The Future of MS Access

Some guy told me that Power Apps is the future, Ms Access will be past. What do You think about that? Do you earn from developing Ms Access? Are there programmer earning only in vba?

MS Access has been under one threat or another since it started I reckon. Well that's what it feels like to me anyway.

Another way to answer your question is you might actually be asking is it worth your while to learn MS Access?

I'm not sure how to answer that lately I have been saying that it might be a dead end however it does integrate nicely with word and Excel so I'm not sure if it was actually be worth your while. A better route might be to look at net Technologies.

As for actually learning it I don't think anything has a better free resources than MS Access. There are like getting on for 20 years worth of posts on the Internet and an established network of people who are willing to help you. I don't see that so much with other products and languages.

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This *story* has been around for years... Desktop Access not going anywhere, Web Apps well can't say what their future will be. That said, IMHO, I don't see Power Apps as a threat to Desktop Access.

That said, I develop using VBA (my main stay) but have also learned other languages, in today's world just being fluent in one language is not enough.

It appears that if you were to replace an Access application with Power Apps you would end up using Azure for the storage of your data. Check out these prices

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/sql-database/

What you can't take away from Access is the remediation that Access can perform. There are so many corporate solutions - NHS Spine was promoted as a all "singing and all dancing solution". Billions of pounds later it was essentially scrapped.

SQL Server is basically a high performance back-end with reporting features and unless you are going down the MVC or Azure route - Access is still a very powerful tool. The SQL functionality within Access is more flexible to SQL Server, handling Expressions for instance.

I understand that SQL Server uses Cubes for storing total values, I have no hesitation if I can intercept the entry process to store these values in a file - ready to be used at anytime.

I have a client with two other systems, Access is used to analyse the information these system simply can not do. Without Access finding out which Farms used InFeed Medication let alone the efficacy of Treatment would be impossible.

Perhaps the real battle is one fits all solutions and bespoke solutions that need the business requirements.

SQL statements are the final arbitrator of data architecture and Access has a very good implementation of SQL.

How much of what we do is to get it right?

Simon