Chicago Access Users Group Meeting Notes

Meeting Date: September 23^rd, 1999

Tom Pizzatto of Microsoft made a presentation on Access 2000. Here is a brief summary:

Tom stated that one of the main goals in the development of Access 2000 was to provide tight integration to Microsoft SQL Server 7.0. The Microsoft Database Engine (MSDE) ships with Access 2000. This is a stripped down version of SQL Server and allows the developer to create an application that can be upsized to SQL Server 7.0 with no coding changes.

The JET engine is still around, and has been improved for Access 2000. Tom pointed out that JET is embedded in other Microsoft products so it won’t completely disappear. JET, however, is now taking a back seat to the MSDE as far as Access development is concerned.

Other important technologies being advanced in Access 2000 include ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) and Data Access Pages.

ADO is Microsoft’s unified methodology for access data from any application. For Access programmers it replaces DAO and RDO. It will require you to use different syntax in your VBA code to open recordsets and execute queries. The things you used to use good old DAO to do.

A Data Access Page is a special type of web page designed for viewing and working with data from the internet or an intranet — data that is stored in an Access Database or a Microsoft SQL Server database. It may also include data from other sources, such as Microsoft Excel. Data Access Pages can be developed right in Access 2000. Unfortunately, Data Access Pages only work with one browser. Can you guess which one?

A couple of other cool things….. When you change the name of columns in a table they will be changed in any queries based on that table. And you can set a database to automatically compact when it closes.

Oh, and then there are the annoyances. A completely new database container. Strange drop down menus that automatically hide infrequently used options. And the little “paperclip from hell” has learned some new tricks as well.

Overall it was a fine meeting. Several lucky people won full versions of Office 2000 in the drawing. Try and make it to the next meeting on October 28^th.