What is a Microsoft Access Developer?

Microsoft Office products such as Access, Excel and Word are very popular applications and used extensively in the business world. Most people will use these products by simply opening the application and entering data. However, each of these applications can also be programmed.

A Microsoft access developer is somebody who knows how to use the programmable features built into the application. A developer is not the same as somebody who knows how to use Access. The best way to show the difference is by giving a simple example.

A person who knows how to use Access sets up a form to gather some information. The information will be added to the table the person selects. Whatever fields are required are added to the form. Basically, the form provides a nicer way to enter data into the table.

Doing this type of task is about the limit of the average Access users ability. The form that has been set up may be fine for a particular use, but there are several drawbacks to relying on this type of form.

One of these is to do with data validation on the form. Let's say that one of the fields to be input is for month of birth. The underlying table has a field for this, and the field type was specified as an integer. Since there are only twelve months in the year, the input to this field should be a whole number between zero and thirteen.

In the simple form set up in our example, there is nothing to stop somebody from entering any number greater than 12. It is possible that when the underlying table was created, a validation rule was added with the field. If so, Access will automatically generate an error message if somebody tries to save invalid data.

It is also possible to add validation when building a form, but it does require advanced knowledge. This type of validation is very limited in its scope. If somebody tries to enter invalid data, the system will reject it, but it will also reject the entire form. It is also nearly impossible to provide complex validation, like making sure an email address is in the correct format. 

A Microsoft access developer will take a different approach to the form. Instead of relying on the built-in error handling function in Access, the developer will write code to validate user input. This is a custom development software essential, and provides more meaningful error messages. This level of validation can also allow the user to store valid data while rejecting invalid data.

A good developer will not be happy with having incomplete records stored in the table. The developer will have code working behind the scenes to handle this situation. This might include generating an exception report, or storing incomplete data in a separate table awaiting correction.

The coding language used in Office applications is a version of Visual Basic, which depends on what version of Office is being used. People who can program in VB will have little difficulty in switching to Office development.

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