I Hate Microsoft #98632
Here's just the major bugs I've encountered with Microsoft Access 2003 TODAY.
* You can create a table called MSysAccessXML (or rename an existing table to that name) which will then replace the INTERNAL SYSTEM TABLE of the same name.
* Retrieving the CurrentDB.TableDefs collection, which is a list of all the tables in the database, now takes three seconds for some magical reason. It used to take milliseconds, and now suddenly it takes more time than the rest of the code combined (which builds and encrypts a 50K XML document in exactly one second) There are only nine entries in the list, for pity's sake. WTF?
Yesterday I wanted to use a crypto function in mscorlib.dll from VBA. The library is listed as a reference. I can add the reference to the project. Intellisense lists the contents, I can even create an instance of the object in VBA, and then I CAN'T CALL ANY OF ITS METHODS. Apparently the solution is to create a wrapper object in VB6, which is odd since this version of VBA is supposed to be equivalent.
I tried to install the Office 2003 service pack, but apparently I don't have the very latest version of IE, so I can't use Office Updater.
Oh, and lets not even get into how utterly horrible the Help system has become. It's usually far more useful for me to type the object name into google than to highlight it in the code editor and press F1.
There used to be a time when, for all Microsoft's egregious social faults, they at least made decent software that mostly worked. And perhaps the mists of time have clouded my memory, but the context-sensitive help system used to be first class. What happened?
Yes this is a rant. It's either vent my spleen or hurl my box down a flight of stairs, and quite frankly the poor hardware doesn't deserve the extra abuse. It's already being asked to run Microsoft code.
* You can create a table called MSysAccessXML (or rename an existing table to that name) which will then replace the INTERNAL SYSTEM TABLE of the same name.
* Retrieving the CurrentDB.TableDefs collection, which is a list of all the tables in the database, now takes three seconds for some magical reason. It used to take milliseconds, and now suddenly it takes more time than the rest of the code combined (which builds and encrypts a 50K XML document in exactly one second) There are only nine entries in the list, for pity's sake. WTF?
Yesterday I wanted to use a crypto function in mscorlib.dll from VBA. The library is listed as a reference. I can add the reference to the project. Intellisense lists the contents, I can even create an instance of the object in VBA, and then I CAN'T CALL ANY OF ITS METHODS. Apparently the solution is to create a wrapper object in VB6, which is odd since this version of VBA is supposed to be equivalent.
I tried to install the Office 2003 service pack, but apparently I don't have the very latest version of IE, so I can't use Office Updater.
Oh, and lets not even get into how utterly horrible the Help system has become. It's usually far more useful for me to type the object name into google than to highlight it in the code editor and press F1.
There used to be a time when, for all Microsoft's egregious social faults, they at least made decent software that mostly worked. And perhaps the mists of time have clouded my memory, but the context-sensitive help system used to be first class. What happened?
Yes this is a rant. It's either vent my spleen or hurl my box down a flight of stairs, and quite frankly the poor hardware doesn't deserve the extra abuse. It's already being asked to run Microsoft code.