Dedicated database application in MS Access VBA is definitely one of the solutions most often chosen by customers. It is also often preferred solution by the client's IT department due to the fact that the Office environments is already installed on their workstations. We have a very flexible data import / export mechanism and an excellent reporting module at our disposal. Important when choosing a program in Access VBA is also the ability to run the application on the free Access Runtime and good cooperation with MS SQL Server, Excel and MS Office applications.
Most of Excel users, especially at the management level, have workbooks full of data and macros that they have developed over the years, which play a very important role in the process of consolidation and analysis of data, and, consequently, in the process of company management. We often deal here with many related Excel files, where if even one of them is deleted, the result of the final calculation may be broken. It is difficult to identify a source of such errors, because we often have to read the content of each connected file. Even more, a set of Excel files is sometimes shared on a network drive, and the data from the files are linked to a workbook that serves as our "main application" on workstations.
Many of you are surely wondering about the possibility of transferring your Excel "prototype" from Excel files to a dedicated database solution. Due to the great mechanisms of data import, the speed of preparation of the initial version of the program the Access database often becomes a natural choice here. Continuous support for Access and Office by the manufacturer is also important (subsequent versions of Access and Access Runtime and their update packages are still being released).
A professionally prepared database application in Access looks and behaves just like a standalone Windows program. It has its own menu (the Access designer elements will be hidden), forms, optimized queries, aesthetically prepared reports-printouts adapted to a specific paper format. The custom solution can work either with the full version of Access or with the free Access Runtime (no Access required).
I usually split the final version to two Access files: front-end (application) and back-end (data).
I encourage you to read the descriptions of several examples of my Access database application projects. Sample projects.
(PL version) Samodzielne aplikacje na bazie programu MS Access
