Documenting a Access Application for Developers
documentation, manual, ms-access
Solution
In my experience, Access and VB6- based programs are plagued by more code replication and technical debt than programs in mainstream languages. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the nature of Access as a "prototype" or "toy" database (though it can be quite powerful when yielded correctly).
If I had to choose between expending time on documentation and expending time on reducing technical debt, for example by remodularizing, eliminating repeated code, splitting long functions, etc., I would choose the latter. The improvement to maintainability and readability would be greater.
Problem
I need to document a MS-Access application that was created, developed and maintained completely by a power-user over 10 years. This is an interesting situation because what they want is a manual so that a future developer can come in without prior domain knowledge and make changes to the frontend or the backend in a timely manner. There are a few questions on my mind for this little project: - What is a good manual design creating application? Microsoft Word doesn't quite cut it. - What kind of things would you, the developer, need to know in order to make changes to things like forms, reports, tables or other Access objects? - Anything else I missed? Any pitfalls?