Sharepoint 2013 : Developing Applications with Access (part 2) - The Access 2013 Client Application, Access 2013 Web Applications

The Access 2013 Client Application

The Access client application sports the new touch-friendly interface with design inspirations taken from Windows 8 and the Windows Phone. The Ribbon interface, the backstage view of database information and application options, trusted documents and the associated security warnings, navigation panes, and the tabbed single-document interface (SDI) for form and table manipulation were all carried forward from the 2010 application version with little more than cosmetic changes. Another change carried forward from the 2010 version is the use of the ACCDB file format for desktop applications.

One change from previous versions is that there is now a concept of a user profile in Office applications, including Access. The user profile allows Access to persist credentials for services such as SkyDrive and Office 365. The profile either pulls from the corporate Active Directory, from Office 365’s user profile system, or from the user’s Windows Live account. Office applications, including Access, offer the ability to manage multiple accounts, although only one can be active at a time. The active user account is identified by name and photo in the top-right corner of the Office application.

When starting with a preconfigured application template such as the desktop task management application, the navigation pane is one of the most important user interaction points for Access application developers. This filterable pane organizes all the application elements for easy access.You must understand that the navigation pane supports instant access to tables, queries, forms, reports, macros, and code modules, as seen in Figure 4.

FIGURE 4

Two of the most useful navigation pane configurations, holdovers from Access 2010, are to set the Navigate To option to the Object Type and [Custom] Navigation. The Object Type view groups Access objects together by type, whereas the [Custom] Navigation view groups Access objects together by related user activities. [Custom] Navigation in a Tasks application is called Tasks Navigation, and in an Issues application, the navigation option is called Issues Navigation. You can rename the [Custom] Navigation group inside of the Navigation Options dialog and explicitly control which Access objects appear on the Navigation pane.

The Access client application experience for desktop applications has not significantly changed. Most if not all of the investment by Microsoft in Access 2013 has been focused on a new web application model, which has been explicitly designed to simplify web development.

Access 2013 Web Applications

Microsoft Access 2013 has gone through a near ground-up rebuild for the user interface. The emphasis of the Access changes has been on the web experience, which now features a web application or web app front end driven by HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This new front end enables the same rich cross-platform accessibility experience in the core SharePoint 2013 application.

In addition to the new front end, the back end for Access web apps has been replaced entirely by SQL Server. Where the previous version of Access leveraged SharePoint lists as the actual data storage mechanism for Access 2010 tables, Access 2013 automatically creates a full-blown SQL Server database housed either on SQL Server or on SQL Azure. SQL Server enables dramatic improvements in scalability and eliminates many of the problems of user contention and locked tables. Because of the SQL back end, Access can now store and rapidly calculate across millions of records. Furthermore, the move to leverage SQL Server as the back end enables IT to inventory and manage enterprise Access applications because all the data is stored in SQL Server.

The Access 2013 client application can also be considered the designer of web applications. Creating a web application using Access leverages a built-in forms generation engine, which applies a default layout and CSS-based formatting to the on-screen elements. This form-template engine ensures that business and IT users can rapidly create eye-pleasing interfaces that offer a consistent user experience across apps, regardless of the actual application author. This web form generation engine automatically creates a consistent interface from Microsoft’s schema templates, existing data imports, and custom schemas created in Access. Access can read the data schema, and generate direct table editing interfaces, which perform like Excel grids, individual record views, record search interfaces, and navigation buttons. Should the schema enforce a relationship between tables, Access automatically creates linked and drill-down enabled views of this relationship. Should the out-of-the-box interface not correctly prioritize data elements or navigation experiences, it is a simple matter to use the Access form designer to reposition or reformat elements. It is worth noting that the Access form designer does not offer an HTML or code-editing experience.

Similar to end-user experiences with new SharePoint sites, the approach Microsoft took with Access was to create a call to action when a new blank application is created. Access 2010 starts users with a blank screen, which frequently causes confusion in novice users. Access 2013 immediately asks users to add tables to the application and supports that call to action with both a search interface and a selection of existing data source connection options.

Power users of Access 2010 and earlier may have invested energy into automating repetitive tasks and business processes with VBA. Although VBA does continue to function in the Access desktop client, web forms cannot leverage VBA. Instead, Access web forms support a pair of macro designers that can react to user interface and data changes. These macro designers are explored in more depth later in the “Database Components” section.

Exploring a Sample Access Web Application

Figure 2 illustrates the basic makeup of an Access web app with Microsoft’s freely available Customer Billing and Time Tracking application. This application shares a number of characteristics with all Access web apps:

• Trimmed down hierarchical breadcrumb navigation bar across the top of the screen.
• Tables representing business entities organized vertically along the left side of the screen. This list of tables is called the Tile Pane. When designing applications with Access, every table is added to the Tile Pane, but each table can be independently hidden.
• Task-oriented views organized horizontally along the top of the screen. Selecting different nouns changes the available views across the top of the screen.

The Microsoft application serves as a model of an Access web app’s capabilities with the inclusion of several YouTube videos through the clever use of web browser controls on the various views. Beyond the eye-catching video, this business application does an excellent job of showcasing the four different view types and macros.

Navigating to the Site Contents page reveals that the Customer Billing and Time Tracking app is treated by SharePoint like any other SharePoint app. It can be secured and removed. The app can also be opened in Access 2013 from the browser where it can be modified and republished. Should the app be treated as a template and get published to a number of different sites, the data in each instance of the app is private to that single site.