Special Edition Using Microsoft Office Access 2003

In the Real World Is the Third Time a Charm for DAP??

"Microsoft gets it right the third time" is an industry adage that dates from the release of Windows 3.0 and was confirmed by IE 3.0. Microsoft appears to have gotten DAP right or at least very close to right on the second pass in Access 2002. Access 2002 solved the serious design-time problems that plagued users who attempted to create Access 2000 DAP without the undo/redo feature. Access 2003 DAP offer undo/redo, multiple control selection and alignment, and other features that bring page layout operations close to the standard established by conventional forms and reports. The primary change to Access 2003 DAP is the operating system restriction of OWC 11. Users running Windows operating systems earlier than Windows 2000 can't view DAP. Users running Windows NT, Me, 98SE, 98, or 95 are out of luck.

If you're an Access 2000 power user or developer, one reason to adopt version 3.0 of DAP as a means of delivering data over your intranet and, with reservation, the Internet is the availability of the runtime installation for OWC 11. Access 2000's DAP 1.0 weren't accessible by users who didn't have Office 2000 installed. The relatively low upgrade and adoption rate of Office 2000 and XP resulted in very limited deployment of production DAP. If you need to support Windows Me or earlier clients, however, stick with the Access 2002 version. Providing the runtime version makes view-only DAP accessible to anyone willing to install OWC 11 on their Windows XP or 2000 PC. Access 2002's OWC 10 doesn't have this operating system limitation.

The belt-tightening associated with the economic downturn that occurred when this book was written has caused many large and small organizations to scale back their investments in internal and external Web technology. Expenditure reductions don't mean that the demand for delivery of accurate and up-to-date data over corporate intranets has decreased. Instead, CEOs and CIOs demand more information faster, but at lower development cost. It's doubtful that any current Web-based technology can come close to matching the rapid application deployment (RAD) velocity of DAP. The Save As DAP feature, described in the next chapter, lets you convert existing simple Access objects primarily queries and reports to intranet-ready pages in less than a minute.

Tip

One of the complaints often heard about DAP is that they're limited to use with Jet and SQL Server databases. That's true for the connection, but you can connect to a Jet .mdb that uses client/server tables linked by ODBC, the subject of Chapter 19, "Linking Access Front-Ends to Jet and Client/Server Tables." Another approach is to use SQL Server linked tables, one of the subjects of Chapter 20, "Exploring Access Data Projects and SQL Server 2000." This means that your pages can use as an underlying data source Oracle, IBM DB2, Sybase, Informix, or any other RDBMS that has an ODBC or OLE DB driver.

Users who haven't upgraded to Office 2003 Standard Edition or higher won't be able to pivot or filter the PivotTables or change the type of a PivotChart without some programming effort on your part. Most page recipients, however, likely will be intimidated by field buttons and drop zones. The vast majority of information on intranets and public Web sites is meant to be read not manipulated. The capability to drill down into view-only PivotTables is probably adequate for most users. There's no limit, however, on programming access to Spreadsheet, PivotTable, and PivotTable features in runtime OWC 11. If your customers (users) want more control over pages, brush up your VBScript or ECMAScript skills.

The upshot of this section is that DAP probably are the most compelling "new" feature of Office 2003 for Office 97 and 2000 users SharePoint Team services, smart tags, and upgraded XML features notwithstanding. Businesses tend to upgrade to alternate Office releases, and many organizations have Office 97 installed. Microsoft hasn't devoted significant marketing effort to Access since Tod Nielsen spearheaded the release of version 2.0. Here's hoping that Office Access 2003 regains the attention that it deserves from the Redmond marketing machine.

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