Has anyone ever written any applications in Access?

I've been given a task of throwing together a temporary app in Access with a small db behind it. I've done a little Access before (about 5 years ago at uni).

Now I'm really struggling to get it doing anything.

Yes I have written several but not for a few years.

what's up?

TBH pretty much everything.

I've got all the table and relationships set up. I've also populated the data and I have got a few working forms that can display data across several tables etc...

The required program is more complex though...

i.e. user "logs in" and then creates a new "transaction". They are then asked to select which customer it is for etc...

They then scan in a barcode (this is easy as the barcode scanner just populates the selected field with text). The system will then find the kit that relates to the barcode and add it to the transaction.

My VBA is non-existent and I think it is needed for this to work (in Access).

I am tempted to try it in Visual Studio with visual c++ and an SQL DB. I already know c++ and SQL and I've written a few apps that do a similar thing (i.e. c++ talking to sql back end). However, I think more licences will be required if we want to use this whereas we already have Access stuff set up.

Oh, and this has to be done by Jan 3rd and look polished. LOL!

Access DB?

C# using .Net and Linq to talk to an Access DB using an ORM, either Entity Framework or Linq2Sql would be the easiest way IMO, saves using VBA

Needs moar TLAs.

+1

That's what I always did. Design the table layout in Access and access the database through Visual Basic (4 through 6) or c# and .Net. It is a lot easier!

If memory serves correct you connect as a generic OLEDB and then you can drag over tables to get the database mapping for classes

Falling over would be harder than this

Well, I have increased my VB knowledge infinitely and managed to get a working WPF program that can search the DB from inputs.

(i.e. more than what I managed in Access).

Not sure how I can help, or if its even needed

OK, so latest news.

I gave up with VB and tried using C#.

That has gone even less well.



Nevermind, going to give up on the whole project I think.

There's a lot of ways to do this, and I'm not an expert in any of them. Personally I'd be tempted to use php/mySQL to create a web interface - that gets around any licence problems, and it's easy to administer. People could access it via their phones too, which may be useful.

I'm back on it with vb .net with an access db.

I think it has to be offline because the computers using it may not have an Internet connection which is why I can't use web services. That would be my normal choice though.

I finally managed to get vb to do what I want and got my brain plugged into it. Should be able to complete the app in time using that now.

Thanks all

Good luck

I was imagining a web interface that would be strictly Intranet btw, but if you've got VB talking to the database then I'm sure you're half way there already.

I'm not sure how easy it is to handle simultaneous updates with Access, so my biggest worry would be perfect performance in testing but random errors in practice with records being locked. Perhaps someone else can enlighten us - Access has been around a long time now so I guess it's probably not a problem if you know what you're doing.

Not sure how you are having issues with C#, do you need some sort of Data access layer, have issues connecting to the db or the config to the db is messed up?

I was able to access the data easily enough. The problem was just lack of any experience in writing Windows applications.

I was starting from absolute scratch trying to write a Windows DB application and the only help was what I could find on the internet

Now that I've managed to pick up the basic structure of the VB stuff it should be no problem to get that to do what I want though

My problem was just being able to pick up the basic syntax and get my head into a whole new language.