MS Office Pro 2007

[razorking]

Just in case anyone out there is interested,

You can download a beta version of MS Office Pro 2007, you will just have to do a Google search as I do not have the URL handy right now. Apparently it is a full version that goes to limited funcioality sometime in February.

I had a new PC that I did not have a copy of Office for so I downloaded and installed it. So far I am reaaly liking the Outlook and Access 2007 programs (the two I use the most).

There are a few changes in Acces that leave you pulling your hair out until you figure out how to do the things you are used to doing in the new interface...but I think is a very nice upgrade.

 

[SSD]

Thanks for the heads up.

 

[Ron_dK]

Just in case anyone out there is interested,

You can download a beta version of MS Office Pro 2007, you will just have to do a Google search as I do not have the URL handy right now.

Might that be this :

http://tweakers.net/meuktracker/12695/Microsoft-Office-2007-beta-2.html

 

[razorking]

Here is the Link

http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/getthebeta.mspx

 

[Banana]

Been using it for a while.

How did others like it?

The ribbon interface is cool, but they sure made it complicated to open/save and change windows as it's not in ribbon. Still trying to find that one.

Was I expecting too much for MS to upgrade the VBA to .NET? Having used VB .NET, I really miss several features that VB .NET offers that VBA doesn't have, and considering that it's been out since 2003 (last upgrade at 2005), I don't see why MS didn't push this more aggressive?

I really like the fact that they make it easier to connect to other data sources, which will be a boon.

Would like to hear what others has to say....

 

[Oldsoftboss]

OK downloaded office 2007 - 440mb
Each office app has the ribbon, which I seemed to rarely use, and takes up a fair bit of the top of the screen. Now none of my apps fit.
Is there a way of removing / hiding / changing the ribbon back to drop down menus that aren't so intrusive ?

Dave

 

[Oldsoftboss]

OK... after looking for help in the menu... good luck - there is a tiny icon on the RHS and searching for Ribbon:

You can hide the Ribbon by double-clicking the active tab.
Keyboard shortcut - To hide the Ribbon, press CTRL+F1.

 

[Karma]

2p

This blog has been going on and off since Oct 2005 regarding Access 2007.

http://blogs.msdn.com/access/archive/2006/06/05/618366.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage

It would appear that other sites -specifically Utter Access - have been involved in this for some time. It seems a shame that the consultation doesn't appear to have been extended here as well.

Having kept up with this so far it seems like a number of features e.g ADPs are no longer being enhanced, specifically you will be unable to use adp to modify objects in sql server 2005 as you can with Access 2003 adp and ss2000. It also looks like dao is making a comeback- my interpretation - not that it really went away but it will be the default language in 2007.

Other than that it seems like a lot of cosmetic enhancements.

Personnally i'm glad the .net hasn't come to Access. Access is about RAD - that doesn't mean poor - and that isn't something i've ever associated with .net Microsoft have a superb product in Access it goes a long way in supporting the £100,000,000 business that i work for and hopefully will be around for sometime to come.

 

[Banana]

Having kept up with this so far it seems like a number of features e.g ADPs are no longer being enhanced, specifically you will be unable to use adp to modify objects in sql server 2005 as you can with Access 2003 adp and ss2000. It also looks like dao is making a comeback- my interpretation - not that it really went away but it will be the default language in 2007.

I was kind of confused about that myself. I have two reference books which I presume were written prior to the Office 2007 announcements, and both were toting ADP and ADO as the future without any real concrete explanation. I've tried to find an article at MSDN that actually says MSN is discontinuing ADP as suggested somewhere else on this forum, but no luck. I did find some articles explaining that DAO isn't dead and would be preferable when you have JET, that ADO makes more sense for a Access database that uses other engine as backend (e.g. SQL).

So, yeah, color me confused about the whole affair.

Personnally i'm glad the .net hasn't come to Access. Access is about RAD - that doesn't mean poor - and that isn't something i've ever associated with .net

That doesn't make sense; .NET is a framework. The benefit of .NET is that you still can program using VB or C# or J# or whatever; the resulting bytecode will be same, which allows for much more portability among programmers. There's probably more to .NET, but the point here is that .NET isn't a development environment; VB .NET is. I still think that VB .NET is capable of RAD and would venture to say that there are features I can see being very useful for Access extensions. Why MSN hasn't moved on, is beyond me.

 

[Karma]

I was kind of confused about that myself. I have two reference books which I presume were written prior to the Office 2007 announcements, and both were toting ADP and ADO as the future without any real concrete explanation. I've tried to find an article at MSDN that actually says MSN is discontinuing ADP as suggested somewhere else on this forum, but no luck. I did find some articles explaining that DAO isn't dead and would be preferable when you have JET, that ADO makes more sense for a Access database that uses other engine as backend (e.g. SQL).

So, yeah, color me confused about the whole affair.

Yes ado is the prefered method for client server apps using Access as a front end. ADP's are not been discontinued per se they are just don't appear to be doing anymore development work on them.

That doesn't make sense; .NET is a framework. The benefit of .NET is that you still can program using VB or C# or J# or whatever; the resulting bytecode will be same, which allows for much more portability among programmers. There's probably more to .NET, but the point here is that .NET isn't a development environment; VB .NET is. I still think that VB .NET is capable of RAD and would venture to say that there are features I can see being very useful for Access extensions. Why MSN hasn't moved on, is beyond me.

I was using .net as an encompassing reference to the language environments based on the platform. My experience of .net in what ever flavour you use c# or vb etc is that it is not a RAD tool in the familar sense of the word. Most software houses stick to one or other languages anyway i've yet to see an advert for a job that asks for vb.net or C#.net it's one or the other. And the fact that you can use multiple languages still doesn't make it RAD.

It takes some time to build your classes, it requires strong object orientated design work to accomplish a robust application. You have the issue that you are often moving data from a OO environment into and out of a DB that is built on a structured relational model. There are tools that will create your object model based on your database and provide the CRUD classes to interact with it and all of that says to me that it isn't RAD. Once all of that is up and running you may get some benefits if it is an enterprise level application where you want to use say a desktop application and a web application and remote connections via a PDA for example but again that takes a considerable amount of effort. It may be simpler than using C++ and COM to accomplish the same task but it's still not RAD.
Look how easy it is in Access to bind a form to a query giving you instant access to record updating, deleting, adding etc no code required, it would take many many times that amount of time to do the same thing in which ever .net language you choose to use. The reason microsoft haven't moved Access to the .net framework in the way you mean is for precisely the reasons i've outlined. .net isn't RAD it requires a deeper understanding of programming concepts in general, you need to understand much more about application development, life cycle and deployment and OO design concepts than are required for building a robust app in Access if at all. Again that's not to say that Access requires no knowledge, quite the opposite, but when you understand relational database theory it's far easier to get a working app up and running in Access. Just my opinion of course

 

[Banana]

While I can see your point about not requiring intense knowledge of programming concepts in order to build a robust database, I am not as convinced that .NET would make it much difficult or slower. On the contrary, I would think that instead of shipping VBA built in Access, shipping Access with option to bind to whatever IDE you need, you are giving much more flexibility to programmers. If they want to use VBA, they can. However, I do miss several features of VB .NET that I'd think would be very useful in aiding rapid development. Few examples would be Option Strict On, Try/Catch blocks, less punctuation for referring to objects/forms, creating class that you can simply drop in your database instead of customizing every snippet to your database's nuances. Are you going to tell me that those features would slow down and thus defeat the whole point of RAD?

I do agree that having Access doing all the work is much much faster than going ground up from VB .NET, but that doesn't make it okay to use what IMO, is obsolete language that leaves me wonder if I used the right punctuation when I should be continuing on the development and doesn't make it easy to reuse various codes.

Are you saying that Access's model isn't inherently OO and thus at odds with VB .NET's assumptions? VBA is OO (well, not properly implemented, but it has some OO features), correct?