Access Curmudgeon

I work on software design by playing around with the product as it develops. Sometimes I discover that I need to make a lot of changes to improve it. Or I'll have an inspiration that causes me to rip out what is working so I can replace it with something better. It's an iterative process. Polishing, removing blemishes.

It's satisfying, at least theoretically. But imagine that you are trying to concentrate on your design when an obnoxious person comes up and bangs on your keyboard or unplugs the computer. It's annoying and it's hard to get back where you were before the insult.

Microsoft Access 2003 is like that annoying person. Just when things are going well -- too well, it pulls the plug. You lose all the work you've done since the last backup. You get a sick feeling when Access stops responding for too long. That inevitable "Microsoft is sorry" message is soon to appear.

I've noticed lately that when the sorry message appears, you are more screwed than you might think at first. The .mdb file size increases and that increase is some sort of cancer that makes the next crash more likely. The larger the file becomes, the more frequent the crashes. Microsoft recommends that you simply copy all objects from the old .mdb to a new one. OK, where then is the command to copy references and database properties? Ha, ha. You can easily loose a lot of work if you're not paranoid and obsessively careful.

Microsoft is known for its testing and its focus groups, right? What kind of testing is done and who are these people in the groups? Working with this software is like working with not just a stupid assistant, but one with a mean streak.

If your product has problems, do you fix them? Or do you ignore them because you are certain that your new whiz-bang products will replace the old ones.

I have an advantage of those with less experience using Access. I know a lot of work-arounds. Some of them that used to work, no longer do. Also, I don't expect the product to work perfectly. Far from it!

Back to "work".