June 2011

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

Hi Everyone,

What an event filled past month. I attended and spoke at the Portland Oregon Access User Group conference in beautiful Silver Falls State Park. It was a conference center up in the hills where we stayed in cabins and spent morning through night together in a very friendly atmosphere. Lacking cell phone coverage, it was a wonderful get away. Met some new friends and enjoyed the camaraderie. Here are some photos posted to our Facebook page.

If you haven't already, please Like our Facebook page. We've posted many items there over the past month, and it's becoming the fastest way to receive our news.

We're very pleased to continue with our product upgrades to Office/Access 2010. A free preview version of Total Visual CodeTools 2010 is now available. We hope you'll take advantage of this fully functional version regardless of which version of Office and VB6 you use, good thru July 2011.

We're also delighted to offer a new Microsoft Access Query Help Center that consolidates all our resources for queries.

Additionally, I've had a few articles published regarding Microsoft Access in enterprises and its scalability. Active discussions on our blog and newsgroups have followed. Hope you find it helpful.

I'll be at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles in mid-July. Hope to see you there.

All the best,

Luke Chung
President

Contents

• Download the Free Total Visual CodeTools 2010 Preview Version!
• New Microsoft Access Query Center
• Microsoft Access Is Underrated
• Creating a Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan for Your IT System
• Microsoft Access Database Scalability: How many users can it support?
• The Making of Microsoft Access 2010
• Consulting Services and Custom Software Solutions for Large Businesses

Download the Free Total Visual CodeTools 2010 Preview Version!

Integrated directly into the Integrated Development Environment (IDE), Total Visual CodeTools gives you a rich set of tools to help you create, cleanup, and deliver better solutions. The latest version is enhanced for MS Office/Access 2010 and has many new features:

• Supports Microsoft Access/Office 2010, 32-bit version
• VBA Code Parsing Supports Access/Office 2010
• Code Cleanup and Code Delivery Allow Immediate Overwrite
• Code Cleanup Error Enabler and Handler Tags are Customizable
• Copy Control Builder Supports Multiple Target Controls
• Long Text/SQL Builder Supports Query Retrieval and Converts Tabs and Spaces
• Select Case Builder Supports Text Blocks and Numeric Ranges
• Recordset Builder Defaults to Current Database and Simplifies Selections
• Three Locations for Total Visual CodeTools on Your Menus
• Tools Available During Debugging
• Default 'Send To' is Remembered
• Screens are Resizable
• Redesigned Storage of Standards for Improved International Support

Visit these pages for:

• Complete list of 2010 enhancements
• Download the Preview Version

Total Visual CodeTools supports all VB/VBA hosts, including Visual Basic 6.0 (VB6) and Office 2010, 2007, 2003, 2002/XP, and 2000.

New Microsoft Access Query Center

Microsoft Access Queries are among the most powerful features of MS Access. We have created a new resource center to make it easy to review all our papers related to Microsoft Access Queries. These original works offer tips and techniques that aren't found anywhere else. They will help you maximize your use of Microsoft Access queries to better analyze and understand your data.

In the Microsoft Access Query Help Center you will find papers covering:

Retrieving Records

• Microsoft Access Query Tips and Techniques (SQL and VBA)
• Microsoft Access and SQL Server Database Normalization Tips
• Using a Microsoft Access Crosstab Query to Create Monthly Summary Reports without Code and modifying data
• Difference Between "Unique Values" (SELECT DISTINCT) and "Unique Records" (SELECT DISTINCTROW) in Microsoft Access Queries
• Finding Records in One Table but Not Another with "Not In" Queries
• UNION versus UNION ALL SQL Syntax

Modifying Data

• Microsoft Access Update Query, SQL Syntax, Examples and Errors
• Microsoft Access Delete Query, SQL Syntax, Examples and Errors
• This Recordset is not updateable: Dealing with Non-Updateable Microsoft Access Queries
• Suppress Warning Messages When Running Microsoft Access Action Queries Programmatically in VBA
• Returning the Number of Records or Rows Affected by an Action Query in Microsoft Access with VB6/VBA

Microsoft Access Is Underrated: Your Hatred Of Microsoft Access Is Largely Unjustified

Enterprise Features publishes an article by FMS President Luke Chung about how and why Microsoft Access is under-appreciated in enterprise organizations.

He discusses the dynamics of IT departments in large organizations and their natural conflict with the needs and budgets of information worker. He also shows how organizations that understand the strengths and weaknesses of Microsoft Access can leverage its power for competitive advantage, and how to structure service levels to do so. 

Creating a Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan for Your IT System

Here's an article by FMS President Luke Chung that was recently published on the Entrepreneurs' Organization, Washington DC web site discussing the need of small business owners to Create a Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan for Your IT System. Luke has been a member of EO for over a decade and previously served as the Washington DC chapter president.

The article covers our experiences working with people running small to medium sized organizations, and the challenges they face to address business process continuation issues. An overview of the basic steps are covered.

Full Article

This is related to a recent article:
Creating a Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan for Microsoft Access Database Applications

Microsoft Access Database Scalability: How many users can it support?

There is a persistent myth that Microsoft Access Jet databases can only support 20 or so users. Here's my response to a recent inquiry:

I question the data for the limitations on the number of Access users being around 30. We've run many tests and have never seen that kind of degradation in performance. It's a myth from Access 2.0 days that was eliminated with Access 97 over a decade ago. A well designed Access database can support hundreds of users. Of course, what matters is the number of simultaneous users, and what they're doing.

If everyone is just viewing data or entering data into a table, that takes very little work and a large number of people (well over 200) can be supported. People cannot type faster than what Access can handle. If they are all running massive reports and queries with data updates, that can still be done but performance would be an issue which applies to any technology, so testing and optimization would be necessary.

If the back-end database is in SQL Server rather than an Access/Jet database, the number of users can be practically unlimited if each user has their own front-end copy of the Access application. Performance issues still apply based on what they are doing. In some cases SQL Server is slower than Access, so it is important to understand the situation before thinking SQL Server is the answer.

All that said, any Access application that is distributed to others with shared data should be a split database design. Here are a few resources we've written:

• Splitting Microsoft Access Databases to Improve Performance and Simplify Maintainability
• Significantly Improve the Performance of Microsoft Access Databases with Linked Tables

We also offer a commercial product for enterprises, Total Access Startup, that helps with the distribution of databases to each user's desktop and launching the right version of Access. 

Blog about it

The Making of Microsoft Access 2010

Watch this Microsoft video by Abigail Welborn, a self-proclaimed "code-monkey" for Microsoft Access 2010 development team.

She shares a little about her contributions to the Microsoft Access 2010 project.

Consulting Services and Custom Software Solutions for Large Businesses

We've added a new page to our consulting web site about our work with large organizations. Learn more about what we've done to help organizations improve their operations and decision making with our custom software development services.

Want to learn more? Please contact our consulting team.

Thank you for your continued interest and support!

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