Migration of MSAccess Db app to Java Swing App - Help

[dpimental]

I am moving a msaccess db application to java swing.

I have setup the main class and the main frame (using netbeans 5.5 beta) and I need to design the interface, which will take the place of the forms which served as the databases processing center.

I have half a dozen forms to translate to swing.

question: should they be internal frames, separate class files, new frames?

I have the menu setup and on the action of clicking a menu option, I will need each frame / panel to come up. I will have a close button which will close, kill, destroy the panel / frame that was up.

Any suggestions? Anybody ever done this before?

I will still use access as a container for the information; but will no longer use the VBA as the programming environment? So, using JDBC, I will need to connect to the database, read the tables / queries in, and then process them.

David Pimental
(US, Oh)

 

[timw]

Why would you want to migrate away from VBA yet keep MS Access? If you're gonna be using MS Access just to hold the data, why not hold it in proper database and drop Access completely?

Tim

 

[sedj]

*LOL* - "proper database"

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Free Java/J2EE Database Connection Pooling Software

http://www.primrose.org.uk

 

[chrissie1]

I think I will post a link to this thread in the access forums. ;-)



Christiaan Baes
Belgium

"My new site" - Me

 

[timw]

I'm just curious to know why the OP wants to drop VBA when that is a perfectly reasonable way to manage the data in an MS Access application.

Tim

 

[dpimental]

I like access and will continue to use it for many things. I've been a developer for 10 years; But we need a portable solution that is flexible, fast and able to do multithreaded processes. We also need something that handles garbage collection better than msaccess.

As part of the business plan, we would retain access solely as a container in phase I. Then in Phase II we would port the data to mysql or sql or some other container.

chrissie1, go ahead and post a link to this thread in access forums. You should post it in the VBA forum. That's the one I use the most.

David Pimental
(US, Oh)

 

[timw]

Nope. Fair enough. Don't know why you couldn't have put that in the original post.

My concern was that GUI development in VBA is far quicker than developing Swing GUIs and that you'd need a good reason to bother.

You can post this where you like, chrissie, my friend. I've done my VBA stint, have moved on and never looked back

Tim

 

[chrissie1]

Has everybody lost it's sense of humo(u)r?

Christiaan Baes
Belgium

"My new site" - Me

 

[dpimental]

Humor, Humor. Where did it go. Oh, there it is.

Sorry, you're right. I do have a sense of humor.

Now, back to the task at hand. Any takers on my questions, please?



David Pimental
(US, Oh)

 

[timw]

Okay David. You may want to look at doing it with one parent JFrame (which is you application top window) and put a JDeskTopPane inside this. Then each of your old Access forms would convert to a JInternalFrame which can live in the JDeskTopPane. One JInternalFrame per Access form you have currently.

Have a look at

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/components/internalframe.html

and see if it suits your needs.

I'm not sure about using Access as a 'container' for this. You may be talking about making this application as a JavaBean which can be turned into an ActiveX component and hosted in Access that way. There was a tool in JDK1.4 (I think) which could do this, but may have been dropped by Sun in later JDKs.

Tim

 

[dpimental]

Thanks timw, that's very helpful. When I said I would use access as a container. I only meant that it would store the source data that the swing application would run on. I would keep the access data separate from the swing application.

Thanks, I will get started with this. Much thanks.

David Pimental
(US, Oh)

 

[dpimental]

timw, sedj can I ask you a dumb question? Can I ask another one?

If I have one internalJframe in one class file and another one in another class file. And I want to create each one when a menu item is selected; what is the best way to do this?

Or should they be in the same class file.


David Pimental
(US, Oh)

 

[sedj]

I think it is perfectly viable for you to have one class per frame - seems logical to me

--------------------------------------------------
Free Java/J2EE Database Connection Pooling Software

http://www.primrose.org.uk

 

[dpimental]

Do you know of any samples that I can look at that uses menus and frames like that. It's been a while since I programmed in java.

if I have form1.class and form2.class. How do I call these from the main class that has the menus?

How do I insert them into my jdesktop?

David Pimental
(US, Oh)

 

[sedj]

Each internal frame class should extend JInternalFrame.
You then use each internal frame class as you would use any JInternalFrame.

See example here : (from a google for "using JInternalFrame") :

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/components/internalframe.html

--------------------------------------------------
Free Java/J2EE Database Connection Pooling Software

http://www.primrose.org.uk