Should Access VBA programmer move to VB .NET?
David Anderson
has successfully developed several Access applications over the past 10
years, should now make the move to another development environment - such as
Visual Basic .NET.
Most of my future application development requirements will be for my own
personal use, rather than enterprise level apps, but I might also take
advantage of any convenient tools to enhance a website . At present I am
developing an Access database for organising thousands of photographs and I
have been checking out some ActiveX controls for handling images. Most of the
ActiveX vendors seem to ignore the Access environment so I'm beginning to
wonder if I am missing something!
I have a limited awareness of object oriented concepts but have yet to write
my own class modules in VBA.
The bottom line is that I am unclear about what benefits any of the
VB-oriented Microsoft development tools offer over using VBA and Access 2000.
I am also unclear on the relative merits of Visual Basic .NET versus Visual
Studio .NET. Any assistance will be gratefully received.
Ken Halter
news:5E16890D-E046-4385...@microsoft.com...
>
> The bottom line is that I am unclear about what benefits any of the
> VB-oriented Microsoft development tools offer over using VBA and Access
> 2000.
> I am also unclear on the relative merits of Visual Basic .NET versus
> Visual
> Studio .NET. Any assistance will be gratefully received.
Not a guru here... but I can tell you that there's no benefit at all in
getting VB.Net as a standalone product versus VS.Net.. and VB.Net can hardly
be considered "VB-oriented". It's completely different. Very little code can
be shared between VBA/VB6 and Anything.Net... even worse, code that looks
and compiles fine in the 3 mentioned may do something completely different
in .Net
As far as .Net specifics go, you'll want to go to a .Net group. They all
contain "dotnet" or "vsnet" in their names.
This and all other groups on the MS server that start with
"microsoft.public.vb" are for VB Classic (VB versions 1-6) and were in
existance long before any .Net products were released. While some of the
code looks the same, they are very different products and require a
different set of groups.
Try one of these:
news://microsoft.public.dotnet.general
news://microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vb
--
Ken Halter - MS-MVP-VB - http://www.vbsight.com
DLL Hell problems? Try ComGuard - http://www.vbsight.com/ComGuard.htm
Please keep all discussions in the groups..
David Anderson
groups but I wasn't excluding VB6 from my list of possible alternative
development environments. However, I had assumed that a group called
'vb.general.discussion' was broad enough to ALL flavours of VB. If no such
group actually exists then I guess I'll just have to persevere here for the
time being and perhaps later raise issues in a .Net group. Your answer has
already provided some insight - and raised some further questions.
My interpretation of your post is that forced to choose a .Net product you
would go for VS.Net over VB.Net, but I suspect that your real preference is
to stay with VB6. Is that correct? Can you expand on these issues?
What benefits, if any, are there to tempt an Access VBA programmer to move
to VB6? Why would a VB6 programmer perhaps be tempted by .Net? I don't mind
learning a new language if there are very tangible benefits, but at present I
have little or no idea what such benefits there might be.
Gerald Hernandez
"David Anderson" <DavidA...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:5E16890D-E046-4385...@microsoft.com...
Well, I will base my comments specifically on your desire to work with
Access 2000.
It is well established that VB6 and VBA work well together, and VBA in
Access will give you the most integrated experience. Since Microsoft is
still very fuzzy on what the user friendly replacement for VBA is going to
be, it seems that VBA will still be around for awhile.
Now for .NET. If you are not running the latest versions of the Office
products, which Access 2000 certainly is not, then my suggestion would be to
forget about .NET for the moment. To interface with Access 2000, you would
need to use the Access VBA COM interface anyway, as there is no .NET
interface provided. Right there you would have an unnecessary layer of
Interop. Plus, not only do you not gain anything tangible by using .NET, you
would probably lose some things. IMHO the COM Interop in .NET is quite
limited and very difficult to use. If you are planning on using ActiveX
controls, this is even more evident. Many ActiveX controls simply do not
work in .NET.
So, when it comes to Access 2000, IMHO anything .NET would be a waste of
time.
Now, on the flip side...
If you plan on getting and staying current with Office / Access, then MS is
pushing .NET. In this case, there are probably a number of benefits.
Additionally, in general MS has determined that the near future will be
.NET, so expect more stuff on the horizon. Also, if you are planning on
writing stuff for yourself, especially web stuff, and looking to learn new
things, then certainly get your hands on a .NET development product.
As far as VB.Net vs Visual Studio .NET, you need to look closely at what is
included. VB, or as some call it, B# (because VB it is NOT) is just that,
one product. Visual Studio would include VB, C#, C++, and possibly others.
Then you have multiple tiers of the Visual Studio line. But given that there
are some real shortcomings in the current release (VB / VS 2003), and the
changes coming for VS 2005, I would forget about the current release and
start tinkering with the betas of 2005. Possibly it will be ready for prime
time at the end of this year.
Plus, if you are looking to get your hands on a legitimate copy of VB6, that
is pretty tough nowadays.
Bottom line? If you like VBA, stick with it. If you want to learn something
.NET, give that a try as well. But unless you are willing to learn the
tricks of full time professional developers and all the headaches that go
along with it, then trying to automate Access 2000 with anything .NET is
more trouble than it is worth.
Gerald
Ken Halter
> Ken, I understand your point about .Net questions belonging to .Net user
> groups but I wasn't excluding VB6 from my list of possible alternative
> development environments. However, I had assumed that a group called
> 'vb.general.discussion' was broad enough to ALL flavours of VB. If no such
Problem is, Anything.Net's doesn't fit into the "all flavors" group <g> VB
used to be VB... no more <g> "VB" is just a couple of letters that were
placed in front of a new product name, hoping that the "we have to have the
newest, no matter what" crowd would jump on board.
> group actually exists then I guess I'll just have to persevere here for
> the
> time being and perhaps later raise issues in a .Net group. Your answer has
> already provided some insight - and raised some further questions.
You can always crosspost to a .Net group... actually, I can do that for
you... all future messages to this thread _should_ show there as well.
> My interpretation of your post is that forced to choose a .Net product you
> would go for VS.Net over VB.Net, but I suspect that your real preference
> is
> to stay with VB6. Is that correct? Can you expand on these issues?
I'd always choose the "suite" over the "stand-alone". A lot of stuff come
with "Studio" that you can't get by buying a stand-alone product. Even if
you bought each product that came with VS, there'd probably still be a few
tidbits missing that you'd probably want. For example, VS6 Enterprise comes
with a bunch of goodies, including SourceSafe. If you were to buy each piece
separately, you'd probably spend 3 times more.
> What benefits, if any, are there to tempt an Access VBA programmer to move
> to VB6? Why would a VB6 programmer perhaps be tempted by .Net? I don't
> mind
> learning a new language if there are very tangible benefits, but at
> present I
> have little or no idea what such benefits there might be.
It's a tough choice.. Since VB6, basically died on April Fools day of this
year, finding a place to buy it legally is becoming a chore. Google has
plenty of places to buy Visual Studio 6 but buying VB6 by itself is getting
tough.
In .Net's case though, VB.Net's role in "the studio" isn't the same as any
development tools before it. It's basically a layer on top of the
framework/IDE but the finished code compiles down to the same IDL that any
other .Net language does (I'm sure someone will correct me here)
As far as my desires to stay with VB6 goes, yep... I'd stay with VB6 'till
the cows come home if it were possible. It does everything I've ever asked
it to and compiles to native code... there's yet to be a decompiler
published that will decompile a VB program back to its source. On the other
hand, .Net's decompiler friendly <g> It requires that you use an
"obfuscator" to hide your code. The one that comes with .Net's, no doubt
been broken/hacked many times so there you are having to go pay $1500 or so
for a commercial version (that's probably been broken/hacked too) - another
point that'll no doubt get corrected if I'm wrong <g>
Since the company I work for has less than zero interest in re-writting
10-20 years worth of code, just to be able to run it in a new IDE, I'll be
running VB6 as long as I work here. It's not that I have no interest in .Net
or even hate it... it's just that I have no interest in coding a bunch of
stuff that'll never help pay the bills. I've written a few small .Net apps,
including one for PocketPC's (.Net's PocketPC emulators are *extremely*
cool) and I've even had (a very limited amount of) luck with the "VB to
VB.Net converter" that comes with .Net.
fwiw, you'll find my name, along with nearly 8k others, asking MS to include
an unmanaged version of VB to .Net (similar to what they've done for C++)
http://classicvb.org/petition/
If you want to know more about the .Net resistance (sounds like a branch of
the Foreign Legion <g>), see (including the 4 links top/left of the article
below):
Visual Basic .Not
http://vb.mvps.org/vfred/Trust.asp
Even more...
Results 1 - 100 of about 670 English pages for "visual fred". (0.68 seconds)
http://www.google.com/search?as_q=&num=100&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=visual+fred&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=lang_en&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=images
A VBA-VB6 transition would, for the most part, be far less painful than VBA
to .Net.... VBA is a subset of VB6 (depending on how you look at it) so they
have quite a bit in common. Most of the VBA->VB6 complaints are related to
controls and "subforms"... VBA's (especially Access) controls have a bunch
of bells and whistles that VB's controls don't, unless you add code... and,
in VB, there's no such thing as a "subform" unless you create it with
code/controls.
It looks like VBA's not going anywhere for a while. As long as MS Office
uses VBA, it'll never die (which is why I've been doing a bit of VBA
tinkering lately <g>)
VB.Net's a great product. It's not VB though and barely resembles the BASIC
language at all. It should have a new name. Actually, it does... VB 2005,
which is worse. It's getting harder and harder to search the web for code
that'll work with a specific version.... their first mistake was calling it
VB... their second mistake was adding a .Net extension when there are
websites that have URLs that end with .Net and have nothing to do with
programming at all. It's a search engine nightmare and it's getting worse.
imo, they should've called it B# (not VB# as some already call it... just
B#) BSharp would be as easy to find as CSharp is now.... but nooooo.. call
it VB and let the devs sort out the search results <g>
Karl E. Peterson
> fwiw, you'll find my name, along with nearly 8k others, asking MS to
> include an unmanaged version of VB to .Net (similar to what they've
> done for C++) http://classicvb.org/petition/
Fwiw, part II, it's looking like we'll crack the 8000 mark sometime this evening or
early tomorrow! :-)
--
Working Without a .NET?
http://classicvb.org/petition
Tom Shelton
> Ken Halter wrote:
>> fwiw, you'll find my name, along with nearly 8k others, asking MS to
>> include an unmanaged version of VB to .Net (similar to what they've
>> done for C++) http://classicvb.org/petition/
>
> Fwiw, part II, it's looking like we'll crack the 8000 mark sometime this evening or
> early tomorrow! :-)
So, what is that - like .1% of all VB developers....
--
Tom Shelton [MVP]
Steve Easton
and go with FrontPage 2003.
VS is lousy at html, where as you can manage an access db with FrontPage.
--
Steve Easton
Microsoft MVP FrontPage
95isalive
This site is best viewed............
.......................with a computer
"David Anderson" <DavidA...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:5E16890D-E046-4385...@microsoft.com...
David Anderson
many gaps in my limited level of knowledge. In particular, I hadn't realised
that VB6 was no longer a current product! Does this mean that VBA is the only
remaining product exploiting ‘classical’ VB coding?
If I could find a copy of VB6, and used it to program ‘front ends’ with data
possibly stored in an Access ‘back end’, should I expect it to be capable of
performing any better for a single user than having an Access front/back end
and doing everything in VBA? Would there be any other benefit in using VB6
versus VBA?
I am not insisting on staying with Access, except perhaps as a back-end
database, and I will upgrade to the latest version of Office as soon as I
find a reason to do so, like perhaps for compatibility with .Net as you have
mentioned. You say that if I upgrade Office then “in this case, there are
probably a number of benefits” in moving to .Net. Can you be please a little
more specific and quote some examples of clever or useful things that .Net
offers in such circumstances.
By the way, I am only looking at ActiveX controls because Access is my
current development tool. Is there another type of control designed for the
VB.Net environment? Are they readily available in many flavours, just like
ActiveX controls?
"Gerald Hernandez" wrote:
> Well, I will base my comments specifically on your desire to work with
> Access 2000.
> It is well established that VB6 and VBA work well together, and VBA in
> Access will give you the most integrated experience. Since Microsoft is
> still very fuzzy on what the user friendly replacement for VBA is going to
> be, it seems that VBA will still be around for awhile.
>
> Now for .NET. If you are not running the latest versions of the Office
> products, which Access 2000 certainly is not, then my suggestion would be to
> forget about .NET for the moment. To interface with Access 2000, you would
> need to use the Access VBA COM interface anyway, as there is no .NET
> interface provided. Right there you would have an unnecessary layer of
> Interop. Plus, not only do you not gain anything tangible by using .NET, you
> would probably lose some things. IMHO the COM Interop in .NET is quite
> limited and very difficult to use. If you are planning on using ActiveX
> controls, this is even more evident. Many ActiveX controls simply do not
> work in .NET.
>
> So, when it comes to Access 2000, IMHO anything .NET would be a waste of
> time.
>
> Now, on the flip side...
> If you plan on getting and staying current with Office / Access, then MS is
> pushing .NET. In this case, there are probably a number of benefits.
> Additionally, in general MS has determined that the near future will be
> ..NET, so expect more stuff on the horizon. Also, if you are planning on
> writing stuff for yourself, especially web stuff, and looking to learn new
> things, then certainly get your hands on a .NET development product.
>
> As far as VB.Net vs Visual Studio .NET, you need to look closely at what is
> included. VB, or as some call it, B# (because VB it is NOT) is just that,
> one product. Visual Studio would include VB, C#, C++, and possibly others.
> Then you have multiple tiers of the Visual Studio line. But given that there
> are some real shortcomings in the current release (VB / VS 2003), and the
> changes coming for VS 2005, I would forget about the current release and
> start tinkering with the betas of 2005. Possibly it will be ready for prime
> time at the end of this year.
>
> Plus, if you are looking to get your hands on a legitimate copy of VB6, that
> is pretty tough nowadays.
>
> Bottom line? If you like VBA, stick with it. If you want to learn something
> ..NET, give that a try as well. But unless you are willing to learn the
Karl E. Peterson
I suppose, yeah. But it'd be, like, 10% of all VFreddies, huh? <g>
Michael C
news:eMi8BEWj...@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
> Not a guru here... but I can tell you that there's no benefit at all in
> getting VB.Net as a standalone product versus VS.Net.. and VB.Net can
> hardly be considered "VB-oriented". It's completely different. Very little
> code can be shared between VBA/VB6 and Anything.Net... even worse, code
> that looks and compiles fine in the 3 mentioned may do something
> completely different in .Net
That may be true but it's not relevent here because the OP doesn't want to
translate existing apps from access to dotnet (afaik). Converting from
Access to vb6 would be quite a bit of work anyway so going to vb6 wouldn't
be a good idea.
Michael
Michael C
> The bottom line is that I am unclear about what benefits any of the
> VB-oriented Microsoft development tools offer over using VBA and Access
> 2000.
They offer much greater flexibility at the cost of a greater amount of work
on your part. Less is done for you when creating a database app.
> I am also unclear on the relative merits of Visual Basic .NET versus
> Visual
> Studio .NET. Any assistance will be gratefully received.
Visual studio just included C# and C++ i believe. I'd advice using C#
instead of vbnet.
> I have a limited awareness of object oriented concepts but have yet to
> write
> my own class modules in VBA.
You'll be in for a shock, it's all classes in .net. Don't be put off though
it's no big deal.
Michael
Michael C
news:eOTRsYXj...@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
> Now for .NET. If you are not running the latest versions of the Office
> products, which Access 2000 certainly is not, then my suggestion would be
> to
> forget about .NET for the moment. To interface with Access 2000, you would
> need to use the Access VBA COM interface anyway, as there is no .NET
> interface provided. Right there you would have an unnecessary layer of
> Interop. Plus, not only do you not gain anything tangible by using .NET,
> you
> would probably lose some things. IMHO the COM Interop in .NET is quite
> limited and very difficult to use. If you are planning on using ActiveX
> controls, this is even more evident. Many ActiveX controls simply do not
> work in .NET.
Is Gerald planning to talk between access and .net? That's not the way I
read it.
Michael
Michael C
news:emPNj4Xj...@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
> imho, If you're going in the "web site" direction, forget Visual Studio
> .net
> and go with FrontPage 2003.
You've gotta be friggin kidding me?!?! vs.net is 1000 times more powerful
for writing web apps.
Michael
Michael C
news:5E16890D-E046-4385-9620-
> VB-oriented Microsoft development tools offer over using VBA and Access
> 2000.
> I am also unclear on the relative merits of Visual Basic .NET versus
> Visual
> Studio .NET. Any assistance will be gratefully received.
BTW, be careful when considering the answers you get here. This group has
mainly all the die hard vb6ers left who don't understand the power of .net,
so the answers you get are going to be heavily skewed towards vb6.
Michael
Gerald Hernandez
"Michael C" <mcu...@NOSPAMoptushome.com.au> wrote in message
news:%23HZd1DZ...@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
Actually is "David" planning on doing this? You are quite correct in
pointing out that the OP didn't specifically mention doing this, but I did
make a point to specifically address what I anticipated would follow. As it
appears actually happened. ;-)
Gerald
Gerald Hernandez
"David Anderson" <DavidA...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:98C41AD4-9B9E-4281...@microsoft.com...
<Snip> Does this mean that VBA is the only
> remaining product exploiting 'classical' VB coding?
Hmm.. That's a tough question. Officially, I think so. But MANY third
parties utilize VBA and/or VB like scripting languages. Plus, I personally
believe they will for some time.
> If I could find a copy of VB6, and used it to program 'front ends' with
data
> possibly stored in an Access 'back end', should I expect it to be capable
of
> performing any better for a single user than having an Access front/back
end
> and doing everything in VBA? Would there be any other benefit in using VB6
> versus VBA?
[GH] Well, first re-coding things into full VB6 would be quite a bit of
work. Are there potential benefits? Yes. You can build very robust
interfaces and numerous other things. Additionally, VB6 can compile to
Native Code, which can provide significant performance improvement and opens
usable memory wide open.
Hitting the database itself may or may not be faster or slower. For this you
would need to familiarize yourself with the options, specifically ADO vs.
DAO. I think at this point it would be good to point out the obvious
differences between "Access" and "Jet". Access is the "front end" while
"Jet" is the "back end" database engine. DAO offers the best possible
performance on the database itself, and is what Access uses I believe. ADO
is more generic, but fairly ubiquitous in VB6.
<...Snip> You say that if I upgrade Office then "in this case, there are
> probably a number of benefits" in moving to .Net. Can you be please a
little
> more specific and quote some examples of clever or useful things that .Net
> offers in such circumstances.
[GH] .Net is powerful, and a VAST framework. It is difficult to compare
them, because VB.Net is so different from VB6 / VBA. It isn't like there is
anything you can't do with VB6. But since Microsoft is pushing .Net, they
are making many things available to .Net in newer products. Potentially they
might continue to expand only the .Net interfaces, leaving VBA stuck where
it is as far as functionality.
> By the way, I am only looking at ActiveX controls because Access is my
> current development tool. Is there another type of control designed for
the
> VB.Net environment? Are they readily available in many flavours, just like
> ActiveX controls?
[GH] Yes, .Net makes it relatively easy to extend or create your own
controls. In fact, some behaviours we have become accustomed to with common
ActiveX controls for VB6 "require" you to modify base .Net controls. The
good news, is that once you learn the ins and outs of how to do it, it isn't
all that difficult and can be fun.
There are quite a number of control libraries available for .Net. What VB6
had going for it was a decade of time for the market to become mature with
available products. There are fewer choices with .Net at the moment. But
since it is "relatively" easy to accomplish in .Net, products are coming
onto the market quite quickly.
<Snipped...>
Gerald Hernandez
<Snipped>
> BTW, be careful when considering the answers you get here. This group has
> mainly all the die hard vb6ers left who don't understand the power of
.net,
> so the answers you get are going to be heavily skewed towards vb6.
>
> Michael
Agreed. Michael makes a very good point. I, of course, use VB and have since
it became VB, and before. I also use the .Net framework products, which I
happen to like. The .Net Framework is vast, and quite powerful.
As long as people remember that VB.Net is a very different language than
VB6/classic, and don't try to get one to be the other, they should be fine.
It actually helps to refer to VB.Net as B# , it reinforces that they really
are that different. Although Microsoft seems to have since dropped .Net from
the name and is now like VB 2005, which could further confuse people.
Gerald
Bob Butler
I think you've missed the point. It's not the technical aspects of the
platform; it's the cutting off of years of development work that makes
people unwilling to adopt it.
--
Reply to the group so all can participate
VB.Net: "Fool me once..."
Stefan Berglund
wrote:
in <#d4vAGZj...@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl>
>BTW, be careful when considering the answers you get here. This group has
>mainly all the die hard vb6ers left who don't understand the power of .net,
>so the answers you get are going to be heavily skewed towards vb6.
I don't give two hoots for how ~powerful~ .net anything is because my software
vendor (as in MICROSOFT) left me out to dry with no forward migration path for
my code other than to refactor the entire f'ing application.
And speaking of ~powerful~ - bwah hah hah. I've just witnessed first hand how
powerful these .NET apps are. What a piece of CRAP! Slower than the old TSO
from IBM where you could take an entire coffee break during login between
username and password.
Understand? Hey pal, I understand more than you know. You better wake up and
smell the coffee before your assets are cremated also. I'll build my software
to run on their platforms as long as I have to but I'll never use any of their
products to do so again!
---
Stefan Berglund
Tom Shelton
LOL... That is probably true...
--
Tom Shelton [MVP]
Ralph
I'm no guru. Ask anyone around here and that is one fact that will be
universally confirmed with no debate.
"should now make the move to another development environment - such as
Visual Basic .NET"
Only if you feel that you would like more control over your problem domain
that you can get using Office Programming and you want to stay abreast of
current and future MS technologies.
VB6 (Classic ActiveX/COM programming) might provide some play value for a
few years yet, but it is a dead-end street. As others have pointed out, you
can likely buy Visual Studio 6 pretty cheap right now.
The future of MSAccess is harder to measure as it is an Office product, and
fills a niche so completely it is not easily replaced with a separate server
solution. (Unless you need a separate server solution.) It is even now so
well 'layered' that MS could swap out any piece of it and you probably
wouldn't notice the difference except for the 'skins'. So you can stay with
it until it no longer meets your needs.
Microsoft is hellbent on creating a monolithic, proprietary, secure, and
robust, full service 'solution' platform that will have one common language
interface - from the highest to the lowest levels of programming. You can
get on board now or you can climb on later - doesn't matter. And it is
important to note MS doesn't care either.
So if dollars are important, and current tools meets your needs - just stick
with Office programming and the odd component or suites. Perhaps picking up
VB6 to play with.
If you have at least a grand to spend and want to join the parade and be
really "IN", then VS 2005 and Office 2003 is the way to go. (Wait - make
that $4k+. As you will also want to upgrade to XP and buy a faster box to
make up for the performance loss.)
Happy computing.
-ralph
Michael C
news:t25ud195gc5jr7p9m...@4ax.com...
> And speaking of ~powerful~ - bwah hah hah. I've just witnessed first hand
> how
> powerful these .NET apps are. What a piece of CRAP! Slower than the old
> TSO
> from IBM where you could take an entire coffee break during login between
> username and password.
You've proved my point here, you don't understand .net and are basing your
dislike of it on one experience. Dot net is slower than vb6 but not
significantly so. The one area I found disappointing speed wise was GDI
because it uses GDI+ for all drawing I believe. I got around that problem by
using APIs to draw anyway.
Michael
Michael C
> Actually is "David" planning on doing this?
Woops. :-)
>You are quite correct in
> pointing out that the OP didn't specifically mention doing this, but I did
> make a point to specifically address what I anticipated would follow. As
> it
> appears actually happened. ;-)
If that's their plan then they should stick with access for sure. A dot net
access hybrid would be a monster. :-) For new apps I'd recommend moving over
to C# and possibly MSDE.
Michael
Michael C
news:%23mnHyrX...@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
> Fwiw, part II, it's looking like we'll crack the 8000 mark sometime this
> evening or
> early tomorrow! :-)
You're probably chasing a lost cause but 8000 signatures I presume just from
newsgroup posts is fairly significant.
Michael
Ralph
LOL!
"MSDE". Now there's stable scaleable target. <mild sarcasm>
-ralph
Andrew Morton
> end with .Net and have nothing to do with programming at all. It's a
> search engine nightmare and it's getting worse. imo, they should've
> called it B# (not VB# as some already call it... just B#) BSharp
> would be as easy to find as CSharp is now.... but nooooo.. call it VB
> and let the devs sort out the search results <g>
Noooooooo! There's already a programming language called B
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/bintro.html
A quick google suggests the next available letter is H, so how H*.COM for
the language name <g>.
Andrew
David Anderson
post! I didn't realise that this topic is a source of so much controversy.
All the contributions so far are much appreciated and have helped to clarify
many of the issues for me.
Some more comments follow the quotes below.
"Gerald Hernandez" wrote:
> Well, first re-coding things into full VB6 would be quite a bit of
> work. Are there potential benefits? Yes. You can build very robust
> interfaces and numerous other things. Additionally, VB6 can compile to
> Native Code, which can provide significant performance improvement and opens
> usable memory wide open.
> Hitting the database itself may or may not be faster or slower. For this you
> would need to familiarize yourself with the options, specifically ADO vs.
> DAO. I think at this point it would be good to point out the obvious
> differences between "Access" and "Jet". Access is the "front end" while
> "Jet" is the "back end" database engine. DAO offers the best possible
> performance on the database itself, and is what Access uses I believe. ADO
> is more generic, but fairly ubiquitous in VB6.
I don’t generally have a problem with the ‘robustness’ of my Access
interfaces but anything that improves performance in an application that
links to large JPEG files (my current development project) is certainly of
interest.
I’m not enough of a techie to understand the difference between the code
generated by compiling VBA within Access and the ‘native code’ that you
mention. Please clarify. Also, can you give me any idea of how much
performance benefit VB6 might offer? I suspect that it may be impossible to
provide a simple answer but some ball park estimate would be better than
nothing.
"Ralph" wrote:
> If you have at least a grand to spend and want to join the parade and be
> really "IN", then VS 2005 and Office 2003 is the way to go. (Wait - make
> that $4k+. As you will also want to upgrade to XP and buy a faster box to
> make up for the performance loss.)
Thanks for making it clear that the .Net route to wider horizons and a more
beautiful body comes with a performance penalty. That was one of the key
facts I wanted to elicit from this discussion.
By the way, I’m too old and bald a bird to be much interested in following
the latest fashions. Since it’s my own money I’d be spending, I prefer to
upgrade hardware or software only when the benefits are obvious. Of course,
when I have persuaded myself that upgrades are desirable, I then have to
persuade my wife ........
Steve Easton
Web pages, No
--
Steve Easton
Microsoft MVP FrontPage
95isalive
This site is best viewed............
.......................with a computer
"Michael C" <mcu...@NOSPAMoptushome.com.au> wrote in message
news:Oe8PpEZj...@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
Ralph
lol
That clarifies it rather well.
Spend your money on a fast box, XP Pro (perhaps the media edition) and
upgrade to Office 2003. Ignore the developer or programming packages (vb6,
VS.Net, &etc).
I am lucky, as my wife is computer-phobic, but does like her occasional
Internet browsing and email. Whenever I feel the need for something new, I
just turn off cookies, change screen colors, etc. When she notices or
complains, I tell her something must have broke and I need to buy a new
'Widget-Klatten'.
I think she is getting suspicious though, she has started locking up her
laptop.
-ralph
Tom Shelton
I first saw the petition mentioned on one of the tech news sites. I
still haven't signed, and no offense intended to those who did, but I
certainly don't plan to.
--
Tom Shelton [MVP]
Gerald Hernandez
"David Anderson" <DavidA...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:9E1B1CA1-09F9-41D7...@microsoft.com...
> post! I didn't realise that this topic is a source of so much controversy.
> All the contributions so far are much appreciated and have helped to
clarify
> many of the issues for me.
[GH] heh, yes. People here are very passionate about VB Classic, as am I.
Many are quite upset over the way Microsoft handled the issue of legacy code
portability, and for very good reason. But it is what it is.
<Snipped>
> I don't generally have a problem with the 'robustness' of my Access
> interfaces but anything that improves performance in an application that
> links to large JPEG files (my current development project) is certainly of
> interest.
>
> I'm not enough of a techie to understand the difference between the code
> generated by compiling VBA within Access and the 'native code' that you
> mention. Please clarify. Also, can you give me any idea of how much
> performance benefit VB6 might offer? I suspect that it may be impossible
to
> provide a simple answer but some ball park estimate would be better than
> nothing.
[GH] Hmm... well without getting too technical, Native Code would be real
compiled code. VBA "compiles" but it is still run in an interpreted manner.
For now, lets just think of it in terms of "layers" of processing that must
take place before the "real" low level code is executed. The fewer the
layers, the greater the potential performance. C has fewer layers than C++.
C++ has fewer layers than VB6. VB6 has fewer than VBA. So as you move up the
list, your maximum potential performance decreases. Notice I say
"potential". It is all about how you use it, what you are doing, and how
efficient your code is. Simply changing from one "language" to another does
not necessarily alter the performance. It also doesn't mean that VBA is
"slow". I have a great deal of blazingly fast stuff written in VBA. It's
also important to note that as you move up the list it typically gets
"easier" and "faster" to write the code, because it requires less work and
technical skill on your part.
So, you are quite right in that it is impossible to provide a simple answer.
My general feeling in your case, is that if you are happy with the VBA
interface, and what you have works to your satisfaction, then stay with it.
If performance is a real issue, then work on identifying and optimizing
potential bottlenecks in your existing code. If it still isn't fast enough,
then get a faster PC.
> "Ralph" wrote:
>
> > If you have at least a grand to spend and want to join the parade and be
> > really "IN", then VS 2005 and Office 2003 is the way to go. (Wait - make
> > that $4k+. As you will also want to upgrade to XP and buy a faster box
to
> > make up for the performance loss.)
>
> Thanks for making it clear that the .Net route to wider horizons and a
more
> beautiful body comes with a performance penalty. That was one of the key
> facts I wanted to elicit from this discussion.
[GH] heh. Well, always moving up to a bigger hammer doesn't necessarily make
you a faster or better builder. The .Net Framework, XP, newer Office, etc.
are all pretty darned big hammers. So you need a pretty beefy PC to push it
all around. So this this is definately something to consider.
> By the way, I'm too old and bald a bird to be much interested in following
> the latest fashions. Since it's my own money I'd be spending, I prefer to
> upgrade hardware or software only when the benefits are obvious. Of
course,
> when I have persuaded myself that upgrades are desirable, I then have to
> persuade my wife ........
[GH] Sounds to me that in the short term, your best bet might be to try to
focus on a more powerful PC. This will probably give you the most immediate
benefit, and would be a pre-requisite for the other options you might
consider.
Gerald
Paul Clement
wrote:
¤ Can one of the gurus on this forum please advise if someone like myself, who
¤ has successfully developed several Access applications over the past 10
¤ years, should now make the move to another development environment - such as
¤ Visual Basic .NET.
¤
¤ Most of my future application development requirements will be for my own
¤ personal use, rather than enterprise level apps, but I might also take
¤ advantage of any convenient tools to enhance a website . At present I am
¤ developing an Access database for organising thousands of photographs and I
¤ have been checking out some ActiveX controls for handling images. Most of the
¤ ActiveX vendors seem to ignore the Access environment so I'm beginning to
¤ wonder if I am missing something!
¤
¤ I have a limited awareness of object oriented concepts but have yet to write
¤ my own class modules in VBA.
¤
¤ The bottom line is that I am unclear about what benefits any of the
¤ VB-oriented Microsoft development tools offer over using VBA and Access 2000.
¤ I am also unclear on the relative merits of Visual Basic .NET versus Visual
¤ Studio .NET. Any assistance will be gratefully received.
I've worked with and still work with both.
Access is a good RAD database development tool. You can build database apps more quickly than with
Visual Basic but that comes at the expense of flexibility and third-party support. I've always been
frustrated by certain features in Access when it came time to design the UI.
I guess it depends upon how deep in the water you want to get. Visual Basic.NET has significantly
more tools and features than Access and is capable of building a far greater variety of applications
than Access. Access applications also require the Microsoft Access application to run, unless you
use the run time environment which distributes at about four times the size of the .NET Framework.
You may want to download beta 2 of Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition to see if it would be something
you're interested in.
http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/vbasic/default.aspx
Paul
~~~~
Microsoft MVP (Visual Basic)
Karl E. Peterson
7996 at the moment. :-)
Who knows? The point is certainly being made that Microsoft doesn't give a sh!t
about what their customers want. That's the story of VFred, in a nutshell.
Michael C
news:s_adnR_Tltv...@arkansas.net...
> LOL!
>
> "MSDE". Now there's stable scaleable target. <mild sarcasm>
It's probably one of the more stable targets, it's seems to be fairly
outdated so that it can compatibility.
Michael
Michael C
> Web "apps" yes.
> Web pages, No
Exactly, front page is great if you want to make static pages but is
hopeless for anything slightly more powerful.
Michael
Steve Easton
Seriously...
;-)
--
Steve Easton
Microsoft MVP FrontPage
95isalive
This site is best viewed............
.......................with a computer
"Michael C" <mcu...@NOSPAMoptushome.com.au> wrote in message
news:uinJNjk...@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
Jim Carlock
really nice webpage designer. It's got a couple quirks here
and there and I've tended to stay away from the FrontPage
automated things.
HTML, CSS and javascript knowledge helps alot, along
with the knowledge in the server side language of your choice,
Cold Fusion, PERL, .ASP (vbScript), etc.
I've used FrontPage since 1998 and all in all it's my favorite
web page editor. As far as creating the server-side scripts
goes, I like NotePad or Visual Studio 6 for some things.
--
Jim Carlock
Please post replies to newsgroup.
"Steve Easton" <ad...@95isalive.com> wrote:
Not as hopeless as you might think.
Seriously...
;-)
--
Steve Easton
Microsoft MVP FrontPage
95isalive
This site is best viewed............
.......................with a computer
"Michael C" <mcu...@NOSPAMoptushome.com.au> wrote:
Michael C
news:%23ee3lkm...@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> HTML, CSS and javascript knowledge helps alot, along
> with the knowledge in the server side language of your choice,
> Cold Fusion, PERL, .ASP (vbScript), etc.
As far as writing code does it do anything to assist you in writing, say,
asp?
> I've used FrontPage since 1998 and all in all it's my favorite
> web page editor. As far as creating the server-side scripts
> goes, I like NotePad or Visual Studio 6 for some things.
As far as static pages go what can't vs.net do?
Michael
95isalive
Tools > Macro > Visual Basic Editor
--
Steve
95isalive
This site is best viewed..................
..............................with a computer
"Michael C" <mcu...@NOSPAMoptushome.com.au> wrote in message
news:OPxNNtmj...@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
Bonj
> You've proved my point here, you don't understand .net and are basing your
> dislike of it on one experience. Dot net is slower than vb6 but not
> significantly so. The one area I found disappointing speed wise was GDI
> because it uses GDI+ for all drawing I believe. I got around that problem by
> using APIs to draw anyway.
It's a very double-edged sword - basically, the people here *are* biased,
but why shouldn't they be?
Microsoft *have* invented a good new product, but they *have* also skanked a
lot of developers by 'not providing a good forward migration path'.
Is this right, what they've done?
Legally right? Yes (probably).
Politically right? Morally right? Technically right? Who knows - it's highly
debatable, and many of these debates run round in circles. So it's really up
to the individual to make the best of what's currently available to them -
and at the end of the day, I would be surprised if there were more than a
handful of people who wanted VB6 but found it to be unavailable to them.
Programming - it's a job, man - like bricklaying, engineering, diplomatting,
or teaching - it ain't a religion!
(personally, I'd say politically right: no; morally right: yes, technically
right: no)
BUT, that's only my opinion...
>
> Michael
>
>
>
Stefan Berglund
in <#Xh$sdljFH...@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl>
>Not as hopeless as you might think.
>Seriously...
>
>;-)
YES it is. SERIOUSLY. Don't you just love when it rewrites your HTML the way
it thinks it should be even when that feature is explicitly turned off?
---
Stefan Berglund
Ralph
"Stefan Berglund" <kee...@in.thegroups> wrote in message
Ralph
"Stefan Berglund" <kee...@in.thegroups> wrote in message
news:3hm2e1p9ac1mpok91...@4ax.com...
Not to butt in, but I do LOVE that part. Especially when you are debugging
a little piece of format, or trying to make it clear for the next guy - and
sort of indent stuff and break lines at logical points, you know. Just to
make it a little easier to see the statements. And you accidently open it in
FrontPage and -
Bang!
Its all clumped to together again with lots of little non-breaking thingys
padded all over. I appreciate it because I would hate to have anyone see me
deliver 'readable' html and without FrontPage's help I might have accidently
did just that.
-ralph
Steve Easton
--
Steve Easton
Microsoft MVP FrontPage
95isalive
This site is best viewed............
.......................with a computer
"Stefan Berglund" <kee...@in.thegroups> wrote in message
news:3hm2e1p9ac1mpok91...@4ax.com...
Jim Carlock
there's a solution to it right off the top of my head. I've
gotten around it by setting the default editor inside of FrontPage
to be notepad or VisualInterDev6. I use FrontPage XP. FP
does mess with the HTML coding if you preview it in the
DESIGN view. If you stay out of the design view, you'll
avoid most of those rewrite problems, but it ends up being
too much of a hassle and I end up configuring another
editor for .asp pages. :-)
FrontPage does have some serious drawbacks. I've put
up with them.
One problem with FrontPageXP and previous versions,
is it's inability to render .asp pages properly. I like using
.asp "include" statements alot to handle different things,
load different images, changing styles et al. FrontPage
is useless in those cases... unless FrontPage 2003 fixed
the problem.
I'm thinking the best thing I've liked about FrontPage is
the search and replace, and the Convert to XML right
click.
--
Jim Carlock
Please post replies to newsgroup.
"Steve Easton" <ad...@95isalive.com> wrote:
I can honestly say I've never had that problem.
--
Steve Easton
Microsoft MVP FrontPage
95isalive
This site is best viewed............
.......................with a computer
"Stefan Berglund" <kee...@in.thegroups> stated:
Karl E. Peterson
> YES it is. SERIOUSLY. Don't you just love when it rewrites your
> HTML the way it thinks it should be even when that feature is
> explicitly turned off?
That hasn't been an issue since pre-Office2000.
Stefan Berglund
in <#G0EBRxk...@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl>
>Stefan Berglund wrote:
>> YES it is. SERIOUSLY. Don't you just love when it rewrites your
>> HTML the way it thinks it should be even when that feature is
>> explicitly turned off?
>
>That hasn't been an issue since pre-Office2000.
Wouldn't matter to me anymore at this point. It caused me to switch to
UltraEdit and I'd never go back.
---
Stefan Berglund
Ralph
"Karl E. Peterson" <ka...@mvps.org> wrote in message
news:%23G0EBRx...@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
That's what they say, but I am running FrontPage 2000 (vers 4) SP3 and it
still happens. Perhaps because it is originally Office 2000 Premium,
upgraded to SR-1, upgraded to SP2, upgraded to SP3, and severely patched
over the years ????
-ralph
Karl E. Peterson
> "Karl E. Peterson" <ka...@mvps.org> wrote in message
> news:%23G0EBRx...@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
>> Stefan Berglund wrote:
>>> YES it is. SERIOUSLY. Don't you just love when it rewrites your
>>> HTML the way it thinks it should be even when that feature is
>>> explicitly turned off?
>>
>> That hasn't been an issue since pre-Office2000.
>
> and it still happens. Perhaps because it is originally Office 2000
> Premium, upgraded to SR-1, upgraded to SP2, upgraded to SP3, and
> severely patched over the years ????
Huh. Well, me too. v4.0.2.6625, specifically. "Works here?" <shrug>
Stefan Berglund
in <esPYwE9k...@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl>
GREAT! But I'll still never look back. Sorry, but I've got several thousand
lines of VB code (more realistically like 300-~500 hundred thousand) to convert
into a working application and MS just simply doesn't enter that equation any
longer. No sorry, been there done that and it simply didn't work out. MS can
b*te ME!
---
Stefan Berglund
Karl E. Peterson
> ...it simply didn't work out. MS can b*te ME!
Hey, make no mistake, I'm on *your* side! :-)
Michael C
> GREAT! But I'll still never look back. Sorry, but I've got several
> thousand
> lines of VB code (more realistically like 300-~500 hundred thousand) to
> convert
> into a working application and MS just simply doesn't enter that equation
> any
> longer. No sorry, been there done that and it simply didn't work out. MS
> can
> b*te ME!
What did that have to do with frontpage?
Michael
Ralph
Huh? Well I have the identical version (v4.0.2.6625)!
So thanks a lot, now instead of just complaining and going on with my
workarounds, which I was quite happy to do, I will now have to spend the
weekend piddling around to see if I can get it to work for me too.
<g>
-ralph
Karl E. Peterson
LOL! Sorry 'bout that, pal. Maybe I've just become complacent, given how
*abominable* it used to hack things up? What are you doing to get it to rewrite your
html? Could be it does it here, but I just don't trigger it properly?
Ralph
I am not doing anything unique.
I only use FrontPage for creating quick HTML. For example, if I need an HTML
version of a resume, chm, or Word doc (I know, I know, Word does that too,
but FrontPage is a 'better' designer. <g>)
I will open FrontPage and paste in something or start anew, and massage the
view. Save the HTML and as I usually like something a little leaner, I
reopen the html in another simple editor (codewright, notepro, notepad, VS,
...) and clean out all the extra junk and save it.
If I open the 'cleaned' HTML in FrontPage and change something - then bang!
There is all that extra garbage again. Which I then open in another editor
and ...
I have often thought of getting a Real HTML editor, but I never found
anything cheap that didn't mean getting a whole ton of functionaliy I would
likely never use. Besides all my html is associated with FrontPage. <g>
Like I said - I thought that was just the way it was. Now, I have to figure
why it is still doing that. Perhaps, if I reapply all the patches?
-ralph
Ken Halter
>
> I have often thought of getting a Real HTML editor, but I never found
> anything cheap that didn't mean getting a whole ton of functionaliy I
> would
> likely never use. Besides all my html is associated with FrontPage. <g>
Have you tried UltraEdit32 ($39.95)? They've recently added quite a lot to
their HTML support. Things like 'Color Selector', 'Style Builder', 'HTML
Tidy', 'GUID Generator', 'Artistic Style' and a whole pile of html form
related functions/features.
(http://www.ultraedit.com/index.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=1) fwiw, I
bought the "Life time registration" option. iirc, it was 20 bucks extra and
I've been getting free upgrades for 3 or 4 years now.
Since (iirc) you're a C dev too, UltraEdit32 can do quite a bit for you
there as well. It comes "pre-configured" to recognize C/C++ syntax. I'm not
positive but I think you can get it to compile the code (by launching the
compiler) and trap the compiler errors for you too.
> Like I said - I thought that was just the way it was. Now, I have to
> figure
> why it is still doing that. Perhaps, if I reapply all the patches?
>
> -ralph
--
Ken Halter - MS-MVP-VB - http://www.vbsight.com
DLL Hell problems? Try ComGuard - http://www.vbsight.com/ComGuard.htm
Please keep all discussions in the groups..
Karl E. Peterson
Could be I'm just used to it. But yeah, if you mess much with layout in the preview
mode, it "does stuff". I tend to only enter text there, and do my layout by hand in
the HTML mode.
YYZ
I have to 2nd this. I do a LOT of editing in UltraEdit, even for VB6.
You can dowload wordfiles that will do highliting and intellisense for
you (Stored Procedures are much better in a full featured editor vs.
Query Analyzer) among many other things like doing search and replace
across multiple lines, support for Regular Expressions in your
searches, Column mode editing, built-in ftp sftp support for editing
files (how many times have you edited your web files and then reloaded
your browser forgetting that you have to upload it in addition to
saving it?)
Add to that hex mode so you can really see what is in your files, and
finally code collapsing and expanding.
And I didn't even get into about 90% of the feature set -- that's just
what I use every day.
Matt
Stefan Berglund
in <Onj6xKHl...@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl>
>Could be I'm just used to it. But yeah, if you mess much with layout in the preview
>mode, it "does stuff". I tend to only enter text there, and do my layout by hand in
>the HTML mode.
My entire site is ASP so there is plenty of server side VBScript, client side
Javascript, and HTML all interspersed with database access and FrontPage does
what it thinks it should to the HTML and that drives me NUTS even when the
feature is specifically turned off.
UltraEdit allows me to work the way I prefer which is to write all the code in
the form and format I choose.
---
Stefan Berglund
Ralph
Ok. Did I misunderstand the earlier comments?
FrontPage 2000 v4 DOES add extra stuff to the HTML?
So there is no point in me trying to find a cure for this, correct?
Guess, I'll take a look at UltraEdit32.
-ralph
Karl E. Peterson
> Ok. Did I misunderstand the earlier comments?
>
> FrontPage 2000 v4 DOES add extra stuff to the HTML?
>
> So there is no point in me trying to find a cure for this, correct?
No, as I said, it doesn't add anything to my pages. And, like Stefan, I have a lot
of script included. I just don't get what the complaints are.
> Guess, I'll take a look at UltraEdit32.
Dunno anything about that one. If you're searching for text editors, though, I'd
definitely recommend you also check out TextPad.