Yes, We CAN Get There From Here

The day after Thanksgiving turned out to be a pretty good day. It was the day I discovered that sometime in the last couple of weeks, Microsoft had turned on a really significant functionality in the 2013 version of  Office 365. Specifically I'm referring to support for creating and deploying Access 2013 "hybrid" databases on Office 365 as well as in on-premises installations.

This is a positive step for Access developers

That was a CLOSE One!

A few days ago I gave in to a bit of discouragement and posted a long diatribe on why I am afraid the story for Office 365 and Access web apps is discouraging.

Well, it turns out I was premature in my efforts at digging a grave for my BFF, Access. What a relief.

Here are the three big reasons I was so pessimistic, and the reasons I now have a lot more reasonable view.

Data Siloing in Access 2013 Web Apps on Office 365: the spade that could finally bury Access

Sometimes, you gotta call a spade a spade. Spades, as you should know, are the tools used to bury things. I’m sitting here staring at my monitor trying to come to grips with the possibility that Access 2013 web apps on Office 365 are the spade that could finally bury Access.

Why I STILL Love Access

Here's to Access, My BFF

Access has been very, very good to me. For at least the last 10 or 12 years, it's paid my rent, contributed to my daughter's college education and helped me put on a few pounds too many at the dinner table. And that's just the monetary side of things. There's also the on-going personal satisfaction of facing a new challenge from a client, or from a poster on Utter Access and finding that you really CAN do most things with Access.

Hammers, Rubber Washers, Lug Nuts and Lookup Fields in Tables

Many, many years ago, I learned The First Three Rules of Plumbing.

1. Never start a plumbing project after all the hardware stores have closed.

Migrating Larger Tables to SharePoint

This is the third, and possibly the last, in a series of blog posts on my experiences migrating data from a working Access/SQL Server database to SharePoint, where it now serves me daily. It's a "hybrid" database, in the sense that the Front End is the original Access accdb, complete with all of the original VBA intact, while the Back End lives on SharePoint.

Patching Up Relationships On SharePoint Migrations

In my last previous blog post, I described one of the problems with exporting existing tables from Access or SQL Server to SharePoint. SharePoint bumps the existing Primary Key field out of its way and replaces it with a new one which SharePoint generates in its place. Here’s how that looks.