Microsoft Office Access 2003 Developer Extensions

[KeithG]

There are several open source RDBMS that you can download and use for free.

 

[ghudson]

Do your end users already have Access 2003 installed on their Windows XP computers?

 

[Penmore]

KeithG - I'm not looking for a free ride necessarily, just a PC product that is reasonably priced - In my opinion, no PC software is worth £600 given the numbers that are likely to be sold. It's a daft world when one company sells it web site development software for over £300 when I can buy another piece of software that has all the facilities of the the other ( and better in some cases ) for a little more than £50.

__________________________________________
ghudson - no they don't or I would just copy the whole application to them. The couple of customers that I have manage holiday letting properties and don't have the profit levels to be investing in expensive software that they don't have the abilities to program or develop.

 

[KeithG]

You should check out www.OpenOffice.org they have a software sweet that is similar to microsoft office. It includes a RDBMS called Base.

 

[WindSailor]

Or...

You could go down the route of Visual Studio.Net 2005 Express editions.
Those are free along with SQL Server 2005 Express edition (free to develop and deploy).

Actually Microsoft (SQL Server 2005 Express), Oracle (10g Express Edition) and IBM (DB2 Express-C) are all free to develop with and deploy. They're just a lot more intensive or of a somewhat limited database server software of their parent server/database engine. And the downloads for the engine(s) are a bit bigger... 55mb, 150 mb, 250mb and/or 350 mb depending on what you want... that may seem big, but the Jet engine for Access that you are going to have to deploy with your app is roughly 34mb anyway.
But then again we are talking database server software not just a database engine. So welcome to the world of a DBA...

That is a big jump from Access, but you could try it on the side just to get the feel of things... ahhhh the learning curve just never stops...

 

[Penmore]

Also....

I suppose the other alternative is to find somebody with the Access Developers Toolkit who would be prepared to compile the application for me and supply me with the deployable application - not sure if there is anything in the licensing agreement that would prevent them from doing this.

 

[Pat Hartman]

I can't believe that this thread has gone on for as many posts as it has and no one has mentioned to you that the Developer's tool that you are so desperately searching for does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to your application. It doesn't "compile" it. You can create a "complied" version of the database with any retail version of Access. The "compiled" version is an .mde. Compiled is in quotes because in fact there is no way to complile an Access database in the same sense that a C++ or VB application is compiled because a database file isn't a plain text file. A database is a container that contains BOTH code and data. It is simply not possible to compile data. With the .mde, all the source code is stripped out so the user cannot get into design view for forms and reports and cannot view/change any code. Tables and queries are still free game.

What the developer's "tool" does is provide a license to distribute the Runtime version of MSAccess.exe along with your .mdb or .mde. The package and deployment wizard creates a self-extracting file that can be used to install your application and any necessary ancillary files on the target computer. So - bottom line - you only need this "tool" if you want to be able to distribute your application to a PC which does not have the correct retail version of Access already installed.

 

[WindSailor]

Ooops...

I think we all assumed he was searching for the Developer Tools to distribute his application to people who didn't have Access and that he already knew how to make a .MDE, trap for errors etc., and simply addressed it as such.

 

[Penmore]

Pat Hartman,

I don't think that anybody was in doubt about the meaning of the word compile that I had used, it was as WindSailor has said and as I had mentioned earlier in my responses to other questions.

The whole issue has arisen because of the way that MS has decided to bundle the Access Developers Toolkit. I have previously used V2.0 some years ago and was just trying to find the most up-to-date version that would work with my upgrade to Access 2003.


Having done some more research on the software I can find what appear to be legitimate copies of Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Microsoft Office for about half the price of those listed here in 'Rip Off' Britain, so I will probably go down that path as opposed to switching to another development tool.

Peter

 

[Pat Hartman]

The product costs around $500 in the US. If you are eligible for a student price, you can get it for aroung $110. MS software is rarely discounted. Make sure you are buying your bargin from a reliable source.

I'm trying to locate the Developer Extensions so that I can compile my Access 2003 application to distribute to my end user.

In this context, a more appropriate term would be "package" rather than "compile". Compile has a very specific meaning when talking about software and that meaning differs from the standard dictionary definition.

 

[Penmore]

Pat Hartman,

The product costs around $500 in the US. If you are eligible for a student price, you can get it for aroung $110. MS software is rarely discounted. Make sure you are buying your bargin from a reliable source.

I was doing a bit of reasearch on Google yesterday for Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 part number U74-00171 but the best price I could find was $662.76. If you have a URL to a reliable source in the US that can offer a lower price than this, I would very much appreciate the link.

 

[Pat Hartman]

I got mine when it first came out and I thought I paid $499 but I could have been wrong. I'll see what I can find. I found this page today that helps to identify counterfit software.

http://www.microsoft.com/piracy/partners/redflags.mspx

 

[Pat Hartman]

Here's a link to the "how to buy" page:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/howtobuy/

It seems that you can no longer buy the 2003 version from MS although the 2005 version should still support Access 2003. Apparently the price has gone up and I also probably bought an upgrade since I had a previous version.

The good news is you get unlimited installs.

 

[Tsango]

You need the following software.
"Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 Tools for the Microsoft Office System"

"Microsoft Office Access 2003 Developer Extensions" is part of it.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/products/vsto/details/default.aspx

I am also trying to find a way of distributing my package. Yes, most PC's have Access but being able to run it standalone just gives it that extra bit of Professionalism from a users point of view.

I wrongly thought that Visual Studio 2005 contained the developer extensions so I got the full Visual Studio 2005 Professional from Microsoft as a 180 trial and couldn't find the Access 2003 Developer Extensions within it......

I actually thought that it was part of Access 2003. i.e. when Access 2003 is installed thge developer extensions are also installed.

You can see why they don't do a trial version of the extensions because it's more a license than anything else, so on your 180 day trial you could literally distribute 1000's of your package...!!!

I don't mind paying the money, but I just want to know that I am getting the right thing....

This is all very confussing.......but this thread has hopefully cleared up a few things.

 

[Penmore]

I was confused but the product that you need today is:

Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 - Microsoft Part Number U74-00171

This is the way that MS has chosen to package it.