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  Welcome To Tips-FX - Edition 22
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Tips-FX is an email newsletter that provides free tips,  help and information for skilled Microsoft Access users and related software disciplines.

Produced by Garry Robinson from Sydney, Australia.

In this edition, 

OFFICE XP - THE ACCESS UPGRADE MYSTERY
DATA MINING / GRAPHING -  BUY SOME SOURCE CODE
VB.NOT  -  SOME THOUGHTS  
ACCESS SECURITY - WIN A COPY OF The Toolbox
SEARCH YOUR ACCESS HELP FOR SOME GOOD READING
AND YET THERE IS MORE
GOOD READING AND USEFUL SITES


Sponsors
http://www.apress.com     http://vb123.com#software


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OFFICE XP - THE ACCESS UPGRADE MYSTERY

The Microsoft marketing machine are being very illusive about the new features that we can be expecting from the next version of Access in a month or so.   This version was called Access 2002 but is now known as Access XP.   The late name change is practically the only thing I can find out about the upgrade on the Microsoft site (or anywhere else on the web).   The only document that I found was on the Microsoft site was the following Word file.

http://www.microsoft.com/office/XPguide.doc

The only useful Access 2000 improvement mentioned in this document was support for XML.   This I would have expected due to the upgrade of ADO over the last 2 years.   Having XML ADO facilities inside Access without having to install a special object driver on the clients computer will go a long way to integrating XML into mainstream computing. 

Thankfully though Ken Getz did a presentation at the Sydney Access users group a week ago and I took a few notes on the Access XP features that seemed interesting ...

The Pivot Chart and Pivot table objects that featured in the totally ignored Access Data pages in Access 2000 have been improved and now have been integrated into Access forms.   These seem to be much better controls than the current Access/Excel chart object.   But we will see.

You can trap and handle the mouse scroll event plus the undo event.

Reports can be manipulated in code and by the user in preview mode.   Things like adding additional columns on the fly, opening the reports hidden, having an Open Args qualifier should appeal to reporting boffins.

Combo boxes and list control boxes are now going to have an add/remove item method like VB.    If you use value list, you now will be able to add more than 2056 characters to the value list (yippee). 

A file dialog object is now fully integrated into Access/Office.  This will mean that you won't have to include all that Windows API code in your applications to select a find file box.  Also there will be support for Internet files, Save As and Folders.   This is good..

Data Access pages will work a lot better.   Just hope that someone gets around to using them.

A printer object has been added to the Office shareable objects and this can be controlled much more easily than the current PrintDev nonsense.  Also Access can have its own default printer.

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DATA MINING / GRAPHING -  BUY SOME SOURCE CODE

If you are interested in technology that shows the drilldown and multi data-source graphing process in Access, why not consider the

"GR-FX Programmers Pack"
 
which has been upgraded to include not only all the source code for the popular Graf-FX graphing tool plus some new programming objects that you can read about at 

www.gr-fx.com/graf+fx.htm
 

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VB.NOT  -  SOME THOUGHTS  

Some notes from Ken's VB.Net presentation at the Sydney Access users group basically highlighted that if you are not aware of how to program a class module, then you have a year or two to understand this programming skill.  Why ?  Basically because you will HAVE to put all your modules and subroutines into a class module in VB.Net so there will be no escape (unless you want to retire). 

Another thought on VB.Net is that it is probably a good idea for visual basic programmers to consider VB.Net as a new programming language rather than a normal extension of the VB that you have come to know (and love).    Why ?   VB.net has been designed to be a modern object oriented language from the bottom up.  This means lots of VB programming features have been left behind.  Therefore conversions are going to be real tough. 

Read what some programmers are saying about the big doosey from Microsoft
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0%2C4586%2C2675673%2C00.html#more_on

Also make sure that you install VB.net on a new computer or disk partition to that occupied by VB 6 or 5 or Office.   Well at least wait till 50000 other programmers ruin their development environment and Microsoft issues VB.Net 1.1  (editorial comment).



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ACCESS SECURITY - WIN A COPY OF The Toolbox

One of the most popular pages at vb123.com is the following Access security page

http://www.vb123.com/Toolbox/00_accvb/accesssecurity.htm

Because of its popularity, Ed decided that it would be a good idea to see what other Access resources were available on this topic on the world wide web.   Here is a new links page with some good links on this topic

http://www.vb123.com/Toolbox/links/access_security.htm

But I am sure there are many more quality resources on this topic and if you can tell me where they are and why you like that resource by   email:  access@gr-fx.com   The five best web resources that will be rewarded with a free copy/upgrade of   www.gr-fx.com/Toolbox/


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SEARCH YOUR ACCESS HELP FOR SOME GOOD READING

Why not check out  the     "FollowHyperLink"

method which will open a file with the application associated with its file type.  This is really useful if you want to view a text file but would rather use your favorite editor than the standard notepad.exe approach to opening files.   The following example will open up my favorite text editor  UltraEdit

Application.FollowHyperlink "C:\scandata\Scan10307.TXT" , , True


----  Or

Do not know much about the secret SQL commands.  Search your help for the creation queries that you can add to your application.   Your words need to be in uppercase.

"CREATE INDEX SQL"

When you save these queries as SQL in your access database, they have a cool new icon in the database container that looks like a draftsman corner ruler.  

And why would commands such as   "create index" and "drop index" be of interest to you  ?  Imagine a report that performs better when it has a table index.  Unfortunately that table does not really need that index for much more than this report.    Well the easiest way to create that index is to use the  Create Index command with doCmd.RunSql  and then "Drop Index" when the reporting is all over.     Ed used this technique in a recent project saving 10 minutes on a complex recordset exercise that ran for 30 minutes.

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AND YET THERE IS MORE ...

Jack wins a copy of The Toolbox for his words.  Do you have any comments to add on the topics brought up in this ezine  ...  www.gr-fx.com/Toolbox

Thanks for your always insightful newsletter.  I very much appreciate and enjoy your offerings.

I was particularly pleased to read your contrast between A2K and 97.  I don't use A2K because it provides no significant functionality over Access 97 when developing in Jet and doesn't permit table level security in MSDE. Most of the stuff that I do has sensitive information in the tables so
security is a must.  That not being possible with MSDE there is no advantage to working with the buggy and more cumbersome A2K so, like with Access 95, I just leave it on the shelf.

I also liked your comment about not messing with future releases until after they have their service release No. 1 available.  I had independently made that decision after seeing all the bugs in Office 2000.  Sadly, Microsoft seems to have put cash flow ahead of quality, perhaps to fund their legal battles.

Jack Buster
Aviation Data Research

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GOOD READING AND USEFUL SITES


Access Automation -  There is not much online but here is good example
http://www.andreavb.f2s.com/tip110002.html

Close your automation objects properly
http://www.mvps.org/access/general/gen0017.htm

Multiple clipboards in Office 2000 - Turn it off using the following
http://www.mvps.org/skp/off00005.htm



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WRAPPING THIS EDITION UP

Thanks to those programmers and power users who have been purchasing enough copies of our software to keep vb123.com and tips-fx online and popular.   Without you, this newsletter and web site would have gone the way of many other online.nots  over the last year.    So get your orders/upgrades in at

http://www.vb123.com/orders/

and keep these popular online and resources ticking along.

Mr Ed:    Garry Robinson


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Garry Robinson - Software Consultant

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Published  2001-03