Access 2000 introduced an advanced facility that allows you to create a project file (with an .adp extension) that contains only your forms, reports, macros, and modules. When you create a new project file, you can specify an SQL Server database to support the project. SQL Server stores the tables and queries you use in the application that you design in the project. You can connect your project file to a database in SQL Server version 7.0 or later, on a server or on your desktop. You can download a special edition of SQL Server 2008, SQL Server Express Edition, which you can install to run on your desktop computer from the following location on Microsoft’s website: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/express.aspx
Access Data Projects (ADPs) still exist in Access 2010; however, Microsoft did not add a lot of new functionality to them for the 2010 release besides adding support for connection to SQL Server 2008 and support for a few more data types. For the Access 2010 product cycle, most of the Access team’s development resources were focused in other areas, most notably the new Access Services functionality. In deciding what features to cover for this edition of the “Inside Out” series, there simply was not enough space to include a full discussion of ADPs along with all the new features included in Access 2010. For more information on ADPs, see Microsoft Office Access 2007 Inside Out (Microsoft Press, 2007).