Tech tutorials The Pros and Cons of the 2013 SharePoint Access App
By Insight Editor / 10 Dec 2013 , Updated on 16 May 2019 / Topics: Microsoft 365 Application development
By Insight Editor / 10 Dec 2013 , Updated on 16 May 2019 / Topics: Microsoft 365 Application development
Before diving into the details on this new SharePoint Access App, we should do a quick overview on SharePoint 2013 apps in general. Included in this most recent version of SharePoint is the App Model. It enables developers to create custom apps that can be published to the Office Store for public download or to the Corporate Catalog, which is an organization's internal App Catalog Site where users can download them to their SharePoint sites. Each app, whether custom or out of the box, targets a specific set of features and is lightweight and easy to use. Included in the out-of-box apps is a SharePoint Access App that enables Access 2013 databases to be added to SharePoint 2013 sites.
This out-of-box, no-code app enables us to put Access databases into SharePoint and includes some really great features (listed above) that I’ll cover in a bit more detail in the following sections. The purpose of the app is to provide a more reliable, faster, robust solution for putting relational data into SharePoint without the hassle of designing and developing something from scratch. Microsoft Office Access 2013 includes a few templates for Access Web Apps and tables that will get you started.
The favorite feature of the Access App is that its back end is SQL Server, or SQL Azure if you're using Office 365. This design allows data to display faster, is more reliable and robust, and it's more manageable long-term. It's a great alternative to creating a list in SharePoint when you know it will grow to be a large list. Not only does it help manage large lists and provide quick access to the data, but it also allows outside SQL Server and SQL Azure supported tools to gain access to the data.
When creating the SharePoint Access App, you can select from one of the quick and easy templates or start from scratch with a custom app. When using one of the templates, Access automatically creates tables and related views around those tables. Also, the navigation is created for you so your database is ready to use. You would only need to add your customizations if you require any and then click Launch App. That's it. In just a few clicks, you have a working SharePoint App.
Even if you're going with the custom option, you still get a lot of automatic features such as table templates that include multiple tables with relationships, related views and navigation. Either way, once you've designed your database, click Launch App, and you have a no-code app in SharePoint that includes a search tool.
The data in the SharePoint Access App is stored in a SQL database. SharePoint doesn't have a mechanism that can get notified when items change in the external data source, so the workflow can’t be directly associated with one of the tables in your app. Using the linked table feature in Access to connect to a SharePoint list doesn’t help because that creates a read-only connection.
A possible solution would be to consume the external data in a workflow. You could create a site workflow or a list workflow and have it read or update from an external list. Basically, it can be done but isn't going happen without some difficulty.
With this app, you can create web-based applications that use the power of SQL Server on premises or in the cloud. You don't have to worry about deployment challenges, software installation issues or operating system compatibilities. You just build your app and share it across the web with SQL Server or SQL Azure.
This new architecture increases performance and scalability and opens new opportunities for SQL developers to extend and work with the data. It has the potential of being a really great app. Add built-in features such as full read/write when connecting to SharePoint lists and workflows, and you've got a truly awesome out-of-the-box solution.
SharePoint 2010 also has Access Services, but the process around how the Access databases are put into SharePoint is very different. The tables in the 2010 database are converted into SharePoint lists, so you don't get the SQL back end.
These web databases are compatible with SharePoint 2013 and Access 2013, but you can’t create new web databases in Access 2013. You’re only able to manage existing ones and publish them to either SharePoint 2010 or 2013. Also, there’s no way to automatically convert the web database into an Access App. You’ll have to do that manually, which consists of importing data from the web database into the new Access App and recreating the interface and business logic.