Rewrite Access 2007 Application to VB Pitfalls

[neelsfer]

I am seriously considering doing a crash course in VB, to learn to rewrite my one application from Access 2007 to Visual Basic. This Access 2007 application of mine may have to be rolled out to a few 100 sites all over, and i am starting to think it may be easier to rewrite it perhaps in VB, than to have it in Access for installation and maintenance purposes. It is split currently, with a accdb backend file.
Any suggestions? Is VB very much different from VBA?

[dsatino]

Admittedly, I've never written an app in VB, but it sounds like you'd be undertaking a fairly major project. Basically, you'd be writing an entire application from scratch.

I think you'd be better of just packaging your front-end. The only real drawbacks are that access doesn't adjust itself to various screen resolutions and you'd better have all of your errors trapped.

[Seth Schrock]

Speaking from experience, coding in VB.NET is quite different from Access VBA. One of the main differences that I have found is that working with recordsets requires a bunch more code that doesn't seem to relate to anything in VBA.

I can however say that I think that I have worked out a very nice system for installing and updating Access DBs for all my users using VBScript. The installation script copies the FE from the server to the local PC, creates a shortcut on the user's desktop (with the icon of your choice), does all the registry changes that I need (trusted locations and ODBC Data Sources for the databases that I have linked to SQL Server) and then sends me an email when the installation is complete. The update script just copies the FE again from the server to the local PC to replace the existing file and again emails me when it is complete. The nice part of the update process is that even unprivileged users can perform the copy as long as they have Write permissions to the folder. If you are interested and I can post what I have.

[neelsfer]

Thx Seth for response. My one problem with Access is that many people think it a "mickey Mouse" application, but is usually quite surprised to see what i am capable of achieving, with it.

My idea is to create an executable file to ease installation of my application, but also with Microsoft Office professional being very expensive due to the weakening of our local currency to the $, i may have to look at another option to install my applications.
I am just scared i am going to bite off to much starting all over again with my application in VB, although i now know what the end product should look like.

[ADezii]

In my opinion, you would need much more than a simple 'Crash Course' to convert your Access 2007 Application to Visual Basic. I would imagine that the conversion would be more difficult if you convert it to VB.net which is far removed from VBA and completely Object Oriented. It's not simply the fact of learning a new Programming Language, but also applying this language for use in a Database Context.

[NeoPa]

I believe the effort involved learning both the language and the object structure would far outweigh the effort you've already put in. Expressed another way, I believe it would take you more time and effort converting your system than it did creating it in the first place. By a margin.

I'd advise extreme caution before taking that route.

If it's something you're interested in, explore it first outside the context of this project. You may like it. Just don't jump into the river and find that the undercurrents are far stronger than you anticipated. That way leads to bad things happening.

[neelsfer]

Thx for the advice. I get the idea that it may be more than what i can handle right now. I have a friend that is a VB and sql expert, that offered to assist me here and there. As they say, how do you eat an elephant? Many little bites! I think i am going to start exploring it bit by bit and see how it goes. For now it will be still my trusty old friend ,"Access".

[NeoPa]

Sounds like a wise approach Neels. Good luck :-)