3 Reasons Why Continued Support for VBA in Microsoft Office is Good for SME Businesses
Posted by Sean MacKenzie on Tue, Feb 02, 2010
Microsoft discontinued support and enhancement of its Visual Basic 6 platform years ago, instead moving to its new .Net platform for enterprise applications. However, what many people don't know is that a flavour of VB called Visual Basic for Applications, or VBA as it is known, continued on in the Microsoft Office suite as the primary language for things like Excel and Word macros, and automation of Access database applications. It appears that, in spite of the relentless move toward .Net at Microsoft for many years, this technology will continue on and will be supported in Office 2010 (Office 14), and for SME business owners this is a very good thing.
1. Most businesses over 20 employees have invested in VBA-automated things for people "in the trenches", from simple mail merge applications in Word, to data extractions for analysis in Excel, to multi-user MS Access databases. Continuing support for these means that these companies will be able to extend the life of their investment.
2. Support for VBA also means that related technologies like the Jet database engine and Data Access Objects, or DAO can be supported by providers for years to come, on newer, more advanced platforms like Office 2010. For the large number of businesses who wrote entire systems around the MS Access/DAO/ODBC/SQL Server platform, this means they can stay current and be sure to be supported for years to come.
3. VBA with MS Access is regarded by many as the quickest way to prototype a working application for SME businesses due to a data access technology (DAO) tightly knit with the VBA language, a powerful design environment, and the best integration with other technologies in the office environment, like Word and Excel.
Ongoing VBA support means SME businesses can still get the best bang for their buck for years to come.