Access™ 2007 VBA Programmer's Reference

1.1. A Brief History of Access

Microsoft Access has been around for nearly 15 years. The first version of Access, Microsoft Access 1.0, was released in November of 1992. Built on top of the Jet Database Engine, Access was designed to enable users to create and manipulate Jet-compatible database applications through a variety of visual designers and a scripting language called Access Basic. Access quickly became one of the most popular database development systems for Windows and the user base started growing rapidly.

With Microsoft Access 95, the fourth release, Access was adopted as a new member of the Microsoft Office product line. This was the perfect move for the product because it allowed Access to integrate and leverage many great features shared among other Office applications, such as Spell Checking or the Format Painter. Access Basic was replaced with the integration of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) across the Office applications to provide a common programming language for creating solutions using the core Office products.

By the time Access 97 was released, millions of people were using Access routinely to build applications to store and manage their personal and business data. Access 97 is still in use today by many individual and business users and it is widely regarded as one of the best releases of Access ever. Some of the key features for that release were increased Web support, the hyperlink data type, and many new wizards. For developers, the release showcased ...