The Future of Access, DAO, and SQL Server

Copper Contributor

I am new to this community so please forgive me if this question has already been asked and answered.  My employer has a number of large MS-Access applications that use SQL Server for the backend.  The tables are linked, and the code makes extensive use of DAO for everything from DLOOKUP, Recordsets, and SQL Passthru.  I read recently that Microsoft was dropping support for DAO in ODBC 18.  I may have misunderstood it, but DAO is still the default method for connecting to data. Won't this break Access applications using DAO?


I would love to hear that this is a non-issue.  But if it is can someone suggest how to deal with this?  Rewriting everything to use ADO instead of DAO would be a nightmare.

 

2 Replies

@David_Richardson 

 

Arggh. Rumors are the bane of any Access developer's life. Why do people like to start and spread them?

 

Unfortunately, you seem to have run into one such unfounded rumor.

 

Guess what, ODBC 18 is based on using DAO. It's been available that way for some time. Here's the release announcement. There is nothing in it about DAO at all!

 

Who told you it was going to be changed? Why would they say that?

 

But, before we get all worked up, perhaps you can share a link to the source of this rumor, so others can see what might really be going on?

@George Hepworth 

 

Thank you for your reply.  That is comforting.  I will contact the person who gave me that questionable information and try to find out where they read it from and reply again.

Its all very confusing.  According to a post on the Access Blog, the Access RoadMap now only includes items expected to be release in the next 90 days.  And I just looked at it, and I can't look backward at previous posts... That's not much of a roadmap... that's more like driving down the road at night with only parking lights.   By the time you see something you have crashed into it.

It would be very nice when one group, like the SQL Server group for example decided to deprecate a feature that will affect other groups like Access  that we get a post saying how that will or won't impact users of that application.  Microsoft created ADP which was great, then they discontinued it without a migration tool.  They created ADO and deprecated DAO, then they turned around and brought DAO back.. the discontinued SQLOLEDB and now brought it back as MSOLEDBSQL (?)...  its all very confusing.  

I'm looking at migrating 32bit Access Apps to 64bit and am still not sure what I am facing there either.

Why can't Microsoft create versions of Office that are compatible with .NET instead of COM?

(Frustrated!)