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Karl Seguin

.NET From Ottawa, Ontario - http://twitter.com/karlseguin/

Access 2007 - Worth installing to see how bad it is

So I double click on an access file a client sent over, and realize it's my first time loading up Access 2007. Whereas the tabbed-menu system of Word is pretty quick to get accustomed to, it's just a pain to work with in Access. Maybe Access 2007 has a lot of great features, but I didn't stick around to discover them - after 20 minutes of gettnig frustrated, I dumped the two tables into SQL Server.

I know it's a beta. I know Office 2007 beta needs a lot of work (Outlook is crashing more and more -I hope those reports I'm sending in our helping). But Access 2007 is a disaster waiting to happen - I'm glad I rarely have to use it.

Published Jul 07 2006, 10:12 AM by karl

Filed under: Short Outbursts

Comments

Sahil Malik said:

Access is always a disaster waiting to happen.

# July 7, 2006 10:31 AM

access_guru said:

sorry to hear you've had a bad experience with Access..

I have made a very lucrative career with the product for the past 15 years...

Never saw any reason to get bogged down with SQL Server idiosyncrises..

# July 7, 2006 11:51 AM

Jim said:

Queue SQL server VS Access debate:
:D

# July 7, 2006 12:00 PM

karl said:

LOL @ Sahil :)

I don't have a problem with Access/Jet. I have a problem with the Access 2007's UI. It's a nightmare, just because it works for Word, doesn't mean it's a good idea for Access.

# July 7, 2006 12:22 PM

Jeremy D. Miller said:

I don't have anything to say about Access 2007, but you're making me feel old right now. I distinctly remember when it was such a huge deal to be moving to Access '97.

# July 7, 2006 12:38 PM

Simon said:

Jim said:
Queue SQL server VS Access debate:
:D

Is that like a message queue? Or do you mean :
Cue - SQL Server Vs Access Debate?

# July 7, 2006 4:59 PM

johnwood said:

"Microsoft Jet is not intended to be used with high-stress, high-concurrency, 24x7 server applications"

That must explain why they use it in Exchange server then :)

Seriously though - it's easy to say something sucks, but your post is lacking some detail to say the least. What exactly don't you like about Access? I'm not sure if you've used any other integrated desktop database applications, but I think Access is one of the best in its league. It's really not fair to compare it with SQL Server, they're completely different beasts.

# July 7, 2006 11:05 PM

karl said:

John: I'm pretty clear about what I don't like in ACCESS ***2007*** It's got a shitty UI. The Tabbed menus just don't work for a database frontend.

It's a database front-end - which genious at microsoft decided what's good for a word processing app must be good for that.

I'm not sure why everyone's defending "access" when I'm talkign about "access 2007's UI"

# July 7, 2006 11:23 PM

johnwood said:

It's not *that* bad. I think it has more of a wizard feel to it than Word's menus (in that it seems to be 'verb' oriented). I'm not a great fan of the 'tabbed menus' at all to be honest, I think popups were invented for a good reason - they reduce screen clutter. This kinda goes against that axiom. It looks pretty but sometimes even pretty gets in the way.

# July 7, 2006 11:35 PM

Jim L. said:

@Simon..
take your pick :) I guess you can chalk it up to sitting at a keyboard all day long lol.

# July 8, 2006 10:46 AM

Greg said:

I have removed my comment and made it a trackback from my blog to not muddy up your conversation here.

Cheers,

Greg

# July 8, 2006 11:42 AM

Greg Young [MVP] said:

I have never understood why access gets shoehorned into so many roles it is frankly not good at.

# July 8, 2006 11:46 AM

Steve Wooten said:

After playing with Access 2007 for a couple of days now, I discovered that user level security is gone. Nuff said. I'll stay with Access 2003 until someone produces a suitable upgrade, obviously Access 2007 is not.

# January 26, 2007 3:17 PM

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