Stand alone Application

[Neil]

I used to use Dbase to build applications and deploy stand alone compiled
(.exe) to users. If I purchase 2007 Ver. of Access can I do the same thing.
Does Access have anything like the "Dot prompt" that made dbase very easy to
learn.
Thanks for any help

 

[John W. Vinson]

I used to use Dbase to build applications and deploy stand alone compiled
(.exe) to users. If I purchase 2007 Ver. of Access can I do the same thing.
Does Access have anything like the "Dot prompt" that made dbase very easy to
learn.
Thanks for any help

dBase and Access are both database development applications... but *they are
very different*. If you approach Access as if it were a flawed implementation
of dBase you'll have no end of trouble! You'll need to "unlearn" some of the
way "things are always done"; Access is IMO a more capable and powerful
program than dBase, and much easier to use, if you approach it on its own
terms.

To answer - you cannot compile an Access database into an .exe, but you can
use the free Runtime version to create a database which can be distributed
with a royalty-free version of Microsoft Access to run it.

For some orientation, see:

Jeff Conrad's resources page:
http://www.accessmvp.com/JConrad/accessjunkie/resources.html

The Access Web resources page:
http://www.mvps.org/access/resources/index.html

A free tutorial written by Crystal (MS Access MVP):
http://allenbrowne.com/casu-22.html

MVP Allen Browne's tutorials:
http://allenbrowne.com/links.html#Tutorials

 

[Albert D. Kallal]

"(e-mail address removed)"

I used to use Dbase to build applications and deploy stand alone compiled
(.exe) to users. If I purchase 2007 Ver. of Access can I do the same
thing.
Does Access have anything like the "Dot prompt" that made dbase very easy
to
learn.
Thanks for any help

Having written a lot of code in FoxPro (which was really an offshoot of
the dBase language), I can certainly attest that the dot prompt was a handy
thing to have. However, I can't say it made things easy to learn because you
had to memorize commands. And if you don't know those commands you're dead
in the water! The same thing happened to the old DOS prompt when windows
came along We all gave up using the DOS prompt to display a directory of
files. The mouse and a graphical interface is far far superior to a text
based prompt.

I could tell you how to get to the MS access window prompt (and that prompt
is about the equivalent of the dot prompt like the old dBase days). However
once you get to that prompt, you not going to be able to do a bloody thing
because you don't know access system yet.

Note that there is a prompt system in access, and often a lot of us
developers use this (it is called the debug window). So, while in MS access
if you hit control G then you see the debug + Immediate window. In the
immediate window you can type in any access programming command and it will
execute immediately. So, the immediate window in access is really the
equivalent of what the .dot prompt was in dbase (and interesting we
use this prompt when you debugging code. That really is much of what you
speak of when you're in the dBase days: you'd enter a few commands and
see the results immediately - you would slice and dice untill you get
the command the way you want..and then Take that code and would become
part of your application.

However the computer industry and development tools have changed so
remarkably much over the years, that few use the immediate window, however
during code testing and debugging, I can assure you that I do type in
a good number of commands into that a immediate window, and even to test
functions and expressions and code, again that immediate window is very
handy. however few new to MS access, I think it's gonna be a little while
before you start to use that immediate window.

Allen Browne has few tips on people who are coming from an old Foxpro or
dBase environment and are new to MS access. He points out a few of the
differences as to how to access works as compared to the old dBase products.

You can find that here:

http://allenbrowne.com/tips.html#xbase


Also as mentioned in the other post, there's not the ability to convert MS
access into a single .exe file, but there is the ability to package it into
a windows installer, and have your package installed on the target machine.