Knowledge neccessary to develop access programs for a small business (1 Viewer)

How much knowledge about access do you think is needed to even think about starting a business to develop access programs for small businesses or home businesses.

I have been thinking about doing this and am not sure that I know enough, or if it is OK, and I would learn more as I went along. What makes a person proficient enough to take on this kind of endeavor?

My personal advice would be to learn something about SQL Server, MySQL or any other big iron RDBMS. There's several formalized training sessions you can sign up (for a fee, of course... maybe there's a free one now & then, but I don't know of one off the hand).

Anyway, the only reason for doing this is twofold: 1) it's not uncommon that Access ends up as a front-end to a RDBMS and you may need to develop against it and 2) you really want to learn about database administration in general which will then be of immense benefit to you when you go back and develop an Access solution.

Another thing you may want to do is look around if there's an Access User Group in your area. Here's one in Dallas. Attending there will help you to meet with others who do this for living and learn from them.

Good luck.

My personal advice would be to learn something about SQL Server, MySQL or any other big iron RDBMS. There's several formalized training sessions you can sign up (for a fee, of course... maybe there's a free one now & then, but I don't know of one off the hand).

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I know That this is porbably the best way to go long term. But I took a financial Freedom class at my church, and the pastor teaching it said one of the best things we can do is start a business. I don't have money to sink into new software, nor a computer that can handle it. So it was my hope to make use of the software and skill base that I already have to start something small, that I could, if it took off, put more money into later (i.e. training, SQL, new comp with appropriate software, etc.)

Thanks for the advice. This is definitely something I need to consider. Also thanks for the suggestion about the access user group. I will look at your link and see if I can find one here in Houston.

As a clarification- you don't have to have the latest and super hardware to run a RDBMS; I was able to run MySQL on outdated hardware with only 256 MB of RAM and it ran quickly as a developer database (of course, when it went in production, it moved to a proper server).

I know that it's free to download & use Oracle (for personal use but not for production use, IINM), MySQL, PostgreSQL (for both personal & production), and SQL Server has a developer edition which costs $50.

Throw in a good book and you can take up on task of teaching yourself.

Best of luck.

As a clarification- you don't have to have the latest and super hardware to run a RDBMS; I was able to run MySQL on outdated hardware with only 256 MB of RAM and it ran quickly as a developer database (of course, when it went in production, it moved to a proper server).

I know that it's free to download & use Oracle (for personal use but not for production use, IINM), MySQL, PostgreSQL (for both personal & production), and SQL Server has a developer edition which costs $50.

Throw in a good book and you can take up on task of teaching yourself.

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I didn't know that! Thanks, I will certainly need to look into it then, especially since I have been wanting to anyway. I still have the question however, of how much I need to know, to even make this a viable business. I am learning vba, but by no means do I have a handle on it yet. I have built one fairly complex database, with the help of a co-worker who taught me a lot. The same would be true with SQL. And given the recent state of events, that I just learned that it's not OK to do lookups at table level, and that relationships should be defined in the relationship window instead, I don't know if even my basic knowledge of database design is good enough to make a venture. I'm beginning to think that I am not up to this. And should reconsider my idea, at least for the time being.

Well, even if you don't feel confident, you have to start somewhere and learn your way forward.

In my case, I got in this racket because I worked a job where the database development was a "other duties as applied" line on my job description and learned everything during I was working the old job. I'm no longer with them, now working as a contractor fulltime, but if it wasn't for that job doing Access on the side, I wouldn't be here.

Well, even if you don't feel confident, you have to start somewhere and learn your way forward.

In my case, I got in this racket because I worked a job where the database development was a "other duties as applied" line on my job description and learned everything during I was working the old job. I'm no longer with them, now working as a contractor fulltime, but if it wasn't for that job doing Access on the side, I wouldn't be here.

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Thanks, that's kind of how I had been thinking, but being on this sight, has shown me how much I don't know. Kind of humbling really. The encouragement was needed, and the advice invaluable.

oumahexi said:

I have found the following links very useful in the past and hope that others will too. A couple of them offer tutorials in a wide variety of software.

http://sqlcourse.com/

http://www.profsr.com/home3.html

http://www.databasedev.co.uk/

http://www.learnthat.com/

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There are more in the Free Online Tutorials Thread under General Access. Hope this helps.

Also, I highly recommend you don't give up your job and start a business. If you can possibly carry on with your current daytime job and start buiding DBs in your spare time that would be perfect, if you find that totally impossibly try and get a part time job to suppliment your income until you are in a position to move on.

Starting a business is an arduous job. Don't expect to work 9-5 it just doesn't work that way, you'll put in a lot more hours than you expect, it's extremely hard work, but well worth it if it works out.

Always make sure you have a contingency though, if this is your first attempt at building a business of your own, look on it as a learning experience because you can be guaranteed it won't be the last, it's addictive.

I wish you the very best of luck and hope my tuppence worth was helpful.

Also, I highly recommend you don't give up your job and start a business.

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There is not a change in heaven or on earth that I would be that unwise!

I wish you the very best of luck and hope my tuppence worth was helpful.

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Every bit of advice given is helpful. As you said, it is a learning experience. I appreciate every your tuppence worth very much (even though I have no idea how much a tuppence is worth, I have always wondered though, as I really like that song in Mary Poppins that talks about "tuppence")

Two old pennies = tuppence. In todays currency it's worth a lot less than a bag of maize to feed the birds

Two old pennies = tuppence. In todays currency it's worth a lot less than a bag of maize to feed the birds

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Thanks for explaining! And I imagine so. Same with the nickel it used to cost my parents to buy lots and lots of candy.

by the way, last time I was in London (2000), you could still buy bags of maize to feed the birds outside St Pauls, but I think they've stopped that now as it causes a rather nasty mess.

You can still feed the pigeons in Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens though, we don't mind our tourists getting sh*t upon

pigeons in Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens though, we don't mind our tourists getting sh*t upon

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Oh, This makes me laugh! Which I need today. Thanks for it!, And I'll keep this in mind if I am ever able to go to London.

Aye, you do that, so you'll be avoiding Edinburgh then?

I have been doing it full time for about 6 months. But I had sold insurance all my life so was well equipped to canvass for business and I think this is an important point.

If you canvass for business then you control where and what you go to and this in turn has a big influence on the knowledge needed.

I view Access (or for that matter any of this sort of stuff) to be akin to your vocabulary and letter writing ability. The English professor might have a huge vocab but can't write a sales letter that gets the results. It is how you string the words together.

You can also tie in with larger groups to handle what you can't handle and this is usually done on a commission type basis. Also tie in with someone that does websites.

As a side note, I have found the money is not in making full data bases but it is in smaller stuff. Back up systems, converting Excel stuff and Access to Word to Email and similar. There can be very good fast money in what is quite small in effort.

I canvass both by phone to obtain appointments and also do face to face on small businesses in industrial estates, where there are heaps of them. I leave a laptop in the car and carry a thumb drive with my "tool box" and also a printed sheet to leave with them. If I do face to face for about an hour I usually generate two appointments for the following week an one on the spot job which can be real simple. For example, a small on the spot job I did was just fixing their email so a copy was left on the server so they could get emails on all their computers and I also fixed up some Excel data where it had things like First and Last Name in one column and also cleaning up the phone numbers. For that I got $150 and it took about 20 minutes.

Personally, I think Access provides one of the best self employed opportunities I have ever seen and I have been self employed all my life so have seen a few.

But remember the most important thing is how are you going to get the business or opportunities to show your talents, that is number one. It is a lot better to have 10 people to see next week and be short of Access knowledge than be the king of Access but no people to see.

And by the way, I would regard myself as having less Access knowledge than the large majority of regular posters on this site.

Mike is right. People skills are more important than technical for the survival off your business. Although I wish I could spend most of my time studying access that doesn't get you the sale.

Mike375 said:

It is a lot better to have 10 people to see next week and be short of Access knowledge than be the king of Access but no people to see.

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that is EXACTLY right, as Mike already knows. I have a lot of useful Access knowledge, but most of it is useless unless I can put it into a practical sense for the user.


I talked with an insurance salesman the other day that wanted some information about my systems, and when I tried to explain to him the purpose of the system, he said "Adam, I don't care about technicalities. I sell insurance and push buttons. That's all I do. As soon as I heard that I knew I pretty much had a sale if the darn thing does what he wants it to do. I seriously doubt the person cared 100% about the interface too. But this example is of course industry specific. Reactions are all different, but in general I think, for another example - you would be 95% of the way to a sale if you said to an insurance salesman, "I have a system that will automatically send out marketing letters in batch quantities for you", rather than to say something like, "we have developed a system that allows you to complete all of your tasks from one central location, a database!


Believe me, the last sentence means absolutely nothing to a gogetter like small business people.

If you are not going to keep writing access databases then it may not be worthwhile tooling up on the protocol. I wrote a database 6 years ago and have forgotten 95% of what I knew.