Chapter 1: Analyzing Access Services

In This Chapter

Admiring Access Services architecture

Specifying Access Services settings

Configuring SQL Reporting Services

As one of the Office applications, Microsoft Access is a great tool for rapidly building database applications. One of its greatest features — much to the chagrin of the IT department — is that it’s easy to use making it an accessible development tool for business users. Business users can take advantage of the many wizards that come with Access to quickly create custom database applications, complete with sophisticated query and reporting capabilities. When the database is up and running, you can post it to a network share and grant users access to the application.

The fact that Access is so easy to use and can produce results quickly makes it very popular among business units that have an urgent need, a limited budget, and don’t want to go through all the red tape of getting a supported application developed through the official service request channels within their organization. From an IT perspective the unfortunate side effect of this popularity is that you have lots of unmanaged, unsupported applications dispersed throughout your organization, consuming your network resources. As business users become more and more dependent on their Access applications, the risks of using unmanaged applications that aren’t within the purview of the IT department really start to pile up. For example, Access applications typically ...

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