Access Services

Access Services hosts applications created with Access 2010 and makes them accessible to users from a browser. Shown here are a browser-based form and a report from an application that was created in Access 2010 and published to Access Services. Access Services leverages the database tool’s popularity for quick development of departmental solutions (such as asset tracking applications), which often occurs without the involvement of central IT departments. It enables Access application data, forms, reports and other components to be centrally managed to ensure they are up to date, backed up, and secured for authorized users.

Not all Access 2010 applications can be hosted by Access Services; developers must create “Web databases” specifically for this purpose. Web databases impose many restrictions on database design and cannot take advantage of all Access features. Furthermore, they cannot run Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) code, which is how most developers have written Access application logic. Instead, developers must use more restricted alternatives to VBA, such as the Access macro language. One implication: organizations can’t move most existing Access applications to Access Services, and even experienced Access users have a lot to learn to build Web databases.