Reasons to be Optimistic About the Future of Microsoft Access
I’m just back from the recent PAUG conference where I had the chance to meet some of the best minds in Microsoft Access, it’s only one of two conferences worldwide, (Access DevCon Vienna is the other one), and it showcased some great content over a three day period. This year’s conference had quite a few new attendees, fresh blood that will take up the Access mantle for years to come. We usually have a member of the Access team participate and this year Shane Groff showed us his excellent work with the new charting feature being rolled out to Office Insiders.
Access Team Bringing Their A Game
The Access team we have now is simply outstanding, here are some of their accomplishments:
- Brought back dBase importing based on User Voice feedback. Shows they are willing to listen to the community and own up to mistakes if need be.
- The team sent representatives to multiple conferences in the past two years, no other team in recent memory has done that.
- The head of Microsoft Access, Mauricio Ordóñez, participated last year with the Spain Microsoft Access User Group in Spanish.
- Representavies of the team have visited my clients as well as clients in Europe to get their feedback.
I could not be more happier for the MS Access team we have now, these guys get it.
Come join me Tuesday May 8th at 6:30 PM CST during the next meeting of SQL Server with Access, you can grab all the details here:
I hope they add more cloud integration and embrace all of the Azure db offerings not just Azure SQL. More integration with SharePoint would really add value.
The more I’m around the place the more I see it still has relevance.
I wonder what Access 2019 will look like now that Access Web Apps are out of the way; maybe Access Developer’s Handbook will come out again; Professional Access 2016 Programming wasn’t even published and Professional Access 2013 Programming was almost hijacked by Access Web Apps.
I think that if they owned up to their mistakes, they would bring back Access Data Projects. I know of a lot of clients in the Seattle area that used ADP. Like Starbucks for example. Being able to run MS Access natively across the WAN makes things possible.. that are not simple otherwise.