Access JumpStart 2.0 | Email Archive
A Rapid Development Framework for Microsoft Access
Email Archive
From Overwhelmed to Intentional
As you may have noticed, I haven't been sending emails much lately. So what has happened? First off, I'm ok physically. I have been a bit overwhelmed lately with things to do both for clients as well as family and friends, which is my own darn fault. As I consider...
Breaking the Triangle: Can You Really Have It All in Access Software Projects?
I've heard in many of the sources I've read that there are 3 dials for projects and optimizing for 1 or 2 of the dials will affect the other(s). The dials are: Cost (Expensive vs Inexpensive) Quality (High with lower bugs, Low with more bugs or inefficient code)...
VS Code, AI, and Me: A Beginner’s Tale of Plugins and Possibilities
In my continuing AI adventures, I have decided to attempt to use a tool called Augment Code which can analyze and index my code base via Visual Studio Code. Visual Studio Code: An open source Code Editing IDE for multiple languages with a large number of extensions....
Access Report Sorcery: Making the Last Page Play by Different Rules
I had a customer with an Access database who wanted me to tack a page with completely different info and format to the last page of a main report. This main report would run in an automated fashion and is emailed to a list of users and it is also able to be run...
Persistent Intelligence (In Progress): Exploring AI Tools for Managing and Modifying Access Codebases
Today, I was thinking more about using AI and Access. Particularly VBA, but I'd also like to be able to see if AI can understand my exported Access object files (I'm using OASIS SVN to export the Access objects currently, but there are other apps that can do that)....
Don’t let a “perfect storm” get you down!
Following up my message yesterday, I had big plans to get some more client work done, but as it happened, I wasn't able to accomplish what I initially set out to do. Why? A "perfect storm" in meteorology is when multiple weather patterns converge to create a...
When life gets overwhelming… choose to stop.
Right now I've got a lot going on. You may have noticed I have stopped writing daily posts. It's been going on my todo list every day, but I just am feeling too drained by the end of the day and my brain just isn't coming up with things to write very easily. So, what...
User Defined Types in Access VBA
I was working on a function in a customer database that returned a customer name. The function looked in a CSV file that was being selected to look through it and find the name in the CSV data. There was a new requirement to look up more information from the file. I...
Allowing AI to see your whole database
Yesterday, I had found a method for CoPilot to see an entire database. In order to do this, all the objects of the database need to be exported to text files. This is an undocumented and unsupported feature of Access, but it has been there for a long time and is what...
Playing with CoPilot for analyzing an Access database
Just now I was thinking it sure would be nice if CoPilot could analyze my Access database and give me tips on things. So I tried an experiment. I asked CoPilot if it could create databases or if I could upload my database for it to analyze. It thought it would be able...
Mastering CROSS JOIN in SQL Server: From Cartesian Products to Reusing Calculated Columns
I had never heard of a cross join, but was exploring ways to put some complex calculations into other calculations in a nested fashion on SQL server. SQL does not allow you to reference a calculated column to calculate another column, but this method allows you to add...
Simplifying Complex SQL Logic with CTEs in SQL Server
This was the technique I ended up using in my query which inspired this article. Again, I had help from Copilot to author the following article about using the CTE (Common Table Expression) syntax: When writing SQL queries, especially those involving multiple layers...
Quick Links
About
Our goal is to help people simplify their business by providing software products to streamline their work.
Contact
(630) 423-4994