Microsoft Access in AS/400 Shops??? Why/why not???

[frankgw@adelphia.net]

Microsoft Access in AS/400 Shops??? Why/why not???

Susan - Having jumped into this fray, please let us know to what extent Microsoft products have penetrated your shop. What is the status of Word, Outlook, Excel and Access?

[frankgw@adelphia.net]

Microsoft Access in AS/400 Shops??? Why/why not???

Chuck - Having jumped into this fray, please let us know to what extent Microsoft products have penetrated your shop. What is the status of Word, Outlook, Excel and Access?

[nycsusan@hotmail.com]

Microsoft Access in AS/400 Shops??? Why/why not???

Frank wrote: "Susan - Having jumped into this fray, please let us know to what extent Microsoft products have penetrated your shop. What is the status of Word, Outlook, Excel and Access?" I work for a very large company with COE (Consistent Office Environment) standards. In plain English, and in a fantasy world, COE means that all of us are supposed to have the same products on our desktops. Microsoft Office products are the standard, which means Word, Excel, Outlook. The only variation is some of us run Windows 2000, while most are still on Windows 98. My old account created their own time tracking program using Access, but that was trashed because the corporation now mandates that every account use a standard time tracking programs. A couple of years ago, the various account could do as they pleased. But now, the company expects everyone to fall into formation, unless there is a very compelling reason why they can't.

[frankgw@adelphia.net]

Microsoft Access in AS/400 Shops??? Why/why not???

Bob - You still haven't answered the question. What word processor or word processors does the Eagle fly with these days?

[frankgw@adelphia.net]

Microsoft Access in AS/400 Shops??? Why/why not???

What role should Microsoft Access play in an AS/400 shop??? Please document your thoughts right here for the rest of us to ponder. The question of should we encourage PC users to learn and use Access has been raised in my shop. It's tempting to say - O.K. you PC freaks, if you want to learn it and use it, go ahead and do it. Just don't bother us AS/400 types with your darn PC questions. Hmmm - maybe there is a better way to approach it. Just let this old AS/400 bigot know what you think it should be. Thanks. ---------------------------------------------------- More clues. This shop already has many Word, Outlook and Excel users. Most of their PCs do not even have Access installed.

[mhajny@thompsonfoods.com]

Microsoft Access in AS/400 Shops??? Why/why not???

Frank, I have developed applications on the AS/400 for 10 years and professionally with Access for about two. Once you get the configurations down with your ODBC drivers Access can do wonderful things with AS/400 data, and its much faster to create ad hoc reports from as/400 data with access than it is to create them on the AS/400 (for me anyway). On the downside, Access does have its faults. I use Access 97 and once in a while I get strange errors that disappear when I repair-compact the mdb and reboot the machine. In older versions of access this occurred much more frequently, but I cannot speak for Access 2000. (this is why we dont run mission critical apps on the pc). If my shop asked me to provide them with a low cost gui reporting tool I would lean towards crystal reports or something of the like. Of course I would still use access, but I dont have the time to support 15 or so "rookies" in the office trying to learn its complexity. Hope this helps. Mark