Converting Access 97 - Acess2003/VB 6.0

[balu]

Hi,

My firm is having a lot of applications running in access 97.I need to
migrate all my access 97 (forms/reports/macro) application to VB 6.0. or
atmost access 2003.

I knew that migrating access 97(forms/reports/macro) to access 2003 is a
liitle bit difficult whereas migrating to access 2003 is very easily.

Is that "Microsoft" is providing any features/tools where we can migrate all
access 97(forms/reports/macro) application to VB 6.0.
or is it possible to update access 97 to access 2003 and then to VB6.0

I will be more grateful for the replies.

Thanks
Bala

 

[Tony Toews]

My firm is having a lot of applications running in access 97.I need to
migrate all my access 97 (forms/reports/macro) application to VB 6.0. or
atmost access 2003.

I don't quite understand what you mean by almost Access 2003?

Why do you want convert your apps to VB6.0?

I knew that migrating access 97(forms/reports/macro) to access 2003 is a
liitle bit difficult whereas migrating to access 2003 is very easily.

Do you mean to state that migrating A97 to VB6 is a little bit
difficult? If so it's not difficult so much as it's a *LOT* of
work.

Migrating to A2003 is quite easy.

Is that "Microsoft" is providing any features/tools where we can migrate all
access 97(forms/reports/macro) application to VB 6.0.
or is it possible to update access 97 to access 2003 and then to VB6.0

Convert Access to Visual Basic, Delphi, Java, ASP or ASP.NET
http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/accesstovb.htm

Also your productivity as a developer will drastically decline.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm

 

[Pat Hartman\(MVP\)]

Converting from A97 to A2003 isn't difficult at all. You may run into
problems if you have sloppy VBA code but otherwise there shouldn't be any
problems. If you have trouble with code, fix the errors in A97. It would
also be a good idea to disambiguate all DAO objects to prevent future
problems. Unless you have some particular reason for doing so, converting
to VB 6.0 would not be worth the effort. You might find some tool on the
web that helps with this type of conversion but I'm guessing that there will
still be lots of manual work required.

 

[Tim Greiser]

Why do you want convert your apps to VB6.0?

Also your productivity as a developer will drastically decline.

We are in a similar situation. We don't really want to leave the
Access environment, but are finding too many problems once the app
grows too large. We need to be able to:

* Use source control
* Have multiple developers working on the app
* Use text search to locate references across the project

In my experience Access gives a great productivity boost at the start
of a project but the curve quickly flattens. I find the above features
are really essential to any large-scale project.

Is there any way to export the forms and reports as text files (.frm or
something similar)? That would meet our requirements, and then we
could use a build routine to reassemble the parts.

thanks,
Tim.

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

We are in a similar situation. We don't really want to leave the
Access environment, but are finding too many problems once the app
grows too large. We need to be able to:

* Use source control
* Have multiple developers working on the app
* Use text search to locate references across the project

In my experience Access gives a great productivity boost at the start
of a project but the curve quickly flattens. I find the above features
are really essential to any large-scale project.

Is there any way to export the forms and reports as text files (.frm or
something similar)? That would meet our requirements, and then we
could use a build routine to reassemble the parts.

You can export Access forms to text files using the undocumented SaveAsText
method, but you can't import that into VB. Bottom line is that there are too
many differences between the controls available for forms in VB and forms in
Access.

If you want to learn more about the SaveAsText method, see my Febuary, 2005
"Access Answers" column in Pinnacle Publication's "Smart Access". You can
download the column (and sample database) for free at
http://www.accessmvp.com/DJSteele/SmartAccess.html

 

[Pat Hartman\(MVP\)]

Access does support SourceSafe so that should solve your source control
problem. You can have multiple developers working on the app but careful
attention must be paid to function isolation so that they don't interfere
with each other. Just using SourceSafe will probably not be sufficient.