CODEWITHSUNDEEP
asp.netms-access
Saturn K
Saturn K

Reputation: 2785

How do I display Access 2010 forms within an ASP.NET Application?

It's dirt-easy to create forms in MS Access 2010 that go off of Access tables. My question is, how do I display those forms on an ASP.NET Web Application. Is there a component that can do this easily?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1895

Answers (1)

Albert D. Kallal
Albert D. Kallal

Reputation: 49039

If you talking about Access 2010, then web forms created with A2010 are in fact standard .net forms and they are based on zammel (XAML). So no conversion of any type is required for these forms. However, these web forms do require what is called Access Web Services. They can even be opended with VS - but this is much rife with the standard pitfalls of a 4GL system.

Access web services currently are available from some hosting providers such as www.AccesHosting.com. You can also publish Access web forms to SharePoint 2010 (Enterprise edition).

Last but not least, you can also publish Access Web forms to office 365 which is VERY low cost hosting that starts are $6 per month.

The only real issue with these Access Web forms is there is no conversion utility that will convert existing web forms. So while Access can be used to create web forms and publish them, they cannot contain VBA (have to use macros which gets converted to JavaScript).

Here is a video of what these new web forms look like. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU4mH0jPntI

Note how at the half way point I switch to running the application 100% in a standard web browser. So these web applications do not require Silverlight or even any ActiveX download – as such these forms work fine on most standard web browsers – including my iPad abnd smartphone.

For an existing VBA application you do not have any choices here. No more then something that will convert FoxPro, VB6, or a c++ client based program. So there never been any reasonable technology I known that lets you convert desktop software to web based as your asking for. So how the basic concepts of the computer industry has worked for the last 30 to 50 years has not changed and running different software on complete different systems never been possible.

However, as noted, Access 2010 does have web forms creating ability now.

In the case of existing Access applications then one possible and often used solution is to use what is called Remote Desktop and terminal services. In fact "terminal services" and remote desktop can be used inside of a web browser. This in fact means you do utilize the windows desktop through a browser. This will however require the user to download an ActiveX component or in the case of using any recent editions of windows then the windows remote desktop client is installed by default and you don't really need a web browser for this setup to work.

Upvotes: 3

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