A colleague mentioned that eventually, VB6 and the Access 97 database files that it requires to use ADO may not be supported for much longer. Does anyone have any insight on this issue?
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A colleague mentioned that eventually, VB6 and the Access 97 database files that it requires to use ADO may not be supported for much longer. Does anyone have any insight on this issue?
You've got a loaded question here. VB6 and Access 97 are not locked to each other. VB6 can use just about any database, including any version of Access (up to and including Access 2007) as well as industrial-strength DBs like SQL Server, Oracle, DB/2, MySQL, etc. Accessibility to a database by VB6 depends on the connection string.
As far as "support" is concerned, it depends what you mean.
For VB6, "official Microsoft support" has ended, meaning you won't get any help from their support line. But VB6 apps and the IDE still work on all versions of Windows including Vista (however, beyond Vista, that is yet to be determined, so "Will OS's beyond Vista 'support' VB6?" is a legitimate question). And of course there is always help in the user community on forums like this and others. (Believe it or not there are folks still using QBASIC and there is a help site for it.)
For Access 97, you will have to check MS to see what versions of Access/Office will run on which OS, but if you are using Access only for the data (i.e. tables and queries), then you only need to ensure that the DLL drivers for the database will run on the target machine to work with the MDB file; you don't actually need Access on the target machine in that case.
Hopefully this has helped, and maybe others can expand on this info.
Moved to General Developer
Well Bruce, I think you pretty much covered it from the view point of where both of these products currently stand.
My only contribution is a suggestion to move to VB.NET while free Express versions are still available for download from Microsoft's web site.
couple of questions then...
1. I thought VB6 had to make use of Access 97 for ADO commands?? I have a massive project (commercial product actually) that makes use of 97 as the main db. However, I use a mixture of ADO commands and SQL commands for various reasons (simplicity and lack of knowledge being two of them). When I first explored ADO, I swear I read something that said you must use 97 for that communication.
2. To convert a VB6 project to a VB.NET project: how difficult is that? are there utilities, or does the whole thing need to be converted, line by line?
VB 2008 express - what are the major limitations to it?
Check out here. There's a section called editions that tell you what is an is not included in each of them.Quote:
Originally Posted by VB rookie
For the general development part, you can do the vast majority of it in the Express Edition.
No, ADO is a connection technology, which is capable of connecting to any database system that has apt drivers (which is all of the famous ones, plus more).Quote:
Originally Posted by VB rookie
The driver for Access (pre-2007) is Jet, which can connect to multiple versions of Access files, as well as .txt/.csv/etc.
How hard the conversion is varies, but in some cases it is easier to re-write the whole thing (which can be a good thing - as you can make better use the new features).Quote:
2. To convert a VB6 project to a VB.NET project: how difficult is that? are there utilities, or does the whole thing need to be converted, line by line?
So there are no worries then. I distribute my db files as 97 with the Jet drivers so its all good.Quote:
Originally Posted by si_the_geek
As for the conversion. Maybe some day, but not today,
Thanks for the info and the reassurances everyone!