Northwind 2 Project — Modernize the Northwind Template for Access

Microsoft is sponsoring a community project to modernize Northwind. A small team of people, including Access MVP’s Tom Van Stiphout and Crystal Long, George Young and myself have gone through the first phase, developing a set of specs for “Northwind 2”. Tom and George Y made the project public at the Denver Area Access User Group meeting on Thursday, the 21st.

Basically, there will be two versions, a Starter version to introduce new Access developers to the main features of Access built around a simplified Data Model, and a Developer version with more advanced features and built around a more fully developed Data Model. Neither model is intended to be implemented as a solution for any existing or planned business. One of the things that became clear in early days of planning was that no data model can be expected to work for all possible businesses, and even at a less ambitious level, there are too many variations to make “one data model to rule them all” feasible. However, we did try to develop a generic data model that reflects good practices.

Tom’s presentation to the DAAUG covers all of the details so far, so I won’t go into depth here. However, I will repeat the request for testing and feedback from volunteers as we get into development phase. You can contact me here via PM if you are interested.

The first draft of the Northwind2 Project Proposal is available.

Your contributions are welcome and appreciated. If you wish to comment, make suggestions or request clarification, do so in the Word doc with  Review Track Changes on.