OK, i'm going to ask a dumb question now. Will an end-user of an application that uses these tricks be able to succesfully run the program if they don't have MS Access stored on their computer?
Here's what I'm trying to do. I'm writing a piece of database management software using Visual C++, and I want to exploit as much of what's already built into Access as I can to cut out my overhead. My intention is to have basically a fancy user-controlled front-end on an *.mdb file that contains all the tables, relations, queries, and reports that the user would need. But, it needs to be a standalone application. I'm not well versed in Basic, but willing to learn. So what I need is someone to tell me if I can exploit Access without the actual program resident on the end-user machine (again, i know, a dumb question). The finished product will also have a great deal of serial port I/O, so I'd rather stick to a language I already know. But, if Basic is what I need, I'm willing to learn.
Any thoughts?