Access Cascade Virtual Conference Presenters
Friday & Saturday Octover 16-17 2020
Alison Balter
CREATING APPLICATIONS THAT YOUR USERS CAN’T WAIT TO USE
Many Access applications look just like that, Access applications. Have you ever considered creating applications that can’t be easily identified as Access applications? Access applications can be both visually appealing and very easy to use. It just takes some creativity and thought to make it happen. There are a few techniques that you can use to create spectacular user interfaces that will make your users’ experiences more enjoyable. This session will provide you with examples and ideas as to what you can do to start building applications that your users will clamor to work with, and will help them to get their jobs done more efficiently and effectively.
Alison Balter is the president of Best Database Solutions, a software development firm specializing in Access frontends with SQL Server on-premise and Azure SQL backends. Alison is a leading author of fifteen Microsoft Access books and SQL Server books, as well as a developer video training series on Access 2013, and a user video training series on Access 2013, all for SAMS Publishing. She also authored an Access Developer video series for Experts Exchange where she has published numerous articles.
Alison is a highly experienced developer and independent trainer. She loves to take highly technical material and explain it in a way that everyone can understand. Alison develops applications using Access and SQL Server. She specializes in teaching others how to develop Windows and Web applications. During her 28 years in the computer industry, she has trained and consulted many people in corporations and government agencies, including Southern California Edison, Shell Oil, Cisco, the US Marines, the US Navy, University of Southern California, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. On a personal note, Alison enjoys spending time with her children Alexis and Brendan. They all love to travel, ski (snow and water), and hike. Alison also likes walking, yoga, and weight lifting.
Anders Ebro
WRITING CODE THAT DOESN'T COMPILE (AND OTHER USEFUL ERROR HANDLING AND DEBUGGING TECHNIQUES)
Writing good applications is about more than providing a fancy-looking UI and ensuring great response times. It’s also about gracefully handling errors WHEN they occur, and deciding whether to shut down the application, try to rollback, or allow the user to continue (hoping for the best). Join me as I share my techniques for handling runtime errors, as well as several tips and tricks on how to debug more efficiently, and how we can convert runtime errors into compile time errors (and why that is important).
Originally an engineer with a degree in Applied Physics and hundreds of hours spent in a hi-tech clean room, Anders started working with Access in 2008 and hasn’t looked back since. Anders has made applications ranging from Requirement Management Tools, document management and tools to calculate financial depreciations. Anders has been an Access MVP since 2014.
On his blog TheSmileyCoder.com, you can find several code samples for treeviews, change tracking (similar to words track changes), and error/crash reporting.
Ebo Quansah & Joe Jimenez (Microsoft)
NEWS FROM THE ACCESS TEAM
Ebo and Joe will provide an update on where Access has been, some recently released features, and what they’re working on now.
Ebo is an end-to-end product manager of Microsoft Access, Microsoft’s database management system with over 11 million monthly active customers. Ebo works in close partnership with the team of Access software developers to manage their backlog, develop new features and prioritize the roadmap. He’s a driver of Access community connections through customer engagement and user group presentations.
Joe Jimenez
Software Engineer on the Access team
Born and raised in the Seattle area
BS in Computer Engineering from University of Washington
Greg Lindhorst
POWER APPS FOR ACCESS DEVELOPERS
Greg will introduce and show the latest features and capabilities of Microsoft Power Apps and how they relate to similar features in Access. He will also cover how Access developers can extend their Access/SQL Server applications to the web and mobile devices using low code Power Apps.
Greg Lindhorst is a Principal Program Manager on the Microsoft Power Apps team, responsible for the formula language, relational data access, and commanding. Having been a leader on the Access team during the 2010 and 2013 Office cycles, Greg is well versed in the strengths of both products and how to use them well together. Greg has also contributed to Visual Studio, VBA, SharePoint, and InfoPath, always gravitating to low code tools that enable anyone to create their own solutions and professional developers to save time and effort.
Karl Donaubauer and Philipp Stiefel
HOW (IN)SECURE IS ACCESS TODAY?
Access has not traditionally had the best security reputation in terms of data, code and designs. How justified is this image today, in the face of stricter rules, the increasing importance of data protection and growing threats of all kinds? And what can the developer do about it? We investigate this for Access frontends, ACE backends and SQL Server backends, among others:
- How secure is the database password? A live hacking attempt.
- What about the VBA password, ACCDE, Runtime version…?
- SQL or Windows authentication? Why? How? And how certainly not.
Karl Donaubauer is a database developer and certified Data Protection Officer from Vienna, Austria. He has given presentations on the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in Europe and the USA and does consulting on its practical implementation for customers in several European countries. He has been an Access MVP since 1998.
Philipp is working with Access and SQL Server for a 20 years now. For some of his clients (financial services) he does software development and consulting on application and data security in the conflict between government supervision/regulation and the protection of personal data.
Karl and Philipp have co-authored the whitepaper GDPR for Database Developers.
Kevin Bell
NOT YOUR FATHER’S MSGBOX
The MsgBox function has been a part of Access since version 1.0, and any experienced developer has called that function thousands of times, likely without giving it much thought. Yes, it has limited functionality, and looks a little dated, but it is simple and just works.
But what if you want to do something a little more complicated, like having custom buttons, radio buttons or a progress bar? Rather than creating a custom dialog box in Access with a form, you can tap into the Windows TaskDialog. The TaskDialog was introduced in the Windows Vista release and you have been interacting with it all the time in Windows.
In this session we will explore what TaskDialogs are, and how to implement them in Access. We will then explore a class library that can simplify many of the more advanced options, as well as exposing some optional custom controls.
Kevin started working professionally with Access in version 1.0 and has been working with SQL Server since version 4.21. For 15 years he ran a consulting firm in Colorado that specialized in creating custom data driven applications on Access and SQL Server. In 2008 Kevin joined the Microsoft Access Team as a test engineer, working on the Access 2010, 2013 and 2016 releases. Kevin is now helping companies migrate their Access and SQL Server backends to the cloud. In his free time Kevin enjoys traveling the world searching for the perfect pint of ale.
Luke Chung
POWER QUERIES AND DATA ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES
Luke will show several techniques for querying and analyzing data in Access, along with some specific methods that harness the power of SQL Server.
Luke founded FMS in 1986. He is the primary author of many FMS tools including Total Access Analyzer/Detective/Emailer/Statistics. He has also personally provided consulting services to a wide range of clients. Luke is a Microsoft Access MVP. He is a graduate of Harvard University with a Bachelor degree in Engineering and Applied Sciences, and a Master in Physical Oceanography.
Ynte Jan Kuindersma
THE POWER OF ACCESS AND WEB SERVICES
MS Access is well known for its ability to connect to data sources. But Web based data sources are a bit unknown to MS Access Office developers
During this session Ynte Jan will show you how to connect to Web API’s from Access and process the resulting JSON-response in VBA. Or post data to a webservice that sends a Text-messages on your behalf.
The examples he will demonstrate come from various Microsoft Online Services like Flow, Forms and Power BI.
Ynte Jan is a longtime developer of Microsoft Office applications with VBA and database-driven websites with ASP.NET.
He’s extremely solution-oriented and chooses his tools accordingly, be it Visual Studio, Access, SQL Server, Power BI or non-Microsoft tools. And always enthusiastic about “new things”, especially the MS Power Platform.
His goal is not programming in itself but making people and organizations more efficient in their daily work by means of some clever code.
Ynte Jan is not only a developer but also a trainer. He has conducted many trainings and presentations in the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. He presented at Karl Donaubauer’s Access Entwickler Konferenz and the .NET Entwickler Konferenz in Nürnberg, Germany for many years. In 2018 and 2019 he did presentations at the Dutch Access Developer Day.
He is a Power BI usergroup Volunteer in the Netherlands.