October 2009

For Microsoft Access, SQL Server,
Visual Studio .NET, and VB6 Professionals

Hi Everyone,

We hope you had a nice summer, and that you are prospering despite the difficult economic environment that we’ve seen in the past year.

FMS was founded in October 1986, so we're celebrating the start of our 24th year in business this month! Over the decades, we've seen many technological and economic cycles–from the stock market crash in October 1987, only a year into my business, to the dot-com boom in 2000, to recent economic downturn.

While we can’t control what happens in world around us, what's allowed us to be successful both organizationally and individually is staying close to our customers and understanding your needs. Economic cycles come and go, but what never changes is the need to apply evolving technology in a cost effective and productive manner. We hope that our tools have helped you accomplish this, and that you continue to turn to us for all your IT needs.

For our friends Down Under, I'm looking forward to speaking at the Office Devcon 2009 in Brisbane, Australia at the end of the month. If you're there, I look forward to seeing you.

Once again, thank you for your support over the past 23 years. We look forward to serving you for many more years.

Best wishes,

Luke Chung
President

Contents

• Product Feature: Total Access Analyzer
• See You in Australia: Meet Luke Chung
• Access Tip: Use the AppendOnly and ColumnHistory Method to Keep Historical Data for Memo Fields
• Customer References Needed
• Access Tip: Reference tab pages by PageIndex
• Our New Website Layout
• Outlook Tip: Delay Sending Your Emails
• Microsoft Access Query Tips and Techniques Paper Published on MSDN
• Next Generation of Business Intelligence

Product Feature: Total Access Analyzer

Total Access Analyzer is the most popular Microsoft Access add-in of all time. It incorporates our decades of database and Access development experience to offer valuable documentation, detect mistakes, and offer suggestions to apply the Best Practices we've learned.

By examining your entire database, it discovers complex relationships among objects and hidden problems. Pinpoint unused code, unreferenced variables (assigned but not used), references to missing objects, variable name conflicts, design inconsistencies, performance improvements, and much more.

We've added some more examples of the 350+ Microsoft Access documentation reports it generates. See how Total Access Analyzer can significantly improve your productivity, reduce errors, and teach you to become a better developer.

See You In Australia: Meet Luke Chung, President of FMS, Inc.

Office Devcon 2009
October 31 - November 1, 2009
Brisbane, Australia

Luke will be giving several presentations on Microsoft Access application development and our products at this conference. Hosted at the University of Queensland, St. Lucia campus, we hope you see him Down Under.

Access Tip: Use the AppendOnly Property and the ColumnHistory Method to Keep Historical Data for Memo Fields

In Access 2007-Format databases (ACCDBs), the AppendOnly property for Memo fields allows you to store a history of the changes made to the field. The history of the Memo field can later be retrieved using the ColumnHistory method.

Are You Willing to be an FMS Customer Reference for Microsoft?

Each year, Microsoft requests some customer references as part of our Gold Certification process. If you'd like to provide feedback to Microsoft as one of our valued customers, please contact us.

If selected, you'll be invited to fill out an anonymous online survey from a 3rd party firm to share your experiences with our products and services.

Of course, you can always share your experiences and provide testimonials about us directly. We may even publish your comments on our website. As always, we thank you for your support!

Access Tip: For Access Forms, Reference Tab Pages by their PageIndex Rather than Tab Value

A Microsoft Access tab control contains pages (tabs) with each page identified by its PageIndex property starting with 0. The value determines the order of the tabs. While using the tab's value works, it's not the best over time. If the tabs are reordered (for instance page 0 and 1 are swapped), the values no longer reference the original pages and your code will crash or not work properly. Similarly, if you add/insert or delete tabs, the values no longer reference the pages as expected. Instead, use the PageIndex property.

New Look of our Website

Our website has undergone a complete redesign. While we're still working on portions of it, please check it out for a more modern look. We'll be making even more enhancements in the near future.

Outlook Tip: Delay Sending Your Emails

Have you ever sent a message in Outlook and immediately wished you could get it back? How many times do you realize you forgot to insert an attachment as soon as you pressed Send? What about seeing a related email that came in while you were composing your message which changes how you should have replied?

Fortunately, Microsoft Outlook lets you set a rule to delay all your messages for a few minutes. This simple feature keeps your message in your outbox so you can update it if you remember something right after you press Send.

Microsoft Access Query Tips and Techniques Paper Published on MSDN

Our popular Microsoft Access Query Tips and Techniques paper was recently published by Microsoft on their MSDN site.  It covers the basics of queries and non-programmatic solutions through more advanced topics including the programmatic use of queries. We recently updated it with a new page for Update Query syntax. To see it on MSDN, visit here.

Next Generation in Business Intelligence

Do you know how to find hidden relationships in your data? How about identifying clusters and patterns? With Sentinel Visualizer, you can do this and more. Perform ad-hoc analysis, test theories and organize complex data networks into real business intelligence. Want to learn more? Visit our Sentinel Visualizer site to learn more today.

Or contact us for more information.

Thank you for your continued interest in FMS, Inc.