MS Access EOL (1 Viewer)

[Vassago]

I am a little confused because if the derogatory term was "nob jockey" I have found multiple definitions of nob jockey or knob jockey. One is derogatory the other is slang for an IT guy which is what a lot of people in the forum are (IT folks).

The offending posts no longer exist. It was considerably worse than that.

That's all I'll really say. We expect anyone posting to have respect for users seeking help. He can bash Access all he wants and we allow enough borderline stuff to occur out here in the Cooler, but when it comes to the main business forums, we expect a little more care to be given.

 

[AccessBlaster]

I hear ya..

 

[Lightwave]

So lets summarize

Bitter
Ageist
Arrogant
& Rude

I definitely want to be taking advice from him.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Given that nfk might be green and wart-laden and live under a bridge, his comments need to be addressed to prevent confusion among the newer members who browse this section. So, let me chime in just a tad.

Everyone talks about how we professionals should move away from Windows and move to LINUX, but they need to consider economics in multiple flavors - and there is also a flavor of reality to be addressed.

First, we and our companies probably have invested a LOT of time and effort into solutions that are based on Windows and Office. Right, wrong, or indifferent originally, once you have a huge amount of money invested, you need to amortize your investment before you decide to upgrade and replace.

In the case of the U.S. Navy, without naming too many names I can tell you that they have a program for the management of the U.S. Naval Reserve personnel that was upgraded to an OpenVMS platform in the late 1980's and early 1990's. They tried seriously twice to upgrade it to get off of OpenVMS and on to ANYTHING else, but both projects died under their own rapidly growing scope bloat.

They wanted to web-enable it, they wanted to centralize it, they wanted to switch to a more modern database management schema, but the project growth made the powers-that-be step back once they had their cost estimates. That old engineering adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" kept coming into play.

The security aspects of the project got more and more stringent, but economics often trumps modernization, particularly with so many projects for new threats, new issues, new concern. Nobody wanted to upgrade something because they thought it would be totally replaced. That project went through three changes of physical platform, four or maybe five, depending on how you look at it, changes in disk infrastructure, and not less than nine O/S and six DBMS software versions. It was still going when I retired, though I hear that some progress has been made to bring at least parts of it into a more modern web-based presentation.

Second, getting off of Windows is enticing, except that many people will correctly say that it is a case of "the other pasture's grass is greener but from a distance, you can't see how deep the manure was that made it look greener." LINUX and its variants are no piece of cake either.

I was in the department that did system administration for over 1000 servers of various flavors. ALL of them... NO EXCEPTIONS... had security issues that were enough to drive us nuts even as it kept us employed. In a world of threats for ransomware, trojans, viruses, and the like, ALL repeat ALL O/S and platform combinations have their serious vulnerabilities. I saw the security notices including which O/S was affected for each such notice. Windows, UNIX variants, OpenVMS, and Apple were ALL being targeted. So before anyone jumps through the UNIX/LINUX hoop, decide WHY you want it. Look at the security features of the O/S you are jumping to, because if it is a "stripped down" O/S to make it more efficient, how much was stripped?

If you can't field a solid TCP/IP stack, you are a gone goose right there because that is the vector through which most infectious code enters your system. If you don't have a solid file protection scheme that includes Access Control List methodology, you are going to fight tooth and nail to maintain decent protection. If you don't have internal protections to keep process A from interacting with process B (unless that was their designed goal) then you will find yourself struggling to assure that you have good backups of every file on your system. If your O/S doesn't support hardware protection against code modification from an untrusted user, you are toast. So jumping from O/S A to O/S B requires very careful consideration.

Third in the hit parade: It seems like you have tons of problems with Windows and I don't disagree - but the advantage is that everyone and his brother-in-law has developed packages for Windows. LINUX, because of its more "engineering" orientation in its earliest years, was not a developer-friendly environment. To be blunt, the O/S was bare-bones because its original purpose was phone-company switching management, for which extra overhead and a requirement for a lot of resident code were simply not supportable. Developers had to "roll their own" utilities because there were no commercial packages available for what they wanted to do. UNIX variants have started to catch up, but it is still harder to find certain things as layered apps for the things that companies want to do.

At first, if you wanted Computer Aided Drafting - the only CAD packages were Windows based. Typesetting? Windows (or OpenVMS, but nobody could afford the early VMS platforms). Web GUI tools? Windows started it. (OK, UNIX picked that up quickly, but they weren't first.) Keep going. You might want to go away from Windows, but your apps (none of which were cheap) also contributes to the investment that you have to amortize before you can talk about moving to a new environment.

The reality of the situation is that hackers will code for a popular O/S - but if they see that what they want is moving to a newer O/S, they WILL re-target their efforts. And don't forget that there is a HUGE negative out there. UNIX code for the Kernel O/S has been published. Hackers can read the code and FIND those vulnerabilities in LINUX and its ilk a lot quicker than they can find it in Windows code, which has at least NOT been published in its entirety.

The ONLY O/S I know of that has never been truly hacked is OpenVMS, because of the way it was originally designed to prevent code alteration. You CANNOT hack the kernel through external means. You have to become privileged first, and that means social hacks would be required.

Oh, you can hack your own process memory and thereby kill your own process, but there are layers to the Kernel code including hardware memory protection. You know that feature Windows has to protect critical code? They got the idea from OpenVMS. At the DEFCON 9 convention some years ago (which is a hacker convention), an OpenVMS v8.2 was set up for a week. Nobody could hack it. At best, they were able to impose a Denial of Service attack, but nobody actually got in.

So... to nfk and anyone else who is thinking about moving away from Windows and Office, your FIRST question must be "to what?" and you need to investigate the answers to that question thoroughly before doing ANYTHING towards a move. Look at available layered packages that do what your company does. Look at the need to modify existing apps to the new environment, because there WILL be some engineering changes in the move. Look to how it will fit in with your security requirements. Don't jump ship because Windows is an antiquated ship. Jump because your targeted new platform will do the job with some tangible advantage.

... puts away soapbox...

 

[NauticalGent]

Doc, if you got paid by the word, you would be a very rich man by now...! Very lucid and well thought out post, BTW

 

[AccessBlaster]

....So, let me chime in just a tad.

Just a tad

 

[Steve R.]

Everyone talks about how we professionals should move away from Windows and move to LINUX, but they need to consider economics in multiple flavors - and there is also a flavor of reality to be addressed.

....

Don't jump ship because Windows is an antiquated ship. Jump because your targeted new platform will do the job with some tangible advantage.

Computer operations and security involve many different levels of technology and users. At one end, there are databases or other systems that have to be very secure, reliable, and that require dedicated knowledgeable staff for support. These systems, to the extent practical, have to be bullet proof. But my focus here is the large user base of casual users.

At the other end are the casual users who seldom utilize the underlying technology. They are satisfied with simply doing mundane routine tasks that do not require a PhD in computer science. LINUX now offers office productivity software that is equivalent to that offered by Microsoft (but which has to be bought). As LibreOffice is functionally equivalent to MS Office, the casual user can easily switch from one to the other.

For the casual user (and the office in which he or she works in) there is a tangible advantage; the economics favor using open source programs, such as LibreOffice. Our office, when I was working, had about fifty MS workstations that had the full plethora of Microsoft Office software. Very few of the people utilizing those workstations went beyond Excel and/or Word (at a basic level). I was one of the very few using MS Access. Given the number of casual users versus the number of power users; investing in LibreOffice would have been a superior selection for the entire office enterprise since paying Microsoft a licensing fee was simply a waste of money.

Additionally, since retiring, I have found converting my home MS Access databases to MySQL to be equivalent. However, I should disclose that my databases are simple, consequently there is only a limited need for a lot of security features.

Of course, I need to throw-in the obvious disclaimer, that every operating system has it pluses and minuses. Additionally, that each organization has its own specialized computer requirements that may not mesh with certain operating systems.

 

[Dick7Access]

The simple answer, because people use it and have yet to appreciate the alternatives. Even the grossly obsolete FAX machine is still being used.

Also consider that MS Windows and MS Access are a cash cow for $Microsoft$. No corporation is going to kill its "golden goose".

I would also add that MS Windows should have naturally "died" by now. But, as with MS Access, people do not seem to realize that Linux is an operational alternative operating system. I keep thinking of how government (City, County, State, Federal) could save big $$$$$$ by switching to Linux. But they haven't. As the saying goes: "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink".

Just asking. I knowing about Linux, but have been told it is difficult to lean.
also been told that I will have great difficulty conversing with people that use Windows. Is this all true, or not?

 

[Steve R.]

Just asking. I knowing about Linux, but have been told it is difficult to lean.
also been told that I will have great difficulty conversing with people that use Windows. Is this all true, or not?

No. It is not difficult to learn. Nevertheless, I need to split my answer into several parts to expound on this.

Ubuntu, which is one "flavor" of Linux is easy to install from a CD. The installation is pretty much flawless and comes with a variety of graphically orientated programs, such as LibreOffice which is functionally equivalent to MS Office. So when the Ubuntu installation is complete you pretty much have all the same software as you would have with MS Windows. As such the learning curve is not too steep.

Unlike MS Windows, Linux has retained the command shell (terminal window). I consider this to be a major plus. It gives you a superior ability to customize your operating environment. But it does add complexity for those wishing to tweak their systems.

One negative issue overlooked with MS Windows is its proprietary nature. When MS Windows fails, I have found it harder to fix than with LINUX. Of course fixing a broken LINUX system still takes a lot of work but can be accomplished, in many cases, through the terminal window.

MS Windows, is better in terms of device drivers and games. Manufacturers for some reason don't seem to be interested in writing device drivers for audio cards, scanners, and video cards. But there are open-source substitutes. I have not found the lack of device drivers from manufacturers to be that much of an impediment.

MS Windows, because of it's large user base, also has many proprietary programs that do not have a corresponding LINUX version. Essentially that means you will need at least one computer which can be booted into MS Windows. You can have both LINUX and MS Windows on the same computer, but can only run one at a time. (Of course there are some programs available that allow one to run MS Windows under LINUX, but I have stayed away from them.)

Now I don't really know about LINUX groupies having a: "great difficulty conversing with people that use Windows.". I do know that since migrating from MS Windows to LINUX, I have become inept with using Windows 10. :banghead:

 

[AccessBlaster]

I use both on two different laptops, one runs Win 10 the other run a version of Ubuntu. I installed Ubuntu based on Steve R enthusiasm.

So when the Ubuntu installation is complete you pretty much have all the same software as you would have with MS Windows

I would say its more like a trimmed down version of windows, I would say lighter and faster.

Unlike MS Windows, Linux has retained the command shell (terminal window). I consider this to be a major plus.

Window still has a Dos or cmd window where you will find all the legacy commands power users are used too.

Now I don't really know about LINUX groupies having a: "great difficulty conversing with people that use Windows.". I do know that since migrating from MS Windows to LINUX, I have become inept with using Windows 10

The most attractive thing about Linux is anonymity, the ability to surf without your ISP logging every key stroke, in this highly charged political climate this is one plus.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

The Windows vernacular and the UNIX lingo are not always the same, though modern demands of some companies are causing some convergence. In the Navy shop, it was not always easy for the Windows and UNIX groups to talk about patching because they don't even patch the same way.

Steve's comments about using OpenOffice and Open versions of LINUX require some minor grains of salt. If you are in a low-security, low-value, unlikely-to-be-targeted environment, all of the Open stuff (for which source code is usually available) really won't make a difference. As the companies get bigger and start dealing with more value, more things to protect, "Open" and "Secure" begin slowly to diverge. In essence, the more you have to be protected, the more expensive it gets - and that is when you don't want to worry about having to "roll your own" version of some security feature or another. It just isn't good once you go down that path.

The big down-side comes in maintenance staff costs. When you have "Open" software as the base of your pyramid of daily operations, typically there is no maintainer from the source of that Open software. (Not always that way, but let's say "frequently".)

When you are a big company with terminals in the hundreds, you want support for your software investment. You don't want to have to rely on your own people, because you want them out being productive. Internal maintenance is an overhead function and no manager wants to pay for overhead. But an external service contract as a cost of doing business is often tax deductible.

I will be the first to say that Microsoft will nickel and dime you to death with their licensing schemes - but if you have a service contract with them, it is my experience that you get service promptly. So typical management risk analysis says, "Pay the vendor for support because paying your own people offers greater risk of extended outages, and outages cost time and time is money."

There is an inverse relationship here. Small business often can afford the issues involved in going "Open" but larger businesses often cannot because of the cost multiplier of having literally hundreds of people using a package to do the same job hundreds of times per day. I don't disagree with Steve's statements other than to say they represent one end of a spectrum. If you can afford to BE at that end of the spectrum, Steve is right. If you get big enough, you can't afford to do all of your own maintenance. You HAVE to be able to farm some of it out based on "risk spreading" strategies.

 

[Lightwave]

I think the tension between open source and proprietary software is good.

Software is somewhat unusual as a product as theoretically it can be immortal as you can copy it infinitely without deterioration -

The cost of something that has an infinite supply in the long term should be zero. Clearly the development of all software however starts with the requirement of funds. So the cost of software at least initially cannot be zero but I expect high priced software to be forced to reduce.

I expect proprietary software costs and open source to converge. We are already seeing that with people like MS trying to open source at least parts of their estate. I look forward just generally improved software that costs less already I have free access to autocad software and geographical information software that is excellent. Interesingly the autocad is not open source (Fusion360) but they have clearly come to the same conclusion as me. Give everyone access to the softare and gain your revenue from minimally charging millions rather than hammering thousands. I actually try and donate to some of these because they have so much value to me. At the end of the day its a simple matter of business and trading that everyone needs to benefit from a transaction for that market to continue into future. The market does look like its wobbling towards some kind of convergent end point.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Concur (mostly) with Lightwave. Supply & Demand are still valid forces, and distributing costs over a larger market can help bring prices down. HOWEVER, we cannot forget that immortal software package, like the immortal Greek gods, will lose followers as they lose relevance, and that means the "spread costs over a larger base" doesn't always work.

If the users of open source software have to do their own maintenance, hackers will absolutely rejoice. This because self-maintained software will have vulnerabilities that have not been addressed, and the hackers will seek "low-hanging fruit" to attack, like the trash-eating billy-goats they are. There has to be a balance between openness to drive down costs and vendor maintenance to keep the software relevant to the modern and rapidly changing world.

This is why the U.S. Government placed mandates on the use of software packages. We were not permitted to use ANYTHING that was true open-source software. It was not legal for us to use it or deploy it to our user populations. We had to have a vendor or a software service organization we could hammer when things went haywire. For that reason we had two acronyms relevant to this discussion: COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) and GOTS (Government Off The Shelf). Either a vendor had to supply it and maintain it, or it had to be built by the government and we would put a support staff on it to maintain it. There was no OOTS (Open Off The Shelf). To use that would literally be grounds for employment contract termination.

Which brings that discussion from a couple of posts ago back into play. While there are thousands of customers for software and some of them drive towards open code, one of the biggest individual software customers is a government with literally millions of civil servants and contractors (and military when in Dept. of Defense) using terminals. Not hundreds. Not thousands. MILLIONS.

The reason folks don't always want to move away from Windows is this basic government goal called "interoperability" - the ability for departments to EASILY exchange data with other departments that want/need the data. In my own little niche before I retired, we had not less than fifteen different offices or agencies, not all of whom were U.S. Navy, with whom we exchanged transaction-oriented data loads from monthly down to four times daily. When it was Windows to Windows, it usually worked OK. When it was UNIX to UNIX, it usually worked OK. And mainframe to mainframe usually worked OK. But even where you would THINK it was apples to apples, it wasn't always smooth because at least ten different TCP/IP stacks were involved in MY little corner of the world and even with published standards (via the RFP mechanism), data exchanges could sometimes fall flat on their faces.

It is because of situations like this, multiplied by thousands of offices, that getting people to change away from something that works to something that MIGHT work is just not going to happen soon.

In the final analysis, nfk isn't wrong when he mentions and bemoans old software - but he has tunnel vision and doesn't see the bigger picture, the forces that drive that software stagnation. His attitude might be off and his manners might be off - but he isn't totally wrong.

 

[Steve R.]

In the final analysis, nfk isn't wrong when he mentions and bemoans old software - but he has tunnel vision and doesn't see the bigger picture, the forces that drive that software stagnation. His attitude might be off and his manners might be off - but he isn't totally wrong.

The concept of "Software stagnation" requires further contemplation. Let's take a look at the ubiquitous word processing software. Early in its inception, there were lots of opportunities to improve productivity by adding features and improving ergonomics (spell checker, gammer checker, a dictionary, and a thesaurus). By today many those features have been incorporated. So how many truly new features that can improve productivity can be added today?

At a certain, undefined point, the software becomes "mature", meaning that additionally development may not be worth the effort. An unfortunate real-world reality for both open-source and proprietary software. Are MS Access, MS Word, and LibreOffice Writer at that "mature" level?

Innovation, of course, will continue, so even if certain software is "mature" there will be new opportunities to improve software and/or develop new software that obsoletes some of today's software. The typewriter would be an example of a product that became "mature" and lasted for many years, but was then obsoleted by a radical new technology. The computer.

 

[scott-atkinson]

The concept of "Software stagnation" requires further contemplation. Let's take a look at the ubiquitous word processing software. Early in its inception, there were lots of opportunities to improve productivity by adding features and improving ergonomics (spell checker, gammer checker, a dictionary, and a thesaurus). By today many those features have been incorporated. So how many truly new features that can improve productivity can be added today?

At a certain, undefined point, the software becomes "mature", meaning that additionally development may not be worth the effort. An unfortunate real-world reality for both open-source and proprietary software. Are MS Access, MS Word, and LibreOffice Writer at that "mature" level?

Innovation, of course, will continue, so even if certain software is "mature" there will be new opportunities to improve software and/or develop new software that obsoletes some of today's software. The typewriter would be an example of a product that became "mature" and lasted for many years, but was then obsoleted by a radical new technology. The computer.

Some companies do go backwards too with their innovation, take the 64bit version of Excel for example...

I do a lot of VBA coding in my companies 32bit excel and now we are migrating to the 64bit version and I have discovered that not all of my VBA code will work in the new version and in fact some of the more intricate work that I have done now needs to be undone and made inferior due to MS not incorporating all the VBA 32bit code into the 64bit offering... gggrrr

 

[Steve R.]

Some companies do go backwards too with their innovation, take the 64bit version of Excel for example...

I do a lot of VBA coding in my companies 32bit excel and now we are migrating to the 64bit version and I have discovered that not all of my VBA code will work in the new version and in fact some of the more intricate work that I have done now needs to be undone and made inferior due to MS not incorporating all the VBA 32bit code into the 64bit offering... gggrrr

My sympathies.

 

[Dick7Access]

My sympathies.

I have Love / Hate affair with

Access, Excel, AOL, Goggle, Quicken, computers, printers and did I mention Quicken.

 

[isladogs]

Some companies do go backwards too with their innovation, take the 64bit version of Excel for example...

I do a lot of VBA coding in my companies 32bit excel and now we are migrating to the 64bit version and I have discovered that not all of my VBA code will work in the new version and in fact some of the more intricate work that I have done now needs to be undone and made inferior due to MS not incorporating all the VBA 32bit code into the 64bit offering... gggrrr

Some ActiveX controls won't work in 64 bit. Another reason to avoid them as far as possible?

Are you aware of the use of conditional compiling for API declarations?

 

[Steve R.]

I have Love / Hate affair with

Access, Excel, AOL, Goggle, Quicken, computers, printers and did I mention Quicken.

The list is endless.

One of my "bad" products that I unfortunately have to use is Turbotax (making a deal with the devil). Their advertising and marketing is very deceptive to the point of it being nearly fraudulent. Nevertheless, I have to acknowledge that in terms of performance it is an excellent product.

My cable provider, coincidentally, has a marketing department that I would also label as essentially fraudulent but the technical staff and technical support is superb. Go figure.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

...
(making a deal with the devil)
...
My cable provider, coincidentally, has a marketing department that I would also label as essentially fraudulent but the technical staff and technical support is superb. Go figure.

By definition, since religion declares Satan to be the Father of Lies, a marketing department IS the devil - or at least the support staff thereof.

The first "real" company I ever worked for was a GREAT place to work, and I was even fairly respected. But I no longer work there because of marketing.

I'll skip the long story. Our VP of Sales and Marketing made some projections of his sales probabilities and those projects said we would need to grow the company. Whether the guy was flat-out evil or just stupid enough to buy his own lies, I don't know. But I do know that the reason I no longer work for that company is that the projections were on flimsy tissue paper that wasn't even worth using to wipe my butt. The president of the company had tooled up in anticipation of work that never arrived and suddenly we were about to miss a bank payment.

Bankruptcy was imminent in August of '84 until we had a white-knight take-over in July. Except that this knight was definitely a bit less than pure. After two years, the company got split up into divisions and mine would have relocated to Baltimore to merge with and consolidate with another division.

However, that was also the time when my mother was in the final stages of Alzheimer's and had gone into fetal position. She was dying slowly and not stable enough to be moved over a long distance. I took a hardship exception to the relocation and stayed behind to finish my last solo project. I was the guy who turned out the lights and closed the doors. No party for me, just a last walk to the parking lot and heading home to an empty house and a severance package. But I digress.

Marketing departments have to be born with a congenital defect - a deep and abiding disregard for the absolute truth. They are the ultimate spin doctors, trying to find ways to persuade you that you cannot live without product X or service Y. In any company, if they don't sent an engineer to keep the marketeer in check, you will end up buying the Holy Grail containing water from the Fountain of Youth and the tray on which that is served will have an engraved map leading you to the terrestrial site of the Garden of Eden. It will be served by smiling Cherubim. I could go on, but you get the point.

Oh, excuse me... did my disdain for marketing types come through a bit strong? Sorry, didn't mean to impugn anyone there.