BobAlston <bobalston9 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote in
news:irrcek$3as$1 (AT) dont-email (DOT) me:

I'll answer these in the opposite order you asked.

There is not IDE for developing database applications anywhere that
is as good as Access, no matter the deployment target (desktop or
web). You are terribly spoiled by what you are accustomed to and
everything will have a high learning curve, because you have to
learn how to do things that Access does for you, as well as change
your whole concept of UI to get away not just from bound data (not
so hard, since it's not uncommon to do that in an Access app in some
places), but also to get used to the concept of statelessness, which
is required for the web.

There are no web application generators that I'd spend a nickel on.
Not because I've tried them, but because of two things:

1. the concept is flawed -- would you purchase an Access application
generator?

2. you can't do a good job of creating web applications if you don't
know the nitty-gritty of how the component parts fit together. That
is, you have to be able to fire up a text editor and write the code
and HTML yourself in order to be able to use high-level tools
successfully.

In 1998, I knew I needed to learn some kind of web technology. My
original choice (because of what looked like good hosting
possibilities) was Cold Fusion. It was REALLY EASY!. But then the
hosting fell through, and I ended up learning PHP, instead.

PHP is very, very difficult in comparison to CF (though CF has
changed much more dramatically over that time period than PHP, and
doesn't really much resemble what I learned how to use well in a
couple of days), and certainly much harder than VBA (in my opinion).
This is partly because there's no IDE at all, but also because of
the nature of the way it works (it's not compiled, for instance).

Anyway, if you want to be a web professional, you need to learn
something from the ground up, not pretend you know what you're doing
because you can use a complicated tool that produces code you
couldn't explain to another developer.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
contact via website only http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/

I have done some 'simple' web development. By that I mean that what I
can build in Access is significantlymore capable than what I can do on
the web. In my experience with web development I have never found any
single tool or set of tools that provide the simplicity and power that
Access provides for the developer. That being said it is possible to
construct for yourself a pretty good toolkit / IDE for web development
if you know your target platform and purpose.

For example I am currently toying with Google's application engine and
am developing (or learning to really at the moment) how to do this
using the Eclipse IDE (Helios Version aka version 3.6) and the Google
supplied plugin. The languages supported by the apps engine are PHP
and Java (what I am using). My intention is to have an app engine
application that can reproduce much of the capabilities that Jet
currently provides, and then to have an Eclipse RCP client application
(this is an application that uses Eclipse as its 'program' the same
way that your applications use Access as their 'program'). This would
provide me a very robust platform for development that comes close to
Access, but even with the large volume of work that I will need to do
to build this (at least ssix months, most likely very many more) and
having a great IDE like Eclipse to do a lot of the heavy lifting, it
still wont be up to the ease of use and capabilitiy that Access 2003
has, not to mention newer versions.

Keep in mind that the target applications you build are probably quite
different from what Access traditionally is intended for. Web based
development is a many splintered thing, and statelessness plays a
large part of that. The design methods you use to handle these
environmental differences are very different from those you would use
in Access to handle a multi user scenario or even a server based BE.
In short it is a different skillset that you need to employ.

I, like David, would not spend a cent on a Web RAD IDE. The best ones
IMO are free, Eclipse being my preferred. You will need to learn new
language skills and problem solving skills too. I would suggest to
start by deciding on how you want your web based application to be
hosted. What type of capabilities will need to be provided on this web
application? What parts need to be on the web and what parts need to
be on the client side? Is HTML 5 and CSS going to be able to do
everything I want all by itself (it can do a hell of a lot actually)?
Do I need a scripting language? Put some time into thinking about what
it is that you really want to achieve and you can figure out what you
need to do to achieve it fairly quickly. Unfortunately I have not
found a shortcut to this. I would however recommend that you not do
the .Net path as it is very specific and you may eliminate a chunk of
your audience. .Net has its place, but a web dev environment or
platform is not it IMO. Better to stick with more accepted standards
like PHP, Java (my preferred as the skillset is re-usable for the most
part for client apps too), HTML 5, and CSS. Likewise it would pay you
to explore some of the open source databases that are in common use on
the web such as H2, JavaDB, especially MySQL and PostGres. I use MySQL
a lot as it is fairly robust, secure, and available at most web
hosting businesses - and its usually free or wrapped up as part of the
package you buy. Google Apps Engine is probably worth a look too now
that Google have opened up access to their 'Large Table' database
technology.

Thats my 2 cents

The Frog

On Sat, 28 May 2011 12:47:05 -0500, BobAlston <bobalston9 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com>
wrote:

Sometime in the next few months I plan on making a web version of the
Auto FE Updater available. This will allow for downloads of Access
via FEs from a zip file on your website. And it will check for
updates from your website on an regular basis.

This will, of course, require a version of Access to be installed on
the local PC.

Not quite what you had in mind. <smile>

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Tony's Main MS Access pages - http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/
For a convenient utility to keep your users FEs and other files
updated see http://www.autofeupdater.com/