Ways to use .Net within MS Access

Question

I'd like to include custom .Net controls and .Net forms within MS Access. It's possible but I was wondering if there was any new good articles on that subject.
Over time I've found a few related to the subject the but always found the process a bit cumbersome (see references below).

One of the issue is deployment:
my user's machines have normal user account and I'm wondering if I can just deploy the dlls in the same folder as the application (in the user's Application Data folder) and reference them from code without needing to register them under an Administrator account on that machine.
At the moment the Access application is deployed automatically when a new version is made available on the network.

References

• Deploying applications with the InteropForms 2.0 toolkit
• Tips and Tricks with the Interop Forms Toolkit
• Using InteropUserControl/InteropForm in MS Access
• Building Hybrid Applications with the Interop Forms Toolkit 2.0
• Code Project article on Interop Forms Toolkit 2.0 Tutorial

Edit 09DEC2008:
I can't believe that I'm the only one with an interest in this? Has anyone tried to use .Net from within Access, either as a way to improve the UI or to slowly migrate to a full /Net app?

Answer 1

Just a word of warning - I used to work on an access based system that had evolved way beyond what access was designed for and it was a real chore.

I know nothing of your project, but it might be an idea to consider a move to a more flexible/scalable system to avoid problems down the line.

Answer 2

The reason you don't see a lot of people doing this (using .Net forms in Access) is two-fold.

1. MS Access is not a .Net application, therefore you must marshall calls between COM-Interop and the .Net framework which is performance heavy and prone to issues.
2. MS Access is not a good solution for persisting data. It is better used as a prototyping tool. You are better off using the built-in ADO.Net Dataset class which can be persisted to XML if needed. It is definately a better performance choice as well as being a .Net solution which uses managed memory, multi-threading and such.
   
   Anything you can do in Access can be done better in a .Net application using ADO.Net.