Access 2007 … For Dummies?

It’s been a long time since I
sought out a "For Dummies" book but when I first opened Access 2007,
I knew what my next book acquisition would be: Access 2007 For Dummies.
The new user interface was just too different and confusing to attempt to
decipher without a little help. There are a number of "Dummies" books
out there already for Microsoft Office 2007, and for Microsoft Access 2007 in
specific, but I settled on Microsoft
Office Access 2007 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies
, which retails
for $29.99.

Microsoft Office Access 2007 All-in-One
Desk Reference For Dummies

By Alan Simpson, Margaret Levine Young,
Alison Barrows, April Wells, Jim McCarter

Buy this book.

After a brief review and assessment of this "For Dummies" book, I’ll
chip in my 2¢ about the new Microsoft database development product. Yes, it’s
still called Access and most of what you already know about Access still
applies, but Access 2007 is going to take some getting used to.

Is "For Dummies" For You?

Let me just say that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. My
experience with Microsoft Access probably qualifies me to skip the "For
Dummies" series, but the truth is, I enjoyed being spoon-fed the details
of the new Access 2007 user interface. Sure, I had installed it and even
plunked around with the new Ribbons and Menus, but I had to read chapter 2
(Getting Started, Getting Around) twice before I felt comfortable with the new
navigation paradigm.

One great feature of the "For Dummies" books is the system of
marginal icons that call attention to points of interest, such as Tips,
Warnings and points worthy of Remembering. While there wasn’t an icon for
"New in 2007", the authors went out of their way to highlight new
features in Access 2007. I’ll review some of those points below, in the section
"What I Like About Access 2007."

If you’re an Access Guru, you probably won’t get your $30’s worth out of the
book. The majority of it focuses on database design principals and building
objects like tables, queries, forms & reports. There’s a chapter on Macros
that you might as well throw away and another on VBA that put me to sleep.

On the other hand, this Dummies book isn’t stupid! While reading books for
review, I often find myself yelling at the pages in righteous indignation over
some ridiculous assumption or assertion made by the author(s). That didn’t
happen with this book. The material is accurate and well thought out. It
proceeds at a good pace for someone new to Microsoft Access and database design
in general. It goes deep enough without adding unnecessary complexity. I would
definitely and heartily recommend this book for someone who wants/needs to get
up to speed with Microsoft Access 2007.

Downside of Access 2007

First my criticisms: Microsoft Office 2007 has been out for
some time now, but I’ve been in no hurry to adopt Access 2007 as a development
platform, and neither have my developer friends. In a recent discussion on the
topic, one of the premier Access Consultants in the Denver area said that until
his clients start requesting it, he’s not even going to install Access 2007.

I have installed Microsoft Office 2007, and I can confirm my friend’s
trepidation. If you need to support applications running on Office 2003 (and
earlier versions) you probably won’t want to install Access 2007 on your
development computer. I’m not saying they can’t coexist, but the already
tedious process of switching between versions has been magnified ten fold. With
Access v2002 and v2003 on the same machine, there was a relatively brief delay
when switching between versions as registry settings were reset. With Access
2007, you might as well go get a cup of coffee when switching versions. The
configuration screen below displayed for over a minute before gracing me with
Access 2007’s new user interface.

Switching back to Access 2003 (or switching between version 2002 and 2003)
displays a more modest configuration dialog and requires less than 10 seconds
to "install" and configure itself.

Those who know me realize that I’m a conspiracy theorist. (Don’t even get me
started about the fake moon landing!) While I don’t have any proof of it, I
believe that there is a Microsoft conspiracy to wean us from desktop
applications in favor of browser based apps. (Remember Office
Live
?) It was something about the way Outlook 2007 rendered itself on the
screen that suggested to me it was actually a web browser. Admittedly, it is a
beautiful browser app, but I’m convinced that’s exactly what it is. It wouldn’t
be that much of a leap from the Outlook Web Access to a locally hosted browser
based Outlook 2007.

As I said, this is just speculation, but it caused me to look more closely at other
Office applications, like Word, Excel and Access, to see if there were any
signs of browser style behavior. So far, I’ve found no solid proof, but I’m
still watching this one and I’ll keep you posted. If Office 2007 products were
moving from Windows to Browser, that would explain the configuration issue
described above, and the performance hit that I experience when using the apps.

Two of the new ‘features’ of Access 2007 fall into the "I’m not sure about
it yet" category.

  1. Ribbons, Menus, Navigation and Tabs
  2. Multivalue Lookup Fields

While the Ribbons, Menus, Navigation and Tabs create a new
and no doubt efficient means of using the Access database program, they make it
difficult to obfuscate Access from the user. Some developers like to put their
own "face" on the applications they create with Access, and the new
UI doesn’t look like it’s going to make that easy. I may be wrong, and if I am,
I welcome a second opinion, but I know of one developer who’s already been
struggling with this issue, and while he got around it, the solution was so
complex he could neither remember how he did it nor explain it to us without
checking his code.

This is important to me at present, because the single most important
requirement of the app I’m currently developing is that it has to hide every
aspect of Microsoft Access from the user. In my next article, I’ll share some
of the tricks which make that possible, and demonstrate how the Access UI can
be made to behave like a web page, only without the performance hit of a
browser.

As for Multivalue Lookup Fields, I just think they are a bad idea. I mean, why would
Microsoft want Access to behave more like Advanced Revelation. Never
heard of it? My point exactly! There are already people who question whether
Microsoft Access is a relational database. Let’s not give them fuel for their
fire.

Other than these issues, I’ve found no reason to dislike Microsoft Office 2007.
The new menus and navigation will be fun to play with, and you can ignore multivalue
fields. I’m looking forward to learning how to leverage the new user interface
where I can, and unlike my associate, I’ve already installed it and I’m working
in both environments. Things change, and you’ve got to keep up with the times.

What I Like About Access 2007

As I read through Microsoft
Office Access 2007 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies
, I made notes
about new things in Access 2007 that appealed to me. Below is a summary of the
things I found:

  • Add a field to a table by selecting a field from an
    existing table.
    This is a great feature for keeping field names and types consistent.
  • New Attachment data type for Access tables
    Requires less space than OLE fields and holds multiple attachments.
  • Ability to add Totals Rows to datasheets
  • Common Filters on datasheets.
  • Ability to schedule saved imports with an Outlook task.
  • Using Outlook to collect data through email forms
  • Rich text format property for memo fields.

I didn’t mention any of the
user interface fru-fru in the bulleted list above, though maybe I should have.
The ribbon includes a number of built-in color & font schemas which may be
applied to forms and reports. Datasheets now make it easy to add an alternating
shaded row effect. Opened objects now appear in a "tabbed" interface,
much as they do in Visual Studio and SQL Server Management Studio. While I love
this for my development environment, I’m not sure this makes for a good user
interface, but time will tell.

Keeping Up With The Jones

Access 2007 is not for dummies. Some things will be
considerably more difficult in Access 2007, other things will be considerably
simpler … once we get used to them. For a time, we developers will be able to
continue blissfully along with our 2000-2003 versions of Access, but as Office
2007 weaves its way into businesses across the globe, we’ll have to get up to
speed. Procrastinate, if you must, but sooner or later, we’re all going to have
to learn the new product. This is one case where the "Dummies" book isn’t
a bad place to start.

»


See All Articles by Columnist
Danny J. Lesandrini

Danny Lesandrini
Danny Lesandrini
Danny J. Lesandrini currently works as the IT Director for Pharmatech Oncology Inc. at http://www.pharmatechoncology.com/. He holds Microsoft Certifications in Access, Visual Basic and SQL Server and has been programming with Microsoft development tools since 1995.

Get the Free Newsletter!

Subscribe to Cloud Insider for top news, trends & analysis

Latest Articles