Access 2007 And Web Services, Part 2

Microsoft Office Access Program Manager Ric Lewis takes his Web Services with Microsoft Office Access 2007 example a bit further with a managed Add-in to work with Amazon.com's Web Service to gather book information into the Access 2007 database application. Ensure that you download the code project, since the example code on the Web page is only a partial listing.

Access 2007 And Web Services, Part 1

If you're interested in how to use Web Services with Access, Microsoft Office Access Program Manager Ric Lewis put together a sample book database application that connects to Amazon.com's Web services to collect book information from the ISBN number. His sample requires the .Net 3.0 runtime, so if you don't have Vista installed, you'll need to download it for Windows XP SP-2 or Windows 2003 server. It won't work on earlier versions of Windows.

Why That Access Database Is So Slow

Ever wonder why an Access database on your own computer runs so fast, but when it's put on the network and other users access it, it becomes as slow as molasses in wintertime? Here's an explanation of why an Access database is so slow in "really simple terms."

For plenty of easy solutions to this common database performance problem, please read Microsoft Access MVP Tom Wickerath's article, "Implementing a Successful Multiuser Access/JET Application."

Upsizing To SQL Server, Part 2

If you're using the SQL Server Migration Assistant for Access (SSMA Access) to migrate your Microsoft Access database back end to SQL Server 2005 as I mentioned in my previous post, then you should read Andy Baron's white paper, "Optimizing Microsoft Office Access Applications Lnked to SQL Server." He offers excellent techniques for improving performance when using linked SQL Server tables.

Upsizing To SQL Server

The Upsizing Wizard has been available with numerous versions of Microsoft Access to migrate data in a Microsoft Access (Jet) back end to the tables in a SQL Server database. It did a good job for the most part, but if your table structures had any discrepancies, some of the columns wouldn't migrate to SQL Server. Even SELECT queries might not be converted to views in SQL Server. Migrating data to SQL Server and linking to the tables was not a seemless operation, because invariably some glitches would keep the newly migrated data in the linked tables from being accessed by the original queries.

For SQL Server 2005, Microsoft created a better data migration tool, the SQL Server Migration Assistant for Access (SSMA Access). It will migrate the data from Microsoft Access 97 through Access 2003 (and likely 2007, too, but I haven't tried it yet) to SQL Server 2005, including the SQL Server 2005 Express Edition. This tool converts the original database objects into SQL Server database objects, loads these objects in SQL Server, and then migrates the data from the original tables into the new SQL Server tables. This is done in a single step.

Microsoft Access developers should have a little easier time migrating data with this tool when compared to the additional "fix-it" work required with the Upsizing Wizard, since a number of the issues with the Upsizing Wizard are fixed in the SSMA Access tool. In addition, network scanning, conversion assessment reports, and other features are now available in the SSMA Access tool.