Will the 2007 version of Office be .net

[chris]

Would anyone know if MS plans to incorporate .NET into the new Office 2007?
Of will we have to continue with VBA?

The reason I am asking is that we have an MS access application that we
plan to convert to .NET. If access 2007 will be ".NETified" we might as well
wait and have a conversion wizard do forms and reports conversion for us.

Thaks In advance,
Chris

 

[TC]

I'd keep your VBA for the moment.

You might also be interested to know that the Access folks have
undertaken not to break DAO. And they now have their own copy of Jet
(which previously was owned by the SQL*Server team). And Access
currently has the largest development team that it has ever had.

HTH,
TC (MVP Access)
http://tc2.atspace.com

 

[chris]

I'd keep your VBA for the moment.

Can you give some more details as to what MS plans to do with Access as far
as
programming? I searched the Office 07 web site but could not find anything
as far as what they are planning to do with VBA.

Also, when you say "I'd keep your VBA for the moment", it sounds to me that
you know more about this that what you say. Can you share?

Thanks ,
Chris

 

[TC]

Hi Chris

I do know a reasonable amount about Access 12, because I'm on the
technical beta program for Office 12. So I've had a copy of it for
quite some time. But this is the first technical beta that I've been
on, and I know that there are strict embargos on what we can say. I do
not want to blot my copybook in that regard!

However, I'm sure that it is safe to say, that VBA is still supported
in Access 12. I know that one of my own products, comprising 75,000
lines of VBA & DAO code, still works - sorta! There are a few problems,
but none that are due to VBA not being there, or DAO not being there.

So, if you have a VBA solution at present, it wouldn't make sense to
discard it just yet.

As for .NET, and its planned integration (or non integration) with
Access, I truly do know nothing about that. I just wanted to say that
VBA ain't going away, any time soon, as far as I can see.

Maybe this would also help:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;en-us;lifecycle&ln=en-us&x=11&y=5

HTH,
TC (MVP Access)
http://tc2.atspace.com

 

[Jonathan West]

Would anyone know if MS plans to incorporate .NET into the new Office
2007?
Of will we have to continue with VBA?

The reason I am asking is that we have an MS access application that we
plan to convert to .NET. If access 2007 will be ".NETified" we might as
well
wait and have a conversion wizard do forms and reports conversion for us.

Thaks In advance,
Chris

Microsoft has publicly committed to VBA being in the next two versions of
Office (i.e. Office 2007 and the one after).

 

[TC]

My personal view is, that they will simply have to keep it going, for
as long as there is a 32-bit windows environment - be it native (as at
present), or emulated (on future hardware). There's so much VBA code in
production, that they simply could not stop supporting it, IMHO. The
screams would go from here to Alaska!

TC (MVP Access)
http://tc2.atspace.com

 

[Jonathan West]

My personal view is, that they will simply have to keep it going, for
as long as there is a 32-bit windows environment - be it native (as at
present), or emulated (on future hardware). There's so much VBA code in
production, that they simply could not stop supporting it, IMHO. The
screams would go from here to Alaska!

Microsoft has a tricky problem with the idea of introducing .NET to Office.
Take a look here for more on the subject.

Office and .NET: Better Together?
http://www.ftponline.com/vsm/2002_08/magazine/departments/guestop/default.aspx


--
Regards
Jonathan West - Word MVP
www.intelligentdocuments.co.uk
Please reply to the newsgroup
Keep your VBA code safe, sign the ClassicVB petition www.classicvb.org

 

[TC]

Microsoft has a tricky problem with the idea of introducing .NET to Office.
Take a look here for more on the subject.
Office and .NET: Better Together?
http://www.ftponline.com/vsm/2002_08/magazine/departments/guestop/default.aspx

All very well, but, MS have already committed to supporting VBA 6 until
2014:

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=2974

And since the effective practical use of a product, well exceeds the
Microsoft support cutoff date, I would expect, that other folks would
expect, that their VBA 6 code would continue working for at least 10-15
years from now! Or, IMHO, for as long as there is a win32 environment
on common PCs.

TC (MVP Access)
http://tc2.atspace.com

 

[Jonathan West]

All very well, but, MS have already committed to supporting VBA 6 until
2014:

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=2974

And since the effective practical use of a product, well exceeds the
Microsoft support cutoff date, I would expect, that other folks would
expect, that their VBA 6 code would continue working for at least 10-15
years from now! Or, IMHO, for as long as there is a win32 environment
on common PCs.

Beware, you are getting mixed up between VBA6 the product, which is a
language product licensed to other software vendors to enable them to
provide scripting support for their products, and VBA the feature in Office.
The fact that Microsoft supports the language product for licensed use in
other companies' products has nothing to do with whether they decide to
include it in future versions of Office.

Microsoft is under no obligation to ensure that VBA remains in Office for as
long as it supports the separate product, and nothing in that link is any
kind of commitment to the feature in Office. If you want to help encourage
Microsoft to keep VBA in Office for a long time, follow the link at the end
of my signature.


--
Regards
Jonathan West - Word MVP
www.intelligentdocuments.co.uk
Please reply to the newsgroup
Keep your VBA code safe, sign the ClassicVB petition www.classicvb.org

 

[TC]

Beware, you are getting mixed up between VBA6 the product, which is a
language product licensed to other software vendors to enable them to
provide scripting support for their products, and VBA the feature in Office.
The fact that Microsoft supports the language product for licensed use in
other companies' products has nothing to do with whether they decide to
include it in future versions of Office.

Oops. You are entirely right. That's exactly what I assumed.

Microsoft is under no obligation to ensure that VBA remains in Office for as
long as it supports the separate product, and nothing in that link is any
kind of commitment to the feature in Office.

I completely misunderstood this. Thanks for pointing it out, I need to
review my knowledge of this.

If you want to help encourage Microsoft to keep VBA in Office for a
long time, follow the link at the end of my signature.

I signed the petition quite some time ago. I also posted it to CDMA -
for all the good that that achieved! (I just got nonsense in response:
"Eek gads, if it were left to you luddites then Access would be a DOS
program and implement a subset of GW-BASIC".)

Cheers,
TC (MVP Access)
http://tc2.atspace.com

 

[TC]

FWIW, I just came upon these, while searching for something quite
different.

http://blogs.msdn.com/patricksmith/archive/2006/03/24/560425.aspx :
"Microsoft is committing to ship and support VBA in office for the next
2 versions. That is the 2007 Office System and then the next version
beyond that. In addition, the support policy is that when we release
software, it's supported for 10 years after release. What does this
mean to you? VBA is not dead and we are committed to ensuring that the
existing investment you have in VBA is realized and supported."

http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2005/09/23/473185.aspx :
"We realize that our customers have an enormous investment in VBA
solutions. VBA will continue to be supported in Office 12 and beyond,
and is a critical part of our Developer offerings."

So it's gotta be *at least* 10 years from now. Probably 15+, IMHO.

TC (MVP Access)
http://tc2.atspace.com

 

[Jonathan West]

FWIW, I just came upon these, while searching for something quite
different.

http://blogs.msdn.com/patricksmith/archive/2006/03/24/560425.aspx :
"Microsoft is committing to ship and support VBA in office for the next
2 versions. That is the 2007 Office System and then the next version
beyond that. In addition, the support policy is that when we release
software, it's supported for 10 years after release. What does this
mean to you? VBA is not dead and we are committed to ensuring that the
existing investment you have in VBA is realized and supported."

http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2005/09/23/473185.aspx :
"We realize that our customers have an enormous investment in VBA
solutions. VBA will continue to be supported in Office 12 and beyond,
and is a critical part of our Developer offerings."

I was aware of those - I mentioned upthread that Microsoft had publicly
committed to VBA being in the next 2 versions.

So it's gotta be *at least* 10 years from now. Probably 15+, IMHO.

Well, it depends on how you count it. What they have in fact promised is
that VBA will be in the next two versions of Office, and that those versions
will have the normal support periods.

Now, that is 10-15 years of support provided that you are prepared to limit
your code to nothing later than Office 13 (or 14 if they decide to be
superstitious and skip a number) which will probably come out in 2009 or so.

Assuming they carry on with an average of a 2-year interval between
releases, that means you might have trouble porting your VBA code to the new
Office version in 2011 or thereabouts. That's 5 years from now.

Of course, Microsoft might by then either have decided that VBA really ought
to remain indefinitely, or they might have decided that .NET is not all it's
cracked up to be, or they might have learned how to do a better code
converter. In any of those cases, we are probably OK. However if they decide
to break VBA without a decent upgrade path, then we could see some
fireworks.

However, prognosticating that far into the future is probably pointless.
Microsoft plays musical chairs with its VP and director positions, so it's
quite possible that the person who will make that decision isn't even in the
Office group at the moment.

All I can suggest to users is that you keep up the pressure on Microsoft as
far as possible and sign the petition (see my sig) and help get a culture
established into Microsoft of the importance of preserving customers' code
assets.


--
Regards
Jonathan West - Word MVP
www.intelligentdocuments.co.uk
Please reply to the newsgroup
Keep your VBA code safe, sign the ClassicVB petition www.classicvb.org

 

[TC]

Great points, thanks again.

Hope this does not come out twice; google groups is playing up.

TC (MVP MSAccess)
http://tc2.atspace.com

 

[TC]

Great points, thanks again.

TC (MVP MSAccess)
http://tc2.atspace.com