Access for the Masses

The other day a developer friend mentioned that the Access 2007 runtime is available as a free download. The last time I looked into the runtime (2003 version) it was packaged as a Visual Studio add-on and was rather pricey. The new wizard-based package builder was was simple to install and the entire process of making a deployable Access application was super-easy taking only a few minutes to create. Not all of the latest changes to Access have been to my liking, but Microsoft got this part right.

An extra 32 bits

Two years ago I got a brand new dual core machine with 4 gig of ram to run Vista. Right out of the box Dell had installed software that would throw an error during boot up. Needless to day that is not what I was hoping to see on a brand new machine. My only big beef with Vista has been the Karo-syrup-like performance. Recently after joining a new domain, the sidebar stopped working altogether. This prompted a clean installation of Vista - this time with a 64 bit version. Wow, this is the machine I thought I was buying. Everything snaps just like a fresh version of XP. Nice.

House of Blues Lives up to it's name

The HOB was full of white twenty somethings tonight to see the comedy troupe Stella. Someone commented that they seemed to be improvising their material. Boy I sure hope so. If they spent fifteen minutes in preparation, how will they ever recover all that wasted time?

To follow up on the relationship post, here is the final result:

I ended up with a very simple design that just allows roles to be defined for each person in a relationship. Since it would be impossible to define every one of these in advance, new [Role] list items can be keyed into the combo box and it will then be appended to the [Roles] table.

The table looks something like this:

My very earliest surviving project was what started out as a simple address book of my personal contacts. Originally an Appleworks file, the data has evolved and still lives inside an Access application. For quite a while I've thought that it would be great to link individuals by pairs of relationships.

So far all I have set up is a table to define these relationships.

Definition Converse Category
-------------------------------------------------
Brother Brother Personal
Landlord Tenant Professional
Parent Child Personal
Doctor Patient Professional
Spouse Spouse Personal
Husband Wife Personal
Wife Husband Personal
...

Each of these will link two "people" records. Some of these are reversable (Spouse) others are directional.

More to follow...

Software for Tough Times

As a long time FMS customer, I found Luke Chung's article to be right to the point about software development:

"Every organization faces a wide range of application development
challenges. Some require enterprise level solutions, while others are best
handled by front-line information workers.

The more information workers can take care of their own needs, the more
value application developers can provide to the problems beyond that. With more
and more power on individual desktops and networks, information workers can
accomplish many tasks themselves. We believe they should do so. Whether it's a
sophisticated Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or Microsoft Access database, end
users can create and modify their own solutions to quickly respond to their
needs.

Anyone who has relied on someone else to design a report and experience the
hassles of adjusting columns and getting it "just right" knows the frustrations
of relying on someone else to understand and do what you want. Let's not get in
the way of individual efforts."

Back in school up-front analysis and design was always emphasized as the best practice. Not that this is not important, but real world application development does not hinge on a simple exact formula. As it turns out an iterative approach of Design-Prototype-Present-Repeat is frequently the fastest way to a solid working solution.

Close, on-going contact between the user and developer is also critical. I've seen users develop their own queries from raw tables and thereby come to understand the process and flow of data though the system. Once the data has been identified and successfully extracted, all that was needed to solve the problem was the polish of a good user interface laid on top of wizard-generated reports.

Always important, a slowing economy just serves to emphasize this type of development efficiency.

Fall Weather

Ah rainy 49 degree nights - finally perfect coding weather.