Here are some rules for creating an Access Database for your business:
- Make sure that you do this without telling IT department or anyone really technical
- Make sure that this side project becomes over time a very important, if not critical part of your business or department
- Don’t worry about backups, computers never break down anyway
- If your reading this 4th bullet point but yet still don’t agree with the first one I'm here to remind you that if you tell IT about it they will simply take this database away from you for no good reason. You know how those guys are…
- Ensure that sooner or later this database stores personal or some sort of other sensitive data (Social Security or Credit Card numbers are a top option)
- Keep your database on a publically accessible network share within your company, you never know who will need access to it and why bother with that stuff
- Make sure to use an older version of Access for this database, like Office 2000 was a good year, or so I've heard from my neighbor
- Ensure to keep copies of this database on random laptops without encryption, this is the best way to provide “offline access” to anyone and everyone
- If at any point it gets really hard to update your database hire some random “expert” that is not in IT, definitely someone local who claims to know a lot in this area is you’re best bet
- And for the last tip… be sure to include this on your resume, who knows, you too might go into software development one day as Management
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UPDATE: One final rule I ALMOST forgot… be carful what advice people give you (especially on random blogs), as the above for example is all a big joke :).
Thanks Matt for a wonderful blog post suggestion!