Tony's Microsoft Access Blog : Software Development

The USA software patent business is indeed insane

Tony — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 21:35:47 GMT

Amazon introduces pre-emptive returns for unwanted gifts

“The patent is for a system using “gift conversion” logic to allow users to set up filters for unwanted gifts: anything bought to be shipped to them that triggers the filter can be replaced with a specific similarly-priced gift, an item chosen at random from a wishlist, or the equivalent value in vouchers.”

I’m thinking. “Duhhh, that’s obvious.”

The USA patent system is basically trying to make money. And the patent lawyers are, of course, encouraging this.

The awesome, and free, MZTools utility

Tony — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 01:14:02 GMT

Every time I do any work in VBA I’m very grateful for the, free for us, MZTools utility. Among the many features the ones I really like are:

The find screen as it displays a list of all the lines of code containing your search string. You aren’t forced to go through them one by one like the VBA/VB6 default find screen. Then just click on the line and you’re there. And you can do a replace from that screen.
The Procedure Callers button. Rather than having to do a find just click inside a VBA subroutine/function and you will quickly see where it’s called. Sweet!
Add Error Handler which places the module name in the msgbox at the bottom of your subroutine/function. Note you can customize this.

Hmm, this blog entry made me look at all the buttons. I’ll do my best to use some of the of the other features.

Sigh

Tony — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 06:49:46 GMT

If there’s one thing I hate it’s looking at my excellent code written a year or two ago and thinking “Why on earth did I do something so stupid?”

10 Things To Improve Your Development Career

Tony — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 01:38:29 GMT

Interesting blog posting at 10 Things To Improve Your Development Career

During high school I tool a programmable logic controller course at the local college. I was the youngest person in there by about 15 or 20 years. The most useful part though was learning about how NAND gates and such worked which are the basic building blocks of CPUs. I also played around a bit with assembler.

I also don’t own a TV.

The Next Y2K

Tony — Wed, 12 May 2010 04:50:21 GMT

The Next Y2K

Karl talks about 2038 which we can all ignore, right? After all it’s a Unix problem and it’s about 28 years away? Not quite. At the very least be aware of this issue.

(Are various versions of Unix 64 bit??)

The Vendor Client relationship - in real world situations

Tony — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 22:58:00 GMT

The Vendor Client relationship - in real world situations

Thankfully I’ve had very few of these kinds of clients.

Accessing external data using the IN clause in SQL

Tony — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 04:15:23 GMT

I happened to come across this article Accessing external data using the IN clause by the Access product group recently again. I thought I’d do a blog posting describing how I use the IN clause to update tables in the Granite Fleet Manager when the user installs a new version. Then, as I scrolled down the blog posting, I realized that I was the first person to comment and that the comment was going to be this blog posting. So now I’ve saved myself the time and effort. <smile>

Taking a screenshot in MS-Access with VBA

Tony — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:18:59 GMT

A very useful question was asked in stackoverflow – I want to use vba to take a screenshot (which will then be sent as an email attachment). Ideally, I'd like to take a screenshot of just the active form. Is there any way to do this? I’ve been vaguely thinking about this for years. Now this won’t help if you have an error message on the screen.

If you’ll notice my comment I suggest saving the created BMP image in the clipboard into a table. I didn’t elaborate on exactly how to do that. Possibly the code at Lebans OLEtoDisk might be enough to get you going.

My friend Jim really likes using Bug Shooting as that integrates very nicely with BugTracker.Net which his development shop uses. However this requires installation on PCs, etc, etc.

Humour: C Compiler Errors (For Real).

Tony — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:27:44 GMT

C Compiler Errors (For Real) was linked from Dr. Dobbs CodeTalk

Sorry for the few blog postings lately. I’ve been hard at work on enhancements to the Auto FE Updater and am still recovering from a miserable cold.

“Not invented here” – a comic strip for us

Tony — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 01:33:35 GMT

Not invented here - (Note: This URL starts you back in 2009 09 21)

“Welcome to our new comic strip, Not Invented Here.

I spent nearly two decades in the software industry. I wrote code, managed people, wrote specs, designed UI, wrote a column about technology, managed people who managed people, and even dabbled as an executive speechwriter. I’ve been an employee, a contractor, a consultant, and a founder. Eventually I realized that what I was best at was making fun of people, so I quit and became a cartoonist.”

Recommended!

Thanks to Larry Osterman’s blog posting for mentioning it.

The Tester: A reality show I just might watch

Tony — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:48:46 GMT

“The Tester, which will debut on February 18th, will star 11 video game fanatics who will compete against each others to determine who’s got the best skills to become a game tester. The grand winner will be offered a job at SCEA San Diego plus $5000 as a signing bonus”

The Tester: A New Reality Show for Gamers

What an interesting idea. I have no idea how boring such a show would be to watch but if it’s testing games ok, I can see that. With all due respect to the MS Access product group I suspect watching those testers test would be quite boring to an outsider.

It’s also quite interesting to talk to testers from Microsoft. Yes, they test for the standard kind of stuff. But I’m told the best kind of tester is a truly twisted, warped person. Someone who takes great delight in tormenting the developer. Ok, that last sentence is an exaggeration. However I’ve learned that it’s impossible to make a user proof program. A user will always, always figure out something totally different than what you meant.

I’ve also learned that very few bugs get reported. I do my best to fix bugs as soon as I hear about them because I’ve come to the realization that some of my bugs must be affecting many people and yet I only get one or two complaints.

I think I’m going to do my best to actually phone each person who sends me an email mentioning a problem or bug. Especially a problem because this means I didn’t make the program smart enough or the documentation good enough. If they mention a bug well, I’ll just fix it ASAP.

BTW I also don’t PS3 console (or any gaming system) or a television.

10 steps to a better IT support process

Tony — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 05:24:33 GMT

I found the following blog posting to be quite useful to think about when you get a bug report from someone using your software.

10 steps to a better IT support process

Kodu - programming for kids

Tony — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 04:01:25 GMT

Kodu - programming for kids

“Kodu is a visual programming language made specifically for creating games. It is designed to be accessible for children and enjoyable for anyone.

Key Features

Kodu provides an end-to-end creative environment for designing, building, and playing your own new games.

    * High-level language incorporates real-world primitives: collision, color, vision
    * Runs on Xbox 360 and PC
    * Interactive terrain editor
    * Bridge and path builder
    * Terrain editor - create worlds of arbitrary shape and size
    * 20 different characters with different abilities”

Etc, etc. Now this looks great!!!

From a link by Zac Woodall, Microsoft Access PM.

How to be a Problem Solver

Tony — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:53:57 GMT

How to be a Problem Solver Or how to deal with an angry customer. In particular note the over communicate concept even if it’s nothing more than we’re still working on it and here’s what we’ve done so far.

Windows 7 development reorganized

Tony — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:02:30 GMT

Steve Sinofsky took over management of the Windows development team after Windows Vista. He was in charge of Office development for a number of years prior. I’ve been reading snippets over the past few years about how the development methodology of Windows 7 had changed. And how Windows Vista development methodology had become too complex.

Now an interesting post by Larry Osterman, long time MS Windows OS developer mentions that. Windows 7 Reflections… In particular read the second last paragraph, the last long paragraph.

Let me also add that I have a great deal of respect for the Microsoft, and other successful, large team development efforts. As you can imagine I mostly work by myself on apps which I have created. With Access when you’re testing things you generally only need to test one or a few related forms or reports. Once the correct data gets into the table you’re done. You don’t need to worry about this bit of external code or that global variable. After all, in my apps, global variables come from the global options table.

But with the Auto FE Updater it’s quite different. There are a lot of global variables and a minor change over here can cause significant problems in an unexpected area over there. Another way of putting this is I really need to figure out some means of doing thorough automated testing with all the possible options. But I’m too busy right now. (Yeah, I can just see some of you shaking your head and thinking “Tony, you’re gonna get real busy if you don’t take the time now.)

My Granite Fleet Manager is being used by a number of Hutterite colonies. Good, intelligent people but they’re not that computer literate. Indeed my app may have been the reason they’re seeing a computer for the first time. Every once in a while I’ll get a phone call about a bizarre problem. Once I realize what they did I realize that I should’ve put better error checking in that particular field. What they did makes sense from their viewpoint. It just hadn’t occurred to me that someone might do whatever it is they did.

As a result I can now understand why there’s generally a developer and a tester working together. And the more “twisty minded” the tester the better.

P.S. I added an Auto FE Updater group in LinkedIn. Feel free to join the group or email me your irritants, pain points and suggestions.

Dual monitors on the laptop

Tony — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:20:47 GMT

I did some searching recently and located some inexpensive devices designed to add a second monitor to your laptop. I'm quite happy with the StarTech USB VGA External Dual or Multi Monitor Video Adapter.

Typically I move the task manager, OneNote and the VBA editor window to the right hand screen. I use OneNote for all my short term notes on what I'm doing.

Details

Note that I've been using dual monitors starting in about 2000 for programming and quite liked it. However when I dropped the one client I moved the tower system that had a Matrox dual VGA video card home. Then as I was visiting other clients for short periods of time I didn't feel like setting up the tower system instead relying on my laptop.

In the past these devices were upwards of $500 so I didn't feel like spending that much money. Matrox have some nice looking cards but they state that it only works on certain graphics adapters. Likely most of them but that seems slightly limiting.

So I purchased a StarTech USB VGA External Dual or Multi Monitor Video Adapter I've been using it at a client along with the DVI output on the laptop. While it has its relatively minor quirks it works quite nicely. That particular device is ten or twenty dollars more expensive than the cheapest version but it supports more video resolutions so I don't mind spending the extra money.

Clearly Windows is smart enough to move the apps back to the main monitor once you disconnect the multiple monitors.

The senior managers at a client started using dual monitors at the suggestion of Jim my friend and the IT manager. They liked them so much, and the price of LCD monitors is so low, that just about every office person is now using dual 22” LCD monitors. With the exception of a few people such as the receptionist or others who don’t spend much time in email or Excel.

Quirks

It is noticeably slower on the screen refreshes when moving applications around. Well, I don't do that often so no big deal. I’m sure the device would such big time at gaming. But not a problem for me.

I use a toolbar on the left hand side of my desktop to launch my favourite 20 or 30 applications. Similar to Quick Launch but it's on the left hand side. After disconnecting this device the LHS (Left Hand Side) Launch toolbar only displays a shadow. Logging off and on redisplays it properly so that's relatively painless. However this problem hasn’t happened lately so I don’t know what I’ve done to solve this.

Future

According to the product page you can have up to five of these devices hooked up simultaneously. Well,that's a bit much even for me. However there might be times I want a third monitor. OTOH what with inexpensive 24" LCD monitors now ... <shrug>

The device driver supports rotation. So I may just see if I can easily rotate the right hand monitor so I can view more code.

GIGO Almost Caused Plane to Crash part 2

Tony — Tue, 05 May 2009 05:36:18 GMT

in GIGO Almost Caused Plane to Crash I mentioned how I screwed up a Dun and Bradstreet database by putting two extra digits for the cents in the data sent to them when dollars were expected. However I forgot to mention the reasonableness check. D & B should've totaled up the annual sales on the tape that I sent them. A reasonable number would've been total sales to all the customers of between $10 and $100 million dollars. However $1 billion or more would be unreasonable for a company that is not a household name in Canada at that time. $5 billion would be exceedingly unreasonable as a guesstimate.

Dreaming of Rails as the Next Microsoft Access

Tony — Tue, 05 May 2009 05:31:01 GMT

An interesting blog posting titled Dreaming of Rails as the Next Microsoft Access (Rails meaning Ruby on Rails of which I know nothing other than having seen the occasional reference it.) Now I disagree with the authors characterization of us as "Office drones". <smile>

Nevertheless interesting reading.

Note that I located this blog entry because I'm now following #access, #msaccess and #microsoftaccess items on Twitter. I'm currently using the Tweetdeck client but I'm not overly impressed with the UI. I also am Tweeting (I think that's the correct verb) my blog postings.

GIGO Almost Caused Plane to Crash

Tony — Sat, 02 May 2009 07:18:20 GMT

A very interesting story: GIGO Almost Caused Plane to Crash "Instead of entering the true weight of 362 tonnes on the laptop, the aircraft weight actually entered was 262 tonnes. " The airline now has a second laptop for data entry.

But I wonder if a better approach would've been a reasonableness check. That is factor in the empty weight of the aircraft. Add the weight of the fuel which has to be entered somewhere somehow. Then enter the number of crew and passengers and guesstimate the weight per person. Which airlines already do. Also enter in the weight of the freight. Then compare that rough computation to the weight calculated by the airline dispatch which is entered. If it's accurate with 5% or 10% then great.

For example

Empty weight is 170,400 kg	170 tonnes
80% of Max fuel 214,810 L at 0.8075 kg/L	139 tonnes
275 Passengers with luggage @ 100 kg	28 tonnes
Rough guesstimated total	337 tonnes
Entered weight which was in error	262 tonnes

Information sources - Wiki - A340-500, Wiki - Jet Fuel

The guesstimated weight is 30% over the entered so a severe reasonableness problem. Unless I've screwed up a computation especially the weight of the fuel. I chose to use 80% of the maximum allowed fuel as this was a long range flight. But even 50% of the fuel would've failed a reasonableness check.

I also had no idea how much fuel is on a typical long range jet. No wonder the landing was hard as they were unable to dump enough fuel.

Finally I'm glad for the sake of the lives of the crew and passengers that there was a control called "TOGA on the thrust levers" which allowed the flight crew to get maximum power.

Other situations

Every few years I read of a similar problem in the stock market. A clerk enters either a stock quantity or price which has an extra decimal place or two in it. And it costs the clerk's employer millions to unwind the stock trade.

My screwup

Your esteemed blogger once did the same 25 years ago. The client, a major Canadian heating, ventilating and air conditioning wholesaler, wanted to send customer data to Dun and Bradstreet including the customers annual sales as well as current, 30, 60, 90 and 120 days overdue amounts. I happily setup the 1200 bpi reel tape files with all the appropriate data. The accountant then calls me in a week or two later and tells me that I included the amounts with the cents when I should've included just the dollar amounts. So a given customer showed $10,000,000 in annual sales rather than $100,000. And $200,000 in 30 days outstanding rather than $2,000.

I was told that Dun and Bradstreet never noticed for a week or so and then had to labouriously back out my clients specific numbers from the data.

Oops.

Can't sleep

Tony — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 04:28:09 GMT

Can't sleep

I got a giggle out of that one. If you don't get it you're not a programmer/developer.