Sea_Sharp wrote: not a good career choice They are all good career choices, even if they become obsolete ten years from now.

I traded my hobby for programming for a career in programming in 1989 by applying to a "head hunter" service and then proving my talent on the job. And while I don't dismiss a degree in computer science I don't think it is necessary to become a professional programmer. As a hiring manager for a global technology company I look for transferable skills: the understanding of how to think conceptually, collaborate and overcome boundaries; build clean systems that last and are readable and maintainable. If you can demonstrate to me the basics understanding of being a professional developer rather than someone who has learned to write code, I would consider your application over someone with a 4 year degree who can't build a clean, sustainable legacy code base. Just my 2 cents.

Sea_Sharp wrote: My thoughts were to restrict non-techie access completely from the database. Ditto; the Access-frontend would link purely to readonly-views on their own version of the database; a simple restored backup of the production-database (on Sql Server). Then again, most people would not offer Access to an end-user and claim that it's the UI they should work with. Sea_Sharp wrote: I found on the last project, having many people access the database at once resulted in many issues. Yes and no. Access does it's job well, but it was never meant to store a lot of data and be accessed by multiple users simultaneous. A database-server is meant for that job, and Acces isn't a server-application - "just" a desktop app. Sea_Sharp wrote: I guess my wording here was awkward. Sorry for my tone/wording; it'll be equally (if not more) awkward (or hostile) at some points. Sea_Sharp wrote: I know Excel can do it via exports but then it becomes the issue of everyone wasting their time trying to make the reports look professional, consistent, and legible ..aaah, yes, users are resourceful. Sea_Sharp wrote: As mentioned earlier I was completely unimpressed with the UI for Access's report builder but looking around I have not seen any alternatives that seem any better. The Query-Builder looks scary, but is a very powerful tool; combine that with the reporting, and you have a "simple" UI - although others will certainly disagree there. Combine that with the free runtime-version of Access, and you got a UI that will be hard for the end-user to "break". Sea_Sharp wrote: You should have seen how bad our MS Access db got corrupted just by having 2-3 people working on it simultaneously. Yes, especially when they're mucking in the same tables. When moving to SQL Server, be sure to read up on locking and transactions - though the concept does exist in Access, it doesn't help to improve multi-user access. Locking is what keeps the data consistent in a multi-user db, but it also introduces a bottleneck. Sea_Sharp wrote: I mentioned earlier I think it would make a lot more sense to do it HTML and CSS or XML and XSLT for professi

You're welcome! Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)