Access for the Macintosh?

Will this application be ported over to the Mac in the future? Although
I can run it within Mac OSX Snow Leopard using Parallels or VMware
Fusion, its a bit slower than using a native Mac version.


Thanks,


John
--
Are there errors in the Bible? How should a church
conduct its worship services? Is drinking Alcohol a sin? Is racism wrong?
If you want to learn, get answers, and be able to defend
the faith, CERM is your place. http://www.cerm.info

While we're not privy to all of the decisions Microsoft makes, I'd be
surprised if they ever ported Access to the Mac.

--
Doug Steele, Microsoft Access MVP
http://I.Am/DougSteele
(no e-mails, please!)



"John" wrote in message
...
Will this application be ported over to the Mac in the future? Although
I can run it within Mac OSX Snow Leopard using Parallels or VMware
Fusion, its a bit slower than using a native Mac version.


Thanks,


John
--
Are there errors in the Bible? How should a church
conduct its worship services? Is drinking Alcohol a sin? Is racism wrong?
If you want to learn, get answers, and be able to defend
the faith, CERM is your place. http://www.cerm.info

John wrote:
Will this application be ported over to the Mac in the future? Although
I can run it within Mac OSX Snow Leopard using Parallels or VMware
Fusion, its a bit slower than using a native Mac version.


Thanks,


John

All good questions. I have no actual knowledge and this is purely my
speculation: The only reason why Access isn't included in the Office for
Mac is because Access used to use Windows component... The database
engine of Access, Jet, was not a part of Access per se for long time and
it was not until recent (just before 2007 release) that Access Team took
full ownership of the database engine and renamed it ACE as well
introducing new features though Jet has been "depreciated" for different
contexts.

Anyway, now that I don't see why they can't port the application,
especially in the light of the boohooey they made over the removal of
VBA from Office 2008 and subsequent reversal (adding VBA back into
Office 2011).

That said, I would believe the best chance of getting this is to make
sure the Access Team are aware of this - if you get enough requests in
they may consider this. You can at least try and use their email:
http://blogs.msdn.com/access/contact.aspx

Also, contact the MacBU:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/suggestions.mspx

Can't say they will respond or take it seriously but the way I figure
it, if enough Mac users request for it, it may move up on the priority
list, and besides talking to them directly is probably the best chance
of getting them to consider the idea at all.



Regarding the VM:

I develop Access solutions on my iMac and even run a SQL Server &
Sharepoint server instance on my Windows VM. I've found that having a
spare hard drive to separate the Windows VM help a lot in reducing the
I/O contention. Plenty of RAM also is good. I use VMWare Fusion but I
know that Parallels is also good - we've been benefiting a lot from the
intense competition between those two.

If you're also looking for alternatives, have a look:
http://www.utteraccess.com/wiki/inde...ther_Platforms

HTH.

Banana Banana@Republic wrote in news:4B92683F.7020301@Republic:

John wrote:
Will this application be ported over to the Mac in the future?
Although I can run it within Mac OSX Snow Leopard using Parallels
or VMware Fusion, its a bit slower than using a native Mac
version.


Thanks,


John

All good questions. I have no actual knowledge and this is purely
my speculation: The only reason why Access isn't included in the
Office for Mac is because Access used to use Windows component.
The database engine of Access, Jet, was not a part of Access per
se for long time

Jet was not part of Windows until Windows 2000. Before that, I don't
know if the Access team or the VB team owned the Jet engine, but I
suspect the former. I would speculate that the transfer of ownership
to the Windows team was part of the 2000-era plan to de-emphasize
Jet (and, it seemed at the time, to eventually remove Jet from
Access entirely).

and
it was not until recent (just before 2007 release) that Access
Team took full ownership of the database engine and renamed it ACE
as well introducing new features though Jet has been "depreciated"
for different contexts.

"Deprecated" is not the same as "depreciated."

And ownership of Jet was not transferred -- Jet 4 still remains
under the Windows team, frozen with no planned changes (except
necessary security fixes). ACE is a new name for a fork of Jet, Jet
4.5 or maybe Jet 5 (I'd vote for the former, since Jet 4 had more
changes in it relative to the previous version than ACE does
compared to Jet 4).

Anyway, now that I don't see why they can't port the application,
especially in the light of the boohooey they made over the removal
of VBA from Office 2008 and subsequent reversal (adding VBA back
into Office 2011).

Access is an order of magnitude more complex than Excel in regard to
VBA and the database engine. Also, Jet is intimately tied to the
Windows file system, so they might not have wanted to have to
troubleshoot getting it working on a non-Windows file system.

That said, I would believe the best chance of getting this is to
make sure the Access Team are aware of this - if you get enough
requests in they may consider this. You can at least try and use
their email: http://blogs.msdn.com/access/contact.aspx

Also, contact the MacBU:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/suggestions.mspx

Can't say they will respond or take it seriously but the way I
figure it, if enough Mac users request for it, it may move up on
the priority list, and besides talking to them directly is
probably the best chance of getting them to consider the idea at
all.

It's never ever going to happen. FileMaker already has the Mac
market sewn up. I don't think there was ever a point at which MS
could have ported Access to Mac and gotten the market share.

Regarding the VM:

I develop Access solutions on my iMac and even run a SQL Server &
Sharepoint server instance on my Windows VM. I've found that
having a spare hard drive to separate the Windows VM help a lot in
reducing the I/O contention. Plenty of RAM also is good. I use
VMWare Fusion but I know that Parallels is also good - we've been
benefiting a lot from the intense competition between those two.

A client of mine runs an Access app on her Mac Air with Parallels,
and it's sufficient from the standpoint of performance, but there
have been issues with interaction between Windows and OS X (e.g.,
the clipboard seems to come and go with various upgrades to
Parallels). I thought it was a great idea back then but have changed
my mind. And I have never been quite comfortable with the non-native
file system (though I guess that could be obviated with an
NTFS-formatted external drive).

--
David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
usenet at dfenton dot com http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/

David W. Fenton wrote:
Jet was not part of Windows until Windows 2000. Before that, I don't
know if the Access team or the VB team owned the Jet engine, but I
suspect the former. I would speculate that the transfer of ownership
to the Windows team was part of the 2000-era plan to de-emphasize
Jet (and, it seemed at the time, to eventually remove Jet from
Access entirely).

Interesting. I thought it was Windows component because it was a MDAC
component. But the core point remains- there was more than one teams
involved which complicated the evolution. At least that's what I hear
cited as explanation for Jet's stagnation between 2000-2007 version.

Access is an order of magnitude more complex than Excel in regard to
VBA and the database engine. Also, Jet is intimately tied to the
Windows file system, so they might not have wanted to have to
troubleshoot getting it working on a non-Windows file system.

I would agree that the porting Access is much bigger task than Excel and
I don't think it's all about VBA but also Access objects. We know that
Access controls is quite different from controls used in MFC or .NET or
whatever framework Windows programmers may use and I remember running
across an old post claiming that Access controls are not derived from
Windows controls, so getting those custom controls (if they are indeed
custom) will be much more of a challenge. Looking quickly in my Mac
Excel, I can create a UserForm so at least _part_ of work is done. How
much that is, I don't know but I'd wager not much!

However, I don't think file system is really a significant barrier
because many applications has solved this problem by specifying their
own format and writing/reading it in the same format across platform.
For example, you can port a MySQL data file between a little-endian
platform to a big-endian platform with no issue because MySQL libraries
enforce their own endianness in the file and read it using their own
specified endianness. There may be other solutions I haven't heard of,
but I would think that the filesystem is less of a problem.

Perhaps I'm incorrect on the details but at least we do agree that the
project will be far from trivial.

It's never ever going to happen. FileMaker already has the Mac
market sewn up. I don't think there was ever a point at which MS
could have ported Access to Mac and gotten the market share.

Never say never.

In my POV, I actually thought that Mac Office were predominantly used by
students & at home and actually expected the VBA removal to go all way
the forward. I was shunned & surprised that there was sufficient outcry
from Mac users that they had to reverse the removal of VBA. From what I
gather, there are in fact business users who may use Mac but need
compatibility with VBA-driven Excel spreadsheets or Word documents to
share with their Windows fellows.

If such cases exist in sufficient numbers to reverse a policy at MS, I
don't see why it can't hurt to at least ask for eventual port, even if
only a runtime for end users for cases where web applications isn't the
right or ideal solutions. I wouldn't be surprised if the answer is still
no, but what good does it do if the question is never ever asked of the
teams? I'm pretty sure they don't have a crystal ball, after all.

Furthermore, Mac Office has long used Entourage as a counterpart to
Outlook. I now understand they're dropping Entourage and working on
releasing an Outlook for Mac trying to achieve parity between those
platforms. Basically, it seems that MacBU are working on achieving
parity as opposed to merely having a comparable but fundamentally
different programs.

Regarding FileMaker, I wouldn't necessarily that they have the market
sewn up -- they only have by the virtue of having no serious competitor
on Mac OS X. Not really a compelling argument. Furthermore, unlike
Access, FileMaker isn't a part of any kind of bundle so to use it you
have to buy licenses. Have you seen their matrix? I'm having a hell of
time figuring out what I need to buy for what feature sets.

A client of mine runs an Access app on her Mac Air with Parallels,
and it's sufficient from the standpoint of performance, but there
have been issues with interaction between Windows and OS X (e.g.,
the clipboard seems to come and go with various upgrades to
Parallels). I thought it was a great idea back then but have changed
my mind. And I have never been quite comfortable with the non-native
file system (though I guess that could be obviated with an
NTFS-formatted external drive).

Interesting. Can't speak to Parallels, as I only use VMWare but I've
been very happy with it, seamlessly sharing clipboard &
dragging'n'dropping files between worlds. The most significant pain I
had was with the I/O contention which a spare hard drive fixed. I don't
get the concern about the filesystem as VM uses images which itself is
then formatted as NTFS. I've yet to see any kind of corruption or bad
things from filesystem even though I've been this for 3 years, and
considering that I do development against Access and SQL Server as well
experimenting with Visual Studio & Sharepoint on it, I'd like to think
I'd have already seen it by then.

Banana Banana@Republic wrote in news:4B92936B.3000802@Republic:

I thought it was Windows component because it was a MDAC
component.

I didn't mention this in my long followup, but this is a
particularly odd interpretation. The reason Jet was *removed* from
the MDAC was because it was a Windows component. So I'd say your
idea is just about as backwards as it could possibly be.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
usenet at dfenton dot com http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/

h, k:

"John" a écrit dans le message de groupe de
discussion : ...
Will this application be ported over to the Mac in the future? Although
I can run it within Mac OSX Snow Leopard using Parallels or VMware
Fusion, its a bit slower than using a native Mac version.
d

Thanks,


John
--
Are there errors in the Bible? How should a church
conduct its worship services? Is drinking Alcohol a sin? Is racism wrong?
If you want to learn, get answers, and be able to defend
the faith, CERM is your place. http://www.cerm.info