How is Access Changing?

The key changes that Access 2002 brings to developers involve better integration with SQL Server, assisting Access's use in client-server situations, and enhanced XML support, which makes it easier to publish data to the Web and exchange it with other organizations. We'll look at these types of new functionality later in the book. However, it's worth remembering that, while we can use the powerful new leading-edge technologies, we can also choose to ignore them. Access continues to be widely employed as a humble repository of names and addresses on a standalone PC. This versatility is part of the reason for Access's success.

While Microsoft will probably wish to enhance Access's role in client-server architectures in the future, it will undoubtedly continue to protect its capabilities in the standalone situation, and it will be interesting to see how VBA fares alongside the new Microsoft .NET software development technologies and the Visual Basic .NET language in particular.