I have software that I have developed for several years in access for client which may have demand for other similar clients.. however this software is somewhat overly customized to this specific operation.

I am at a point where enough is known to recreate the programs to market to a broader clientele audience. I am struggling to determine if I should start the new development in Access 2002, 2003, 2007, or switch to vb and visual studio,, etc...

I have heard that some programmers don't really like what msft did to access in office 2007, that its been 'dumbed down' to appeal to a larger user base. But I worry that sticking with 2003 puts me 5 years behind all the new vista's, processors, etc etc...

How does one decide what to choose? These aplications are highly specialized and involve a limited number of users...

Any advice would be appreciated...

That is where market research comes in. If you want to make it portable, use a compiled language like VB.NET. This adds design and build overhead, but can be used by anyone.

Access 2007 is basically glorified FileMaker Pro, so very dumb and hard to use. It may be skipped over by some people hoping for a more user friendly interface than Office 2007, or we may just be stuck with it and have to move on to another platform. Sad. But the underlying structure would remain the same.

You can develop in 2007, and then save versions to earlier revs, like 2003 and 2000. So that is probably your quickest and dirtiest option.

Did any of that help?

mmcdonal

Look it up at: http://wrox.books24x7.com

Thanks Mike (I gather thats what the M stands for)

It would be much better if I could stick with access, as that is what I know how to do. Just didn't know if there were compelling reasons not to use it. It will work great for everything I want to do.

I guess their motives for making access more like filemaker pro is that so many struggle with it and give up, never able to grasp it, by 'dumbing it down' they hope to increase sales. It was a long time before I became accomplished at access, having to shed my lust for the spreadsheet.

Yes, therein like a problem with Access vs Excel. I have developed many applications at work for different people. They LOVE a spreadsheet layout where they can see everything in rows and columns... AND be able to edit that way.

However, if you create tables correctly -- especially a one-to-many relationship -- you simply cannot do that in a "simple spreadsheet" fashion. Moreover if you try, you end up with a query that tries to "collect" data for several tables.... which renders the query NOT updateable. They can see, but they can't touch.

So you either have form/subform construction -- which many hate because they want to see the parent data in spreadsheet style, not one record at a time -- or you have to somehow rig up a main form with two datasheet subforms where the 2nd datasheet changes to match the parent record in the 1st datasheet. It's workable, but more design time.

My office uses Access 2002 (XP) and I use 2003 at home. I hear we may upgrade to 2007 at work next year (in time for MS to develop Access 2010?!). I am disappointed in what I read about 2007. MS has to stop creating upgrades for everything so quickly: Windows 98, 2000, XP (2002), 2007, Vista, etc... and then announcing they won't support older versions. Offices simply cannot keep upgrading every two years with extremely tight budgets.

Good luck with your venture.