Part IV: Professional Database Development
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l (^) Privacy Options: Lets you choose how Microsoft Office Online communicates with your
computer. You can set options to use Microsoft Office Online for help, show featured
links at startup, download files to determine system problems, and sign up for the
Customer Experience Improvement Program.
Continuing to improve the product
A developer’s work is never done. Most likely, you came up with new ideas as you built the basic
application, or your clients pestered you with improvement requests as they beta-tested the interim
builds. Although avoiding “off-spec” changes that interfere with the main development effort is
important, you should record these ideas and use them as starting points for the next iteration of
the product.
In many cases, improvements to the application consist of enhancements to the user interface. If
you discover that users misunderstand how to enter data, perhaps you need to add more label text
to the forms to serve as guidance. Or if people complain that the application is hard to use, you
might have to add more menu options or use more “plain English” throughout the program.
In the “Maintaining usage logs” section, earlier in this chapter, you read about building usage logs
into your applications. A properly designed and maintained usage log provides invaluable informa-
tion about how the database is being used. You might be surprised by how often errors occur, or
how rarely a particular form or report is used. Any feedback you get from your users or the appli-
cation itself will help you as you begin the next phase of what might turn out to be an endless
project.
Summary
This chapter has taken a quick look at the steps required to bulletproof Access applications.
Although entire books could be written on this important subject, the concepts presented in this
chapter are all you need for most Access applications.
Obviously, bulletproofing a database application takes a lot of time. Validating all the data entry on
every form or adding status-bar messages to every control in an application isn’t easy. But the time
you spend bulletproofing your databases will be paid back many times over in reduced support
calls and happier users.