developers because it breaks out of the restrictive pen that Access has you in and allows you to be creative. I believe that creative solutions will win the day, because they will push the boundaries of what can be delivered to the client. In just two weeks I have made more progress than I did in six months when working with Access for the first time. Moving Access Apps to Alpha 5 is so cool because it lets you use both the existing desktop App alongside it to see how they perform.

I am by no means an Alpha 5 developer and have a long long way to go, but the development skills are VERY transferrable and I might add more useful as you move into javascript and other web technologies. I am just starting to come to terms with syntax etc, so I will be better qualified to comment better later. I am a fantastic example of converting a very very sophisticated Access App that is very tightly integrated with office a dedicated twain OCX to deal with scanning and integration with Google Maps etc, so I know where the limitations are. The migration of this app should be an awesome case study.

Regards

Martin McSweeney
Head of Development
CMITS.net

Naturally, we wanted to know more. And over the course of the next few days, Martin poured his thoughts into a number of e-mails on everything from RAD to the reviews of Microsoft, Iron Speed, FileMaker, and Macromedia to his own experiences with Alpha Five Version 10. I'm going to share all of those with you here over the next week or so. Each post that contains an e-mail from Martin will be titled "A developer's thoughts on ..." with whatever platform covered that day. So stay tuned! We've got some great ones in the pipeline!