Access limited life?

Always rumors and Microsoft is investing a lot of energy into Power Apps, BUT, they are also putting resources into Access.   They have added several new features in recent versions, and if it was truly going to die, I highly doubt they'd be doing that.

 Also Access based apps have a large installed base.   If they killed it off now, with nothing to offer as a replacement they would loose a considerable amount of business.

 So any statements about the death of Access are probably very premature.

Jim.

Microsoft has being trying to kill Access for ages but i don't see much success on this...the tremendous user base along with the fact that is by far the best RAD tool makes it almost impossible to kill...

<<Microsoft has being trying to kill Access for ages >>

 That's not true per say.   Microsoft has no interest in killing off Access, but they are focused on moving to a web/mobile world.   So any desktop orientated product is fair game.

Jim.

You should be more careful when selecting friends.

/gustav

@Jim considering the fact that Access haven't really received any real update  especially in the code area based of another "killed" beloved product (VB6) i think that my statement carries some truth...we talk that the code is same from 20 years ago from the era of Access 97...not to mention the LightSwitch

@John,

<<@Jim considering the fact that Access haven't really received any real update  especially in the code area based of another "killed" beloved product (VB6)>>

  Ah but it has.  In regards to VBA, you did get 64 bit and a brand new version of VBA, which was VBA7 with Access 2010.   Access has also gotten several features that I think prove that Microsoft has no intention of killing it off, such as the recent support for BigInit, and additional data connectors for things like oData and Sales Force.

 If they were going to let it die anytime soon, there would have been no need for either or the time and money spent on them.

<<i think that my statement carries some truth...we talk that the code is same from 20 years ago from the era of Access 97...not to mention the LightSwitch>>

  And all I'd call that is great backwards compatibility.

  In regards to LightSwitch, as I said, Desktop products since 2007 or so have been fair game.   But LightSwitch was never very well defined in it's role, did not have an installed user base, etc, so it was very easy to kill off.   With Access, not so much.

  Personally I think Access in it's current desktop form will be with us for quite some time to come....at least 10 years if not longer.  

  No matter what Microsoft seems to think, to your point the desktop is far from dead.

Jim.

The reports of the demise of Access from around 2000 stem directly from the SQL Server group who built the SQL server desktop engine that shipped with Access at that time.  Since the idea was to switch from "Jet" which everyone who didn't know any better referred to as Access to the new SQL Server option, they said "Access" was dead when what they really meant was Jet.

The reports of the demise of Access from around 2005 again stem directly from the SQL Server group who were responsible for Jet (which still hadn't died by the way).  With the release of A2007, Access substituted ACE (which was controlled and developed by the Access team rather than the SQL Server team)  for Jet so technically the SQL Server people were right.  "Access(Jet)" is dead.  Long live "Access(ACE)".

The more recent rumors stem from the fact that Microsoft decided to not continue support for Access web apps that were integrated with SharePoint.  The AWA never got any momentum for four reasons.
1. They didn't support any coding language.  Everything was done with macros so what you could do was pretty limited.
2. There was no conversion path from a desktop app to an AWA so converting was a complete rewrite and not trivial because of the huge differences between VBA and macros.  Being able to port the data was simply insufficient since that has always been fairly easy to do.
3. They were totally dependent on SharePoint and people were simply not interested into being forced to support SharePoint just to use AWA.
4. Many Access apps integrate with Word and Excel and Outlook and without a programming language, that integration would be lost.

Jet is still alive and well but now Access is tied to ACE.   Doesn't matter though.  Everyone who doesn't know any better still refers to Jet/ACE as Access and all the bad press you ever see about Access is actually targeted at the two desktop engines who people cannot in their minds separate from Access which is a Rapid Application Development tool.  Access is the front end application.  Jet and ACE are desktop database engines and also serve as the repository for Access objects and that is why Access cannot seem to be separated from them in the minds of way too many.