Dealing with Access
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I'm looking for other IT professionals experience dealing with users and the MS Access applications they create. Access is part of Office so users create their own database apps. After awhile the app grows so large they find themselves in over their head, then they call IT and want us to fix it. I've taken the approach that Access apps are Office documents; we don't support Word, Excel or Access documents. It's IT's job to make sure Office is installed and runs on the user's computer. I'm wondering how others deal with this problem. It's good to be alive
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I'm looking for other IT professionals experience dealing with users and the MS Access applications they create. Access is part of Office so users create their own database apps. After awhile the app grows so large they find themselves in over their head, then they call IT and want us to fix it. I've taken the approach that Access apps are Office documents; we don't support Word, Excel or Access documents. It's IT's job to make sure Office is installed and runs on the user's computer. I'm wondering how others deal with this problem. It's good to be alive
Unfortunately, that ugly beast does rear its head from time to time. Our approach is: you build it, you support it, unless of course, someone at the VP level gets involved, in which case we try to disassemble it and rebuild it as a true DB base app.
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I'm looking for other IT professionals experience dealing with users and the MS Access applications they create. Access is part of Office so users create their own database apps. After awhile the app grows so large they find themselves in over their head, then they call IT and want us to fix it. I've taken the approach that Access apps are Office documents; we don't support Word, Excel or Access documents. It's IT's job to make sure Office is installed and runs on the user's computer. I'm wondering how others deal with this problem. It's good to be alive
I say that you should look at it this way... It's Access. To be honest I'd rather work with Access than a lot of other things. Having said that a little lesson I learned from my days of being a corporate employee at a company with a local worker base of 17,000 and 31,000 internationally. Take on the access projects and don't complain. Corporations are such divided places anymore. If you want to stand out and be distinct the get it done. I'm not talking about a team player either. I'm talking about doing the right thing even when you don't want to. Developers have a very solid understanding of what access is doing and how it works. Marketing and accounting people don't. Show your strengths so that your weaknesses don't get brought up in company restructuring meetings. That's not a threat either that's a very real thing that will happen. - Rex
I only read CP for the articles. Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
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I'm looking for other IT professionals experience dealing with users and the MS Access applications they create. Access is part of Office so users create their own database apps. After awhile the app grows so large they find themselves in over their head, then they call IT and want us to fix it. I've taken the approach that Access apps are Office documents; we don't support Word, Excel or Access documents. It's IT's job to make sure Office is installed and runs on the user's computer. I'm wondering how others deal with this problem. It's good to be alive
Turtle Hand wrote:
I've taken the approach that Access apps are Office documents; we don't support Word, Excel or Access documents. It's IT's job to make sure Office is installed and runs on the user's computer.
So you've forgone the "Most Help IT Department" nomination in favor of convenience? I suppose that might not be such a bad trade-off. Charlie if(!curlies){ return; }
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I say that you should look at it this way... It's Access. To be honest I'd rather work with Access than a lot of other things. Having said that a little lesson I learned from my days of being a corporate employee at a company with a local worker base of 17,000 and 31,000 internationally. Take on the access projects and don't complain. Corporations are such divided places anymore. If you want to stand out and be distinct the get it done. I'm not talking about a team player either. I'm talking about doing the right thing even when you don't want to. Developers have a very solid understanding of what access is doing and how it works. Marketing and accounting people don't. Show your strengths so that your weaknesses don't get brought up in company restructuring meetings. That's not a threat either that's a very real thing that will happen. - Rex
I only read CP for the articles. Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
code-frog wrote:
To be honest I'd rather work with Access than a lot of other things
I agree with code-frog. It is nice having everything bundled in one package with an Access database. If a person or company has needs that fit within Access's abilities, by all means use it. Just be mindful of limitations :) My client uses Access and it does very well for him. He has 50-75 tables, about 130K+ records, 3-7 people using the database concurrently, and few little problems from time to time. PJC
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I say that you should look at it this way... It's Access. To be honest I'd rather work with Access than a lot of other things. Having said that a little lesson I learned from my days of being a corporate employee at a company with a local worker base of 17,000 and 31,000 internationally. Take on the access projects and don't complain. Corporations are such divided places anymore. If you want to stand out and be distinct the get it done. I'm not talking about a team player either. I'm talking about doing the right thing even when you don't want to. Developers have a very solid understanding of what access is doing and how it works. Marketing and accounting people don't. Show your strengths so that your weaknesses don't get brought up in company restructuring meetings. That's not a threat either that's a very real thing that will happen. - Rex
I only read CP for the articles. Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
When dealing with Access, as with all things, projects and support will be prioritized. Locally, if an item is projected to exceed 40 hours, it becomes a project and must be approved and scheduled; otherwise it is at the developers discretion. The other question to be answered before tackling the support/project is scope creep... what is perceived as a minor item can quickly become overwhelming. There are two Access databases that have grown unmanageable because the users were not willing to wait for I/S resources to be made available and developed their own database.... there are now over 2 gig and 5 gig in size.
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I say that you should look at it this way... It's Access. To be honest I'd rather work with Access than a lot of other things. Having said that a little lesson I learned from my days of being a corporate employee at a company with a local worker base of 17,000 and 31,000 internationally. Take on the access projects and don't complain. Corporations are such divided places anymore. If you want to stand out and be distinct the get it done. I'm not talking about a team player either. I'm talking about doing the right thing even when you don't want to. Developers have a very solid understanding of what access is doing and how it works. Marketing and accounting people don't. Show your strengths so that your weaknesses don't get brought up in company restructuring meetings. That's not a threat either that's a very real thing that will happen. - Rex
I only read CP for the articles. Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
code-frog wrote:
Marketing and accounting people don't.
Meant to mention this earlier. When the marketing people I work with see Access do "wonders" for them, it is funny. They look at me like I am some sort of sorcerer. Behold, the magic of VBA :laugh:
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I'm looking for other IT professionals experience dealing with users and the MS Access applications they create. Access is part of Office so users create their own database apps. After awhile the app grows so large they find themselves in over their head, then they call IT and want us to fix it. I've taken the approach that Access apps are Office documents; we don't support Word, Excel or Access documents. It's IT's job to make sure Office is installed and runs on the user's computer. I'm wondering how others deal with this problem. It's good to be alive
I had to re-do an access program created by an accountant at my last job. I worked with him to make the program bigger and better using ASP.Net and SQL Server. It was a win win situation. My advice is to unintall access on their clients and only install the access runtime. That way they can use access applications but can't create their own. "People who never make mistakes, never do anything." My Blog
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I'm looking for other IT professionals experience dealing with users and the MS Access applications they create. Access is part of Office so users create their own database apps. After awhile the app grows so large they find themselves in over their head, then they call IT and want us to fix it. I've taken the approach that Access apps are Office documents; we don't support Word, Excel or Access documents. It's IT's job to make sure Office is installed and runs on the user's computer. I'm wondering how others deal with this problem. It's good to be alive
I've inherited an Access App that is huge; it has over 200 tables and twice as many queries and forms. It was created in a Unix enviroment version 97 and now is in a 2003 version on XP Pro over a MS Network. I want to hire an outside group to come in and create something new. But the group hangs on to it like a ball and chain. If I have to repair it one more time, I'm going to quit! Bob Fischer