- Whether to mention a pregnancy in a job interview
- A possible meeting protocol
- What are an end-user's responsibilities?
- Another take on opening PCs, or not
- Getting some process going
- Selling a more open environment to management
- Running an effective meeting
- Licensing rules for virtual machines
- The ROI of metrics
- Legal challenges to virtual machines
April 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Isn't the future supposed to be in front of us?
Now I'm mad.
Until now, the changes from "upgrading" to Office 2007 were merely annoying. And even there, I have to admit to one advantage. So far as I can tell, the Ribbon is hard-coded, and while that eliminates customization, it does result in a much snappier interface than one where every mouse click triggers interpreted VBA code.
At IT Catalysts we use an application we call our "Engagement Management System" (EMS). It's a place to log all interview notes, process parameters and characteristics, hypotheses, and possible recommendations.
It's how we operate.
It relies on one of the best-designed features of Microsoft Access - its database replication and synchronization feature. It lets us operate independently as we enter our notes in airplanes, hotel rooms and other disconnected locales, merging our entries later on when we're plugged into the same network again.
Now that we've moved to Office 2007 we figured it was time to migrate the application to the new Access database format.
That's when I discovered: Access no longer supports database replication and synchronization. Or rather, it does so long as you don't convert a database to the new format.
Who makes these design decisions? Doesn't anyone at Microsoft understand anymore that when you go forward, you're supposed to end up ahead of where you started?
- Bob
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Posted by Bob Lewis on April 30, 2007 06:43 PM
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Microsoft has trouble with this concept from time to time. When they purchased Fox Software in the early 1990s, they assured the nervous developer base that their investment in FoxPro's cross-platform strategy was safe. Within a couple of years, support for Mac and UNIX evaporated, and the cross platform strategy was redefined as "any version of Windows or Win32s you might choose".
I still have welts on my back from my UNIX and Mac users to whom I had passed on Microsoft's assurances.
In this present case, I suspect Microsoft is trying to coax you in the direction of SQL Server, having decided that replication is an edge case for Access and they don't want to support it anymore. They have probably decided to piss off a few people in exchange for dropping what is doubtless a particularly nettlesome piece of code to support.
The moral of the story is that Microsoft is ruthless in making business decisions. At least in this case they have high deniability, because the indicated that JRO (Jet Replication Objects, Jet being the Access database engine) was being dropped starting with MDAC 2.7, as far back as at least December 2004 (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms810810.aspx).
Of course, this statement was, near as I can tell, buried in the above page where only a very attentive developer might have noticed it. Google hindsight is always 20/20, but I suspect Microsoft did not make an effort to announce this pending change to the Access user base.
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Three books. Three ways to change the world, your life, or at least Bob Lewis' bank account. Leading IT: The Toughest Job in the World distills the world of IT leadership into eight learnable skills and gives you concrete, practical techniques for each one of them. Bare Bones Project Management: What you can't not do makes project management manageable, even for first-time project managers with no formal training in the discipline. ManagementSpeak: What managers say/What they mean … well, it won't help your career, and won't make you a better manager. Mostly, it will make you chuckle, guffaw, and maybe even chortle. Make friends - it's the perfect gift for anyone who has ever suffered through one of those meetings. Order your copies today! |
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