This blog was referenced in Jay Mathews' Washington Post article on February 2, 2012:
An outsider's wild teacher-evaluation idea

We at FMS have always been passionate about education and have provided a wide range of software solutions for the education community at all levels. Over the past several years, I've served on a Business and Community Advisory Board to the Superintendent of Fairfax County Public Schools. The public schools in Fairfax County are among the best in the nation with 180,000 students, making it larger than 12 states (by student population). I currently serve as the school board representative on the county's Information Technology Policy Advisory Committee (ITPAC) to the Board of Supervisors where we review major technology projects for the county.

Tying teacher performance to student achievement

At the beginning of the school year, I was appointed by the superintendent to participate in the county's Teachers Performance Evaluation Task Force. I'm one of two outsiders on this committee of 35, which includes some of the best teachers, principals and administrators across the county. To meet the waiver requirements of the Federal No Child Left Behind statute, the State of Virginia is requiring teacher performance to be tied to student performance. The state department of education is recommending a 40% weighting. They are not defining on what to base student performance, but state standardized test scores immediately come to mind.

As an outsider who has never been evaluated as a teacher, you can imagine my surprise to discover that while principals were judged by their school's student performance, student performance is not part of a teacher's performance evaluation in our county (and probably state). 0% Are you kidding me?

I've learned that there's a lot of angst around this. We all recognize that not all students are equal, and we don't want to have a system where teachers are evaluated solely on student performance because the incentive would be to only want to teach good students. Good students may perform well in spite of bad teaching, so raw scores are not a good indicator of performance. The fairest testing evaluation system seems to be the concept of "value added" measurements. That is, as a teacher, you'd have students coming in at a certain percentile, and leaving at another percentile at the end of the year. If your students move up, you've added value; if they've moved down, they would have done better with an average teacher. Sounds good in concept, but this has practical problems such as kids moving in and out of classes within the year, impacts on kids outside teacher control, whether the test is a good measurement, multiple teacher collaborative environments, etc.

That said, 0% is still not acceptable. Nor is scrapping the whole concept based on a few outliers or issues. Especially compared to the current evaluation system where a principal or administrator sits in a classroom for less than an hour each quarter, and huge challenges removing under-performing teachers who don't improve with training.

What have I learned?

I have been very impressed by individuals on the committee who get it. They understand that it's in their best interest and that of their profession to set high standards and meet them. Failure to do so not only harms students but undermines political and taxpayer support for public education. Change is coming from the federal level down, and taking a leadership role has long-term benefits.

In our fast-changing software world, we need people to constantly gain new skills and improve their productivity. Performance with old technology last year may not be relevant this year. We can't rewind each year and evaluate people on skills, client relationships, projects, etc. since so much changes each year. However, in education, the inputs each year are essentially the same (it'd be nice if student performance continually improved but that's not changing significantly). 

In spite of all the shortcomings, there are actually lots of objective measurements available to judge teacher performance. Almost all academic courses have existing pre-tests and post-tests for classes, and of course there are standardized tests. Those opposed to tying teacher performance to student achievement tend to be the ones least interested in providing any measurements for doing so. Propose alternatives if the existing ones are not acceptable. We can't treat teaching like an art that can't be measured.

As I pondered the issues around teacher performance, it always boiled down to philosophical issues. What does it mean to be a good teacher? Average class performance? Performance of the best kids? Raising the weakest kid? What if you can't get a kid to engage and be interested? Whose fault is that? We've always known there are great teachers who many people love yet others passionately hate. Who's best to judge, the students, administrators, peers, parents? Everything has shortcomings.

Who benefits and pays the most for good or bad teaching?

Over the holidays, I started thinking of teaching in a totally new way by considering: Who benefits and pays the most for good or bad teaching?

• Well, the students do of course, but no one is eager to have students evaluate teacher performance directly due to the many conflicts of interest.
• Parents? They certainly have a stake but being a parent myself and being around other parents, I would hardly consider parents qualified to really know what's going on with individual classes -- they should stay focused on evaluating their own children.
• Bureaucrats? Whether at the federal, state, or county level, I think they're hard pressed to come up with specifics for evaluating a particular teacher. They can design what should be taught and offer resources and training, but evaluations taking into account each school and class's unique situation is too detailed to do with broad requirements.

An alternative paradigm: 'Teachers are the Customer'

I've now come up with a whole new way to look at teaching. Essentially, a teacher receives kids from upstream, trains them, and then passes them off to their next downstream teacher. Looking at it more like a production line, the teacher is a huge beneficiary and victim of good and bad teaching, more than anyone else in the system other than the student. Teachers should be empowered to define expectations and evaluate their upstream teachers for their performance. Done properly, this creates a positive feedback loop and automatically addresses any unique issues within a school. After all, doesn't every teacher want to grow and deliver the best batch of students to their colleagues? Looking at it from this perspective, the teachers I discussed this with all knew exactly which teachers upstream from them they thought were good or bad overall and for different types of student personalities. In fact, several said there were teachers they would want or avoid sending their kids to. Wow, wouldn't it be great to include the input of downstream teachers in a teacher's evaluation? Isn't that an important person each teacher is serving? I felt I made a mental breakthrough.

Feedback from the administrators

So I introduced this to the Teacher Performance Task Force last week. And while they appreciated my new perspective, I didn't receive an immediate endorsement. They raised some issues such as teachers were not trained to do this, and how new teachers could properly evaluate more experienced teachers. I took their feedback under consideration.

At last night's meeting, I mentioned my idea to the superintendent. He liked my approach and asked how it was received within the task force. It then occurred to me that the feedback there was not acceptable. The concept that more junior downstream teachers would evaluate more senior upstream teachers may be too foreign and frightening for some to accept, but that's a resource which should be utilized. Training to do it properly is just training. You have to serve your customer. I'm not saying a teacher's entire performance is based on that or that experience isn't a factor (it is), but the next teacher plays a unique and important role in evaluating performance. 

What's next?

Overall, I appreciate the committee welcoming and encouraging my feedback and treating me as an equal, given my never having been a teacher. We all share a goal of improving public K-12 education with a fair teacher evaluation system, and I recognize I'm naive about these actual evaluation processes. They've asked for my out-of-the box thinking and applying best practices from outside the education community. That's how I reached my teacher focused paradigm. Teachers have the most at stake with creating an evaluation system that at the very least, identifies and removes poor performers that training fails to improve. Teachers are very concerned with the new evaluation system, so empowering them in the process should be positively received. In the end, teachers pay the highest price if improvement doesn't occur. First in their day-to-day classroom efforts dealing with under-prepared students, and longer term their professional reputation and taxpayer support. Removing under-performing teachers, doesn't even reduce headcount. It gives an opportunity to someone who is eager to teach in the school system and has above average promise (if not, that's a recruiting problem). Beyond that, the evaluation system should focus on professional development to help teachers identify areas of improvement. There will probably be a different process for evaluating rookie teachers who are expected to gain skills initially versus more experienced teachers who should already have those skills and falling back to "rookie" level would not be considered acceptable.

We have a few more meetings before the task force needs to finish and make its recommendations. They are hoping to put the new system in place for next school year. Wish me luck.

Luke Chung
President
FMS, Inc.

As a resource for the Microsoft Access community, we've updated our comprehensive list of Microsoft Access Error Codes and Descriptions for Microsoft Access 2010.

There are PDF reports of the error codes and descriptions, and a database containing a with each error code and its different descriptions access MSAccess versions 2010, 2007, 2003, 2002, and 2000.

Here's the detailed HTML page that lists every Microsoft Access 2010 error code with its description and for some of them, hyperlinks to resources that address the error and/or provide more information on the topic. Since this page is so large, please be patient while it loads.

This resources is part of our Microsoft Access Developer Help Center where you'll find lots of other information to improve your skills. Hope this helps!

I've recently had several discussions with developers (not technology specific) about how they can be perceived as higher level professionals in enterprise environments.

One of the key steps is making sure you understand the larger needs of the organization. While it's nice to create solutions quickly and on your own, IT managers look beyond the current solution or technology to see how it will be supported and enhanced over time. Developers who create solutions that do not follow industry or organizational standards are a risk. While it may be personally satisfying to do things on your own, that's not a perspective shared or encouraged by organizations worried about what happens when you're no longer available to help. After all, they can all of a sudden become responsible for your work and the next person may not be so pleased with your "creativity".

It's important to mitigate that risk by reaching out and using resources to help you be more productive. Adopt processes that address the long term requirements of a solution to support its entire lifecycle. This begins with understanding best practices for creating solutions and avoiding common mistakes. Within the application, there should be consistent coding, error handling and commenting standards, the use of source code libraries or shared code across applications, etc. It should also include system documentation, version control, disaster recovery plans, quality assurance and test plans, deployment processes, etc. Issues of security, reliability, scalability, and maintainability become more and more important as your solution becomes more successful.

We at FMS face these issues all the time, which directly resulted in the creation of many of our commercial products. Professional developers in enterprises use lots of 3rd party tools to be more productive. Take advantage of what we have to offer so your organization addresses these critical needs at a fraction of the cost of you building it yourself. In fact, using industry products and standards makes you more of a professional, not less.

Here are some resources that can help Microsoft Access developers get to the next level:

• Microsoft Access within an Organization's Database Strategy
• Microsoft Access Developer Help Center
• Microsoft Access Errors, Suggestions, and Performance Tips
• Microsoft Access Products for Users, Developers, and Database Administrators

Enterprise organizations understand the investment that's necessary to support their solutions and professionals because the work is so valuable and mistakes so expensive. For your personal growth, it's important to spend time learning on your own whether it's through online resources or books. Learning from others is the next level which can be in person and through online groups. Formal training can also help. Hiring consultants for their specific expertise can be quite useful in bringing in new ideas and solutions, and teaching you additional skills and best practices. Finally, products that can leverage your knowledge and skills, or automate manual steps, have a tremendous return on investment both short-term and long-term. Take advantage of all these resources for your own sake and because other professional are.

Good luck!

We are very pleased to offer a Free Preview of Total Access Detective for Microsoft Access 2010.

Ever wonder what changed between your database versions or the difference between two similar objects or tables? Total Access Detective is the premier program to detect differences between Microsoft Access databases, objects, code, and data.

Available as a Microsoft Access add-in, Total Access Detective lets you easily find differences between objects in your currently opened database. Easily find changes in your table and field definitions, object properties, controls, report sections, embedded macros, regular macros, modules, and data. The results are available to you in reports and on screen which can be copied or exported.

You can also compare any two databases to easily find exactly how they changed. Your databases can be an ACCDB, MDB or ADP database format. The new version lets you create separate databases for each comparison so you can easily manage multiple databases and changes over time.

We've added many new features to make Total Access Detective more powerful than ever.

Manually comparing databases for design and data differences is prone to error. Discover why so many Microsoft Access professionals rely on Total Access Detective to improve their productivity by quickly identifying the changes in their work.

Tell us how it works for you!

I had the privilege and honor to be one of 18 small business owners from across the country to participate in the Senate Finance Committee’s Small Business Roundtable yesterday.

Convened by the senior tax policy advisors of the Senate Finance Committee’s two chairmen, Senators Max Baucus (D-Montana) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), it was their desire to learn how tax policy helps, hurts, and influences small business owners.

The meeting was held in the Dirksen building of the Finance Committee room with the big elevated dais under the Senate seal. We were sitting around a rectangular set of tables on the floor of the chamber with the staffers on one side and the business owners around the other three.

Rather than politicians, these were the senior staffers of the Senators and were the people actually responsible for understanding the issues and writing the legislation that gets passed.

Unlike the political rancor by their bosses the last few months, these people from both parties were sincerely interested in crafting legislation that would benefit small businesses. After all, every politician has small business constituents, and wants to help us create more jobs. They were also delighted to hear our perspective which is very different from the interests of large and multinational businesses that dominate lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill.

Led by Holly Porter and Jim Lyons, we discussed how tax policies impact our businesses and what we would like to change. The meeting lasted for three hours and was very interesting. It was a nice cross-section of American businesses. The 18 businesses came from 11 states. Among us, three were technology firms, there were a few manufacturing companies, retailers, industrial services, and professional services firms. Most of the firms, like FMS, have been around for decades. 

Because of the diversity, different businesses wanted and needed different types of tax legislation, but overall there was general agreement:

1. Business owners are too busy trying to generate revenue and deliver services to focus too much on tax policy and special credits or incentives.
2. The tax code is too complicated and no one understands what’s in it. Our accountants file our taxes and whatever benefits or credits exist, we may capture them if we’re lucky, but well after the decisions were made. As a group, we’d prefer lower tax rates with fewer deductions.
3. The cost of compliance is too high and too complicated. Personally, I’d like to see a national sales tax and never have to file a tax return again. After all, companies use government services even if they don't make a profit -- or a profit in the United States. Just dreaming here....
4. The incentives that are added to the tax code get changed so often that they are hard to know and use. There were requests to have whatever policies implemented to be permanent or at least have a three year life so that people can understand and actually make decisions to use them. The staff immediately mentioned this wasn’t possible because today’s Congress can’t constitutionally obligate a future Congress. Hopefully they’ll recognize the maybe you have it or maybe you don’t legislation doesn’t help businesses with long-term planning. 
5. Due to significant changes in income or losses from year to year, and investment/sales cycles that don't fit neatly in a fiscal year, it would be desirable to average income across multiple years. That would be fairer and more aligned to long term growth in a progressive tax system that assumes relatively level annual incomes.
6. For more asset intensive businesses, the small business rules (Section 179) for immediate expensing of equipment that would otherwise be depreciated is important for cash flow and creating jobs. For those who aren’t familiar with this, when businesses purchase certain “long-life” equipment, the amount paid can’t be immediately deducted from income and have to be deducted and depreciated over time. The problem is that the company has to pay taxes on income which doesn't deduct all the money spent on the equipment. Basically, you have to pay taxes on income that was never received. Section 179 helps with that. While in our firm, hardware is a small portion of our expenses so the impact is minimal either way, in manufacturing, it’s often critical. Personally, I’ve always hated the idea of paying taxes on money that wasn’t received even though you make it up in the following years. Just seems unfair when one is investing in the future of our people and company.
7. Finally, there was a sense that no matter what legislation is passed, the big multi-national corporations are the primary beneficiaries of all the deductions with their teams of lawyers and accountants. And that small businesses end up footing the bill. Why should we pay higher taxes than General Electric? Far better to reduce the complexity and deductions, and give us a lower tax rate. There was also a general sense that large companies aren’t paying their fair share, shipping jobs overseas, and not investing in the local economies. One gentleman suggested that there should be preferential capital gains tax rates for investments directly in real businesses versus financial speculation on the stock markets. Makes sense to me.

They asked us if there was anything they could do with tax law to directly decrease unemployment and we didn’t offer many suggestions. In fact, the feedback was overwhelmingly negative on some of the attempts to improve employment such as the HIRE Act and reducing employee FICA taxes. They were considered to have zero impact on any hiring decisions. The consensus was that we need increased demand for our products and services, and that we’ll create jobs if we see opportunities to increase profits. Unfortunately, that may beyond the power of tax legislation. Anything they can do to reduce the complexity of compliance and tax rates would be welcome.

Overall, it was a great experience to meet the people who craft the legislation we live under, and help them better understand what really impacts our businesses. I’m glad to see they reached out to small business owners and hope they’ll do what they can to help us remain competitive and successful.

FMS is pleased to announce the release of Total Visual CodeTools 2010, the most popular commercial Visual Basic for Application (VBA) and Visual Basic 6 (VB6) coding product for the Microsoft Office/Access community.

Total Visual CodeTools is an add-in that is integrated with the module editor of all VBA platforms such as Microsoft Office, Access, Excel, Outlook, Word, etc. It offers a wide range of utilities to help developers become more productive when creating new code, taking over existing projects, and delivering more robust solutions.

"Total Visual CodeTools is by far my favorite third-party product," says Alison Balter, author of Mastering Access Desktop Development, instructor and developer. "Total Visual CodeTools helps you get your job done more quickly and allows you to focus on the fun and exciting aspects of application development. My favorite feature is the Code Cleanup. If you've ever inherited a code-intensive database, you'll appreciate this feature."

Total Visual CodeTools 2010 includes many enhancements over its predecessor for Office 2007. In addition to supporting VBA in Office 2010, there are new options and better performance for Code Cleanup and Delivery, enhancements to many Code Builders including the Message Box Builder, Recordset Builder, Select Case Builder, and SQL Text Builder. New features simplify the replacement of existing error handling code, and the user interface is enhanced to support Windows 7. There’s also improved support for international languages and operating systems.

"We are very pleased to ship Total Visual CodeTools 2010," said Luke Chung, President of FMS. "This version represents our seventh major release of this product and our continued support of the VBA and VB6 developer communities."

Edwin Blancovitch of Advanced Developers in Puerto Rico adds, "I really recommend it. This tool definitely increased my productivity, allows for code optimization and quality, and best of all reduced my costs."

"I really love Total Visual CodeTools," said Peter Weinwurm of Axium Canada. "I am completely blown away by how much the products in the Total Access Developer Suite can do, and how much time they will save me."

Product Information

Total Visual CodeTools supports all Visual Basic 6.0 and VBA development environments including all versions of Microsoft Office from Office 2000 through 2010. Additional information is available on these web pages:

• Main product page
• New features
• Free trial

Licensing and Pricing

Total Visual CodeTools is available via ESD and also comes with a professionally printed 164 page user manual and CD.

Total Visual CodeTools is licensed on a per developer basis. A single license is $299. Existing customers can upgrade for $199. It is also included as a standalone product and is part of the Total Access Developer Suite, Total Access Ultimate Suite, and Total Visual Developer Suite.

Total Visual CodeTools can be purchased directly from FMS, corporate resellers, and international distributors. All FMS products include a 30-day money back guarantee.

Press Release

Mercer Consulting, a global provider of human resources services, chose FMS to enhance an existing application for deployment to their multinational clients. See how they leveraged our commercial software development experience to create a professional quality solution with many enhancements including language localization:

"Although we had ambitious goals and increased the scope mid-stream, this was still one of the smoothest software development projects I've seen. FMS's requirements gathering was flexible and efficient, with helpful quick prototyping to facilitate our decision making. The technical development work was always fast, creative but focused, and thoroughly tested....And project management was a breeze, with thorough monthly tracking and the project coming in ahead of schedule and under budget."

Read more in our joint Case Study: Leveraging our Commercial Software Development Expertise

Additional information on our Microsoft Access Development Services 

We are very pleased to announce the creation of our new (and free) Microsoft Access Developer Help Center. It contains our many popular papers with tips and techniques for becoming a better Microsoft Access developer, programmer, and administrator. It covers the whole life cycle from strategic planning of how MS Access fits, database and table design, form and report tips, programming do's and don'ts, deployment, best practices, performance tips, etc.

This follows our recent Microsoft Access Query Help Center that's been well received, and our Microsoft Access to SQL Server Upsizing Help Center. 

We welcome any feedback on what we've put there and suggestions for additional content that would be helpful.

Microsoft released service pack 1 (SP1) of Office 2010 late June 2011. Information on the update and download instructions are in their Knowledgebase article 2460049. The KB article was last updated yesterday.

Unfortunately, we and some of our customers have encountered problems after installing the update. While we haven't had exhaustive testing with SP1 and tentatively believe everything is okay with the 32 bit version, there are definitely compatibility problems with the 64 bit version of Access 2010. In particular, ACCDE files created in the original release of Access 2010 64 bit no longer run under SP1. This error message appears:

The database cannot be opened because the VBA project contained in it cannot be read. The database can be opened only if the VBA project is first deleted. Deleting the VBA project removes all code from modules, forms and reports. You should back up your database before attempting to open the database and delete the VBA project.

Obviously, with an ACCDE file, unlike an ACCDB file, you can't modify the VBA project. It requires rebuilding the ACCDE from SP1.

So far, we have not experienced problems with our 32-bit ACCDE files between the original and SP1 Access 2010 versions. Some of these issues have been noted in these articles:

• Microsoft Access Development Team Blog: Using 64-bit Access 2010? You may want to wait on SP1
• TechNet report: Access 2010 - Wizards not working after installing SP1

This is a Microsoft KB article discussing the problem which impacts ACCDE, MDE, and ADE files created with Access 2010, 64-bit. For us, when we create MDE and ADE files for use across multiple versions of Access, we've used Access 2003 so that still works fine. The only time we use Access 2010 64-bit version is when we're creating an ACCDE specifically for Access 2010 64-bit users.

This issue impacts two of our products' Access 2010 64 bit versions:

• Total Access Emailer 2010
• Total Access Statistics 2010

We have created new builds of these products and are undergoing internal testing and QA to verify they work with SP1. When ready, we'll release free updates of these products to existing customers. If you need it earlier, please contact our support team. Note that this does not impact the Access 2010 32 bit version.

Regardless of whether you are using our products or not, please be aware of the compatibility issues if you're using the 64-bit version of Access and deploying ACCDE files. You will need to make sure your Access version is in sync with your users' version. Unfortunately, this bug occurs before any of your code can run to provide instructions to your users or offer a graceful exit.

Not sure what version you have installed? Run Access, select the File menu, and click on Help. The version informing is shown on the right side and will show (SP1).

Since our beginning in 1986, we've served large organizations with our leading-edge solutions designed to help people make better data-based decisions. Whether it's on PC desktops, networks, the Internet, and more recently mobile devices, we recognize you need to have the data you need, where and when you need it, in a format that helps you make decisions and avoid mistakes. We also understand the challenges of balancing application functionality with the cost and requirements of regulators, auditors, and enterprise IT.

Our general philosophy is to quickly create sophisticated solutions built on a solid database foundation. Designed to scale and expand, our solutions evolve as your business demands it. Sometimes we can anticipate future needs in our design, but more often, the application evolves based on unforeseen events such as changes in the economy, regulations, new products and customers, or competitive pressure. With our staff of experienced developers, we can quickly adapt our solutions to meet your needs. Rapid development and deployment, fail quickly and cheaply, and water and nurture the seeds that grow and justify additional investment.

We understand the needs of large organizations and deliver the quality you demand. FMS products are used by tens of thousands of customers in over 100 countries including 90 of the Fortune 100.

Learn more about our experience and services to large organizations in our new page Consulting Services and Custom Software Solutions for Large Businesses.

To find out how we can help your organization, please contact us for a Risk-Free Assessment.

Microsoft Access Queries are among the most powerful features of MS Access. We have created a new resource center to make it easy to review all our papers related to Microsoft Access Queries. These original works offer tips and techniques aren't found anywhere else. They will help you maximize your use of Microsoft Access queries to better analyze and understand your data. 

In the Microsoft Access Query Help Center you will find papers covering:

Retrieving Records

• Microsoft Access Query Tips and Techniques (SQL and VBA)
• Microsoft Access and SQL Server Database Normalization Tips
• Using a Microsoft Access Crosstab Query to Create Monthly SUmmery Reports without Code and modifing data
• Difference Between "Unique Values" (SELECT DISTINCT) and "Unique Records" (SELECT DISTINTROW) in Microsoft Access Queries
• Finding Records in One Table but Not Another with "Not In" Queries

Modifying Data

• Microsoft Access Update Query, SQL Syntax, Examples and Errors
• Microsoft Access Delete Query, SQL Syntax, Examples and Errors
• This Recordset is not updateable: Dealing with Non-Updateable Microsoft Access Queries
• Suppress Warning Messages When Running Microsoft Access Action Queries Programmatically in VBA
• Returning the Number of Records or Rows Affected by an Action Query in Microsoft Access with VB6/VBA

Let us know what additional related topics you'd like us to add in the future.

There is a persistent myth that Microsoft Access Jet databases can only support 20 or so users. Here's my response to a recent inquiry:

I question the data for the limitations on the number of Access users being around 30. We've run many tests and have never seen that kind of degradation in performance. It's a myth from Access 2.0 days that was eliminated with Access 97 over a decade ago. A well designed Access database can support hundreds of users. Of course, what matters is the number of simultaneous users, and what they're doing.

If everyone is just viewing data or entering data into a table, that takes very little work and a large number of people (well over 200) can be supported. People cannot type faster than what Access can handle. If they are all running massive reports and queries with data updates, that can still be done but performance would be an issue which applies to any technology, so testing and optimization would be necessary.

If the back-end database is in SQL Server rather than an Access/Jet database, the number of users can be practically unlimited if each user has their own front-end copy of the Access application. Performance issues still apply based on what they are doing. In some cases SQL Server is slower than Access, so it is important to understand the situation before thinking SQL Server is the answer.

All that said, any Access application that is distributed to others with shared data should be a split database design. Here are a few resources we've written:

• Splitting Microsoft Access Databases to Improve Performance and Simplify Maintainability
• Significantly Improve the Performance of Microsoft Access Databases with Linked Tables

We also offer a commercial product for enterprises, Total Access Startup, that helps with the distribution of databases to each user's desktop and launching the right version of Access.

Read our new paper on using Terminal Services and RemoteApp to Extend Microsoft Access and Other Windows Applications Over the Internet.

One of the features of Microsoft Windows Server that is increasingly popular over the last few years is the Terminal Server and more recently RemoteApp. With few exceptions, most Windows applications work within a Terminal Server environment. By doing so, your investment in existing applications, and the power of Windows desktop features and interoperability, can be exposed over the Internet.

This is particularly powerful for database applications such as Microsoft Access since it eliminates the need to send large amounts of data over the Internet for Access to process and users do not need to install Access on their machine. With RemoteApp, you can set up a terminal server experience where your users can only run your application without running other applications or browsing your network. Easily web enable all your desktop applications.

The recent release of Windows 7, Service Pack 1 (and Windows 2008 R2) breaks backward compatibility for Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects (ADO). That means if your .NET, Visual Basic 6, VBA/Office, C++ or other program includes an ADO library reference, and you compile your application or COM object on a Windows 7 SP1 machine, it will not run when deployed to an earlier environment containing the existing ADO object.

An error you may encounter is: Unable to cast COM object of type 'System.__ComObject' to interface type 'ADODB.Connection'.

Basically, the interface IDs for files like MSADO28.tlb and MSADO15.dll have changed. For more information on this, read the Microsoft KnowledgeBase article 2517589 entitled An ADO application that is re-compiled on a Windows 7 Service Pack 1-based computer does not run on down-level operating systems

This is not an issue in Visual Studio .NET if you are using ADO.NET. But if you are using ADO, it is an issue. For .NET specific issues, see KnowledgeBase article 840667: You receive unexpected errors when using ADO and ADO Multidimensional in a .NET Framework application

Note that applications built on the original version will run fine on Windows 7, SP1. You just can't go backwards. Watch out!

Please join our new FMS Facebook page to get our latest information directly in Facebook.

Be sure to click on the "Like" icon to connect to us. We look forward to creating a community of our customers, and people interested in sharing their experiences with the latest in our industry.

You can also connect to our Twitter account.