Ms access testing tools

Grade 2, Tier A, Speaking. Grade 2, Tier A, Writing. Grade 3, Tier A, Reading. Grade 3, Tier A, Speaking. Grade 3, Tier A, Writing 1. Grade 3, Tier A, Writing 2. Academy Open in new tab. Community Open in new tab. License Portal Open in new tab. Store Open in new tab. Migrating to Jira Cloud? Learn more. Testing Microsoft Access Applications. It should be a dead dumb simple view that responds to User Interaction and then delegates responsibility for responding to those actions to another class that is testable.

How do you do that? Familiarizing yourself with the Model-View-Controller pattern is a good start. It can't be done perfectly in VBA due to the fact that we get either events or interfaces, never both, but you can get pretty close. Consider this simple form that has a text box and a button. In the form's code behind, we'll wrap the TextBox's value in a public property and re-raise any events we're interested in. Now we need a model to work with. Here I've created a new class module named MyModel.

Here lies the code we'll put under test. Note that it naturally shares a similar structure as our view. Finally, our controller wires it all together.

The controller listens for form events and communicates changes to the model and triggers the model's routines. Now this code can be run from any other module. For the purposes of this example, I've used a standard module. I highly encourage you to build this yourself using the code I've provided and see it function. So, that's great and all but what does it have to do with testing?! Friend, it has everything to do with testing. What we've done is make our code testable.

In the example I've provided, there is no reason what-so-ever to even try to test the GUI. The only thing we really need to test is the model. That's where all of the real logic is. There aren't a lot of options here. Most frameworks require installing COM Add-ins, lots of boiler plate, weird syntax, writing tests as comments, etc. That's why I got involved in building one myself , so this part of my answer isn't impartial, but I'll try to give a fair summary of what's available. It's out there, but hasn't seen an update since It's clunky and there's lots of boiler plate code.

It's the best of the worst, but it doesn't work in Access. So, that's out. I've been there and done that. It's probably more than most people want to get into, but it is completely possible to build a Unit Testing framework in Native VBA code.

So, back to our code from section 1. The only code that we really needed to test was the MyModel. Reversed function. So, let's take a look at what that test could look like. Example given uses Rubberduck, but it's a simple test and could translate into the framework of your choice.

I know that answer was a little long, and late, but hopefully it helps some people get started in writing unit tests for their VBA code. I appreciated knox's and david's answers. My answer will be somewhere between theirs: just make forms that do not need to be debugged!

I think that forms should be exclusively used as what they are basically, meaning graphic interface only , meaning here that they do not have to be debugged!

The debugging job is then limited to your VBA modules and objects, which is a lot easier to handle. This does not mean you cannot use anymore this AfterUpdate event! Just put standard code in the event, like this:. Choosing such a generic solution means a lot. It means you are reaching a high level of code normalization meaning painless maintenance of code.

Write your automation code, once for all. It takes a few days of work but it give exciting results. I have been using this solution for the last 2 years and it is clearly the right one: my forms are fully and automatically created from scratch with a "Forms Table", linked to a "Controls Table".

I can then spend my time working on the specific procedures of the form, if any. Another advantage of Access being a COM application is that you can create an. NET application to run and test an Access application via Automation. The advantage of this is that then you can use a more powerful testing framework such as NUnit to write automated assert tests against an Access app. Therefore, if you are proficient in either C or VB.

NET combined with something like NUnit then you can more easily create greater test coverage for your Access app. This is obviously not a full-blown unit-testing solution. It's still relatively young, so I doubt I've worked out all the bugs, but I think it's mature enough to release into the wild. Just copy the following code into a standard code module and press F5 inside the Sub to see it in action:.

Edit : Here is a simple function with "doctest rules" the function must satisfy. I would design the application to have as much work as possible done in queries and in vba subroutines so that your testing could be made up of populating test databases, running sets of the production queries and vba against those databases and then looking at the output and comparing to make sure the output is good.

This approach doesn't test the GUI obviously, so you could augment the testing with a series of test scripts here I mean like a word document that says open form 1, and click control 1 that are manually executed. It depends on the scope of the project as the level of automation necessary for the testing aspect. If your interested in testing your Access application at a more granular level specifically the VBA code itself then VB Lite Unit is a great unit testing framework for that purpose.

There are good suggestions here, but I'm surprised no one mentioned centralized error processing. Then send all errors to a single function where you can log them. The only other way of getting the same result as Access would be to use an Integrated Development Environment and code it all up in a compiled programming language. You get a better result but it would take 10 times as long. So arrogant to drop Microsoft Access, i have been a supporter since Access2, Using large amounts of VBA and automation some bespoke programs can be created, totally not available off the shelf, and a far cry from a contact database.

Standalone databases not on the web still have a place in business. Keep Access going we have made you a fortune over the years. We used Access in the same way for many years, but moved away from it, favoring SQL scripts over GUI-based operations because scripts allow better repeatability, modifiability, QA-ability, self-documentation, and version control.

I expect to see it in future antique shops and museums much like the toys from my youth are now displayed…. Google Forms for what I catch is a single table form presentation for a spreadsheet, by nothing a database handling and linking different tables. The only real downside to MS Access is that it cannot be effectively deployed via a browser. This limits internet access to an Access application to a virtual Windows desktop environment like a VM or Citrix.

Access is a great front-end GUI and report-writing solution for small to medium companies as well as departmental apps. The new direction of Microsoft to the Power platform is great and Access can to some degree work within that framework. Over the past two years I have been developing a robust data modeling and administrative system that integrates across numerous functions and applications. It uses Access a conduit for data transformation and publishing. I completely agree with you Phil, and to add, I think that MS Access has become one of the most underestimated tools over the past few years.

Where I live almost every medium sized company and quite a few large companies have moved over to O and are beginning to take advantage of SharePoint, PowerApps and Flow. I always create my relationship based tables in Access and then upload to SharePoint. This gives me the ability create a fully relationship based data-sets in SharePoint within minutes. And as you mentioned, the mere act of opening Access with an internet connection automatically backs up the data and also gives users the ability to perform offline tasks… Amazing!

It is imperative that MS Access is supported for Microsoft NET6 on VS, as the demand for such developers is growing day by day and we will be able to use Access skill for next 10 years. It is easy to link to multiple Excel or. CVS files and do regular, right and left joins using Access. If there is a cheap or free tool that does it as well and easily, would love to know about it, but until I find a replacement, for this tool alone, I would truly miss it if it were gone!

The article completely ignores the online support angle. The level of crowd-sourced support is just astounding. You Google the problem and get nothing. Oh, and the fact that Access has changed so little over the years? It means that the subroutine you find online from will work today.

Same with the instructional videos. Makes you realise in the end these new features are just not worth spending the time learning. Show me any other product out there where you can develop complex DB application from analysis to deployment in less 15 minutes.

I do hate it, but will miss it if Microsoft nix it. I am sometimes amazed that some of these databases even work when I see how badly the tables are designed, and the associated VBA, queries etc.

Access is unique, because it is a database that comes with a full set of tools to build a functional application. Or you could call it an application builder, that comes with a database! There are many of these legacy applications running well under current versions of Windows and many clients who would be lost without them. They have a very large customer base that depends on it. One thing about Access that many developers love: it has a small footprint and is highly efficient. New highly specialized applications can be developed quickly and relatively cheaply.

The downside with Access is security, but when it is deployed on a network, network security takes over and these applications run securely. Access rocks. The ribbon sucks. Microsoft totally blew it with the later versions that it developed. Access could have evolved into an extremely powerful tool for small to midsize applications using SQL Server as its database. I used to work for a company that was developing applications in dot net using C sharp.

I am still clinging to Office for that same reason. At work I use Access desktop version to store and combine data from different sources f. To me, storing data in Excel is like summoning the evil one. MS query in Excel is painfully slow and data integrity… number stored as text, oh my! Access does all that, the query builder is terrific, and you can build and automate reports in no time.

You have no idea how much time I save with reporting only. Btw, try sharing data with an external company via Sharepoint, Teams, Onedrive if your global sysadmin acts like Mordac, the preventor of information services. Mail an Access report or exported query and everybody is happy. Hello there! One thing Assess in not that good is a security. And this is not discussed in length or not even mentioned. Security this days is a paramount and no matter how much Access is good as a tool, it is not safe for anything more than a home usage.

Yes, the SQL Server can be used, but than it is not a standalone database, and multiple licenses are needed. Still, one can connect and dump the data which is exactly against the security principles. So, decisions, decision, is Access for domestic usage or corporate?

I am getting daily questions on how to move Access to the Web. The interest is huge. I contributed to the invention of Information Engineering. I have experience. I started using Access version 1 in and was impressed by how easy it was to use. I developed the SQL Server back-ends, wrote the stored procedures, etc. You can develop a simple, single-user app, using wizards, to do something useful.

You can also develop slightly more complex, multi-user systems by splitting the Access database into two: back-end and front-end. This is where simple VBA usually comes in. Someone in England developed a successful Access version 2 system with simultaneous users. You can make it efficient. SQL Server. I was called in to look at a VB6 system with an Access database.

Response time going from tab to tab on the main data entry form was around 10 minutes. The network was heavily overloaded. Government department with no money to spend on IT. But the problem was the way that the database was used to add a new record. The SQL statement to open the new record read every record in the contact table, over , of them. That reads every contact into the front-end. That got the response time down from 10 minutes to 5 seconds.

One line of code. I changed a few other things and eventually got the response time to around 1 second. There are idiots everywhere. You can do some interesting things with VBA. I did a fingerprint booking system for a police department a few years ago. The system popped up multiple booking forms so that an operator could see all the machine and ink available spots for a location on one screen, and could enter the new appointment on any of them. That required the booking form to be an object that could be replicated as many times as needed across a screen.

Sort of. Access fits a niche. That niche to me is a rapid development solution. Hey want to proto type a phone app idea for a qucik brainstorm with a developer? Need a certain task done or noted, need some form of database type information stored, sorted or printed? It is basically a digital swiss army knife. Add tot he fact that you can build a front end for a SQL Backend or other and you unleash any more power. Myself I use Filemaker Pro Advanced and Powershell for my rapid development or tool generation needs but when it comes to small to medium businesses Access is the easiest to purchase, license, and deploy using E3 license and since it is Microsoft, updates, support, and learning curve of ease of use is much easier to adopt than other third party options.

Microsoft knows this. Businesses know this. Microsoft has such a stronghold on this niche that few companies choose to compete head to head. Access is here for a long time. Now changes they may make? I could see Microsoft adopting more of a C than VB path down the road.

I could see Access gaining more updated tools to deal with larger file sizes when using 64bit, better graphics storage, stability improvements, speed improvements in the engine, and maybe some GUI design overhauls to modernize created solutions. But a coffin nail? Not for long way down the road. It is too ingrained into too many businesses to let it die on the vine. Sadly, your article is flawed and biased.

Microsoft deprecated Web Databases from Access, one of its components.