Sunday, December 11, 2011

"Microsoft Access in a SharePoint World" Is Available

I'm delighted to announce publication of a new, first-of-its-kind, book on Access 2010 and SharePoint 2010. It's been a long time in the writing, but we finally wrapped it up.

My fellow MVPs, Ben Clothier (MS Access), Tim Runcie (MS Project) and I teamed up to write Microsoft Access in a SharePoint World. Tim’s company, Advisicon, is publishing the book.

For more details or to buy the book, you can visit the Advisicon store. Tim has offered a discount of $10 off the list price to the first 10 buyers—use coupon code "save10bucks".

WHY YOU NEED MASW

MASW covers the essentials of working with Access 2010 and SharePoint 2010 to create data-driven, web-enabled databases that run in the browser from a SharePoint Site. The goal was to place Access in context within the SharePoint world, so the book includes additional discussions about the other wonderful tools SharePoint brings to the table: project management, document management, and team collaboration.

MASW assesses the suitability of Access as a web or client solution in a SharePoint world and shows how they are a natural fit.

MASW also addresses design considerations that may challenge experienced developers designing an Access web application for the first time.

MASW discusses using Access as a client to SharePoint data, which offers several advantages, such as working offline, seamless synchronization, and a high level of integration. The book also addresses the ramifications of choosing SharePoint as a data source and the difference between SharePoint's architecture and ODBC data sources.

Finally, MASW offers a brief glimpse into using SharePoint tools such as SharePoint Designer and InfoPath and manipulating the SharePoint object model with SOAP and JavaScript to make your Access on SharePoint databases more professional, and concludes with a discussion of security and deployment.

Ben did the heavy lifting on the SharePoint side. Tim contributed his insights into Access and SharePoint gained through many years of experience implementing SharePoint and Project Server installations for larger organizations. A tip o' the hat to both my partners.

We also owe a debt of gratitude to Albert Kallal and Jeff Conrad, whose technical reviews were invaluable to our understanding and explanation of many points. Thanks, guys.

We're looking forward to hearing back from readers on the content and presentation of the material. And above all, we hope you find it useful.

George