Microsoft database technologies roadmap

[Vincent van der Leun]

I came across a quite interesting page on MSDN detailing Microsoft's roadmap for its database technologies. I should mention that the document is about 1 year old already though

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms810810.aspx

As PowerBASIC currently only supports 32-bit development it may not be of a major concern that some technologies are not (and will not be) available on native 64-bit Windows today, but it will probably be a concern later on, so I thought I should post above's link here.

I did not know for instance that there are no 64-bit Microsoft JET (for Microsoft Access MDB databases) drivers at all, and according to above's document there never will be.
Interesting, as I have quite some legacy apps which still are in use today, that use Access database for their data storage. I believe that the 32-bit JET still can be installed on recent 64-bit versions of Windows for 32-bit applications though.

Developers creating websites using Access in the backend (ASP, ASP.NET, maybe even PHP) are also warned, as IIS on 64-bit systems will not support the mentioned 32-bit data-access technology by default. If I understand correctly, the whole IIS must be run in 32-bit mode completely in order to support it. Something that most hosts will not be willing to do (for good reasons).

Best regards, Vincent

[Michael Mattias]

Good summary link, thank you.

One thing which struck me was this quote..

The Microsoft Jet Database Engine 4.0 components entered a state of functional deprecation and sustained engineering, and have not received feature level enhancements....

Functional deprecation? Feature-level enhancements?

Talk about "weasel-words" for "we don't want to support this anymore!"

[Vincent van der Leun]

Yes, the article is full of them

Another interesting quote:

However, for these applications, you should plan to migrate from Jet to the 2007 Office System Driver. You can download the 2007 Office System Driver, which allows you to read from and write to pre-existing files in either Office 2003 (.mdb and .xls) or the Office 2007 (*.accdb, *.xlsm, *.xlsx and *.xlsb) file formats. IMPORTANT Please read the 2007 Office System End User License Agreement for specific usage limitations.

It seems the Office 2007 driver they talk about here is also 32-bit only and according to a usenet topic reply by a Microsoft Online Community Support member is also not planned for 64 bit.

I think the message is clear: Don't use Access anymore for applications that you want to have in native 64-bit format later on.