A few weeks ago, I discussed how Microsoft Access could link to databases hosted on SQL Azure. Here's a new paper discussing How to Deploy Microsoft Access Databases Linked to a SQL Azure Database. Details on how this works and how to distribute your databases are covered. The people who receive your database don't need a license of SQL Server but do need to have its ODBC driver installed on their machines.

Here's the original blog on Microsoft Access, Azure and SQL Azure.

Using Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (VSS) with Microsoft Access for system development is great for tracking old versions, maintaining a professional Access development platform, and multi-developer environments. Being able to quickly see old versions of individual objects, differences over time, and check-in and check-out objects to prevent multiple developers from changing the same object are all wonderful features. Visual Source Safe is part of MSDN. By installing the Office/Access developer extensions/edition or Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO), VSS gets added to your Access menus.

Unfortunately, as Access databases get more objects, VSS slows down and can sometimes take minutes to add a new object to the database. Waiting for VSS to prompt you for every new object not only wastes time (especially if you don't want to add a temporary object to VSS), it disrupts the rhythm of system development. Fortunately, there's an easy way to work around this. Read this paper Speed Up Microsoft Access and Visual SourceSafe Integration for details, including Access 2010.

We at FMS are very excited about cloud computing and started developing solutions using Microsoft Azure including SQL Azure well before it was released to the general public. I feel cloud computing represents the next big platform change in the software industry and the most significant transformation since the introduction of the Internet in the mid-1990's. It will transform the internal hardware, application hosting, and data storage business the same way electric companies eliminated most organization's need to generate their own electricity.

While there's been lots of discussions of Azure with .NET and SQL Server, we also see lots of opportunities with Azure and the Microsoft Access/Excel/Office community. In fact, we're busily working on a way to integrate Access data and files with the cloud. Meanwhile, we'd like to share some tips and techniques for linking Access databases directly to tables in SQL Azure. This opens up huge new opportunities to create and deploy Access databases using a more robust, cheaper, and highly scalable platform that is enterprise quality.

 I look forward to your feedback on two new papers:

• Microsoft Azure and Cloud Computing...What it Means to Me and Information Workers
• Microsoft Access and Cloud Computing with SQL Azure Databases (Linking to SQL Server Tables in the Cloud).

On Monday July 19, I'll be live on the local radio show Start up or Shut up! which covers creating and running a small business.  It'll be from 2-3PM on 1580 AM in Northern Virginia. 

Start up or Shut up! is a LIVE radio show Monday afternoon from 2-3pm on the Big Talker 1580 AM hosted by Mark Bucher & Tom Gregg. More info about the program here About Startup or Shutup

I spent the 4th of July watching the fireworks in DC next to the Lincoln Memorial. It's always a wonderful experience to do that beyond the basic joy of watching cool explosions. Sitting by the reflecting pool with friends and family let us reflect on what a wonderful nation and concepts our founding fathers created by prioritizing the freedom of the individual.

Over the past few months, I've had the fortune of participating in our democratic system much more than usual. 

I was recently appointed to the Fairfax County Information Technology Policy Advisory Committee (ITPAC) on behalf of the school board, which is giving me insight into the challenges our county and all local municipalities face with providing services to its citizens. Some of the problems are quite fascinating and complex. I've only been to one meeting and we won't meet until after the summer, so we'll see what comes of it.

Late last month, I was invited to participate in a lobbying effort on Capitol Hill as part of the Association for Competitive Technology. I did this twice almost 10 years ago, so it's been quite a while. ACT gives small technology businesses a voice amid the battle among the large players, and brought in participants from across the country for a one day blitz. It turns out that we as a group are very under-represented on the Hill and were warmly received at all the offices we visited. All elected officials want to support small business owners in their districts, but don't seem to meet them too often on the hill. I was very pleased to participate in small group meetings and had a chance to meet my Senator Mark Warner (D-VA, very impressive as he really understands the technology industry) and Congressman Moran (D-VA). We also met the legislative aides for Sen. Hatch (R-UT), Congressman Connolly (D-VA) and Wittman (R-VA), and Speaker Pelosi (D-CA). Unlike the others, the speaker's office is in the Capitol building and was an interesting maze to get to both physically and through security.

The general message was to make sure they considered the impact of their decisions on small businesses and how unintended consequences of their decisions may impact us. Whether it's regulating the internet, net neutrality, cloud computing, privacy, international laws, taxation, patents, etc., a lot of issues affect small technology businesses. Considering the impact of small business on employment in this country, it's critical that they don't create more problems than they solve.

I don't know how much of an impact we had, but it was gratifying to walk the halls of Congress and see how they operate. There are a lot of challenges facing our country and world. Technology holds the promise that it can help us increase our productivity and ability to address those needs in a meaningful way at a reasonable cost. I hope they continue to foster an environment that allows technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship to prosper for the common good.

From Access 2007, you may want to convert an Access ACCDB database to a legacy MDB format. You may have done it several times before but all of a sudden, you get this message:

It turns out this occurs if the database was opened with Microsoft Access 2010.

Learn more about the issue and workaround here: You cannot save this database in an earlier version format, because it uses features that require the current file format

FMS president Luke Chung will be a participant on a panel discussion at the upcoming Digital Capital Week conference.

On June 16 at a 2:15 PM session, Luke will be speaking on a panel for Accounting and Technology for Ecommerce Companies. He'll be discussing how to maximize the value of data analysis and reporting to support the natural evolution of high growth businesses where change is rapid and unpredictable. Here is a summary of some of the financial reporting and system concepts that are expected to be covered. He'll also discuss FMS and his experiences helping organizations address these needs, how systems change over time, and lessons learned.

We are pleased to announce the availability of the preview version of Total Access Statistics for Microsoft Access 2010. Total Access Statistics is the most popular data analysis program for Microsoft Access. It extends the data analysis capabilities of Access queries to let you perform advanced numerical analysis on your data. Use any Access table, linked table, or query to perform calculations such as percentiles, regressions, frequency distributions, t-Tests, correlations, non-parametrics, rankings, moving averages, etc. It can also perform data normalization and let you select random records. As you would expect in a query, you can specify Group By fields so analysis is performed on each set of records with identical group fields.

Total Access Statistics runs within Access with all output in Access tables. It supports MDB, ACCDB, and ADP databases.

In addition to supporting Access 2010, we've added financial calculations for cash flows. It now calculates net present value (NPV), present value (PV), future value (FV), internal rate of return (IRR), and modified internal rates of return (MIRR).

This FREE preview is available with support for both the 32 and 64 bit versions of Access 2010. It includes both the interactive wizard that runs as an add-in, plus the programmatic VBA library so you can embed statistical analysis in your applications.

The preview version is fully functional through September 1. Download it here: http://fmsinc.com/MicrosoftAccess/dataanalysis/preview2010.asp

We have a long history of leveraging existing data to improve decision making and communications.

Many of you are already familiar with how our Total Access Emailer program automates the sending of personalized emails with recipient specific data and reports. This amazing product lets you leverage the power of your data to significantly improve how you communicate with your contacts.

With our experience creating Total Access Emailer, our Professional Solutions Group has helped many organizations incorporate the product and implement advanced, custom features.

We've also taken this technology to the next level by creating web sites to host files rather than emailing them to your contacts. If you're interested in learning more about how we can extend your Windows desktop files to the web, please let us know. We can make it easy for your contacts to privately log in and see their files.

Can we help you with a project? Contact us for a Risk Free Assessment

In our Microsoft Access, VBA, and VB6 programs, we often need to pause processing for a certain period of time, or until a specific time, and then continue processing. One common way to do this is to use the DoEvents function in a loop while waiting, however, this method consumes the CPU time and slows down the PC considerably. This is a significant problem when pausing for more than a couple of seconds, when users will notice the slowdown. Use the Sleep command instead.

Learn more about our royalty-free Microsoft Access/VBA/VB6 module code.