Microsoft Access 2007

I am not sure what MS hoped to accomplish with this version of Access, other than to make it easier for most Access users, who seem to use Access as a glorified Excel spreadsheet. Having developed in Access for many years, this major revision is a little off-putting. It looks just like FileMaker, which I personally dislike.

That being said, it has all the basic functionality of the older versions, except with a very forced FileMaker interface that is hard to overcome. You can down-convert to mdb files, so that is a good feature. Otherwise, the most significant update is the menu ribbons, which are a pain to relearn, and the XML formatting, which remains to be seen if it will be useful in the Office environment. Since they are pushing SharePoint quite succesfully, I think this will pay off for MS in the long run, but otherwise, just be prepared to shell out some retraining dollars.

This product is overpriced for its use. It is rarely used in the school world. This product to most is hard to use and requires better HELP programs in the software.

This is an excellent program with a steep learning curve. You have to follow its rules exactly. Familiarity with the new ribbon interface is a must.

I found the book "Access, The Missing Manual" to be a big help.

I started using Access 2 in 1992. Before that I used DBASE, RBASE and Paradox. I didn't like Access and thought that RBASE was the best of the 4. However, as things go, Microsoft won and the others are dead, either entirely or mostly. So, I decided to stick with Access and have for the past 15 years.

Access is a good tool for many things and 2007 is a definate upgrade to 2002. However, getting used to it is a little bit of a challenge.

I've used access as a stand alone product or as a front-end to a DBMS like SQL Server so I could get a significant performance boost out of it.

I use it to manipulate data for data quality issues and for data exploration and dup checking. And, it works great.

I've also created some pretty complex and cost effective application with it over the years with lots of positive results.

I am extremely disappointed with MS Access. About 18 years ago I used Borland's data base program called Reflex. It was heads and shoulders
above the Microsoft product. I had thought that things were supposed
to get better not worse.