Databases Books

Some years ago Microsoft created a specialized programming language to allow extensions to be made to the normal modes of operation allowed in their Office suite. The language was fairly well thought out to be applicable to applications as different as word processing, spreadsheets or data bases. They called it Visual Basic for Applications shortened to VBA. It has worked remarkable well. Down theough the years there have been relatively few changes to VBA.

This book is on VBA as specifically oriented to the Microsoft Access database program. But if you learn Access VBA, you are not far from knowing how to use VBA on any of the other Office components.

While this is an Access book, it is specifically on VBA, it assumes that you already know about how to build a table, and about rows and columns. It also assumes that you have some familiarty with other Access features such as building queries.

Access goes to a great deal of effort to avoid having to use the underlying SQL language. There are a couple of chapters on SQL for the total beginner. In the long run, you will probably want to know more.

You can't design one book to do everything in about 400 pages. This "dummies" book concentrates on VBA. That's enough for one book. It does a good job on VBA. You may want to fill out your bookshelf with Access for Dummies and SQL for Dummies.

I had to learn Access for my job, and found this three-volume series. The books were designed for classes, but worked very well on their own. In this first book, all of the basic topics (creating tables, forms, queries, reports, etc.) were introduced using a step-by-step method. The examples were real-life, not some widget company, which really helped. I am not a computer whiz, but I picked up this difficult subject without too much trouble!

I had to learn Access for my job, and found this three-volume series. The books were designed for classes, but worked very well on their own. This book built on the topics (creating tables, forms, queries, reports, etc.) that were introduced in the first two books, and added some more complex topics. It used a step-by-step method, and the examples were real-life, not some widget company, which really helped. I am not a computer whiz, but I picked up this difficult subject without too much trouble, although some of the topics in this third book took more time to digest than the others!

This book was made in a very proffesional way. From the moment I started reading and following each chapter i felt that this book would be a great guide for me in this level. I have run through alot of manuals but they weren't so precise and deep into tasks as this book was. i truely recommend it. it's the perfect resource for programmers and developers and everyone else in need to complete.

Nicely presented book. It's helped me in clearing my concepts.

I wanted to find a worthwhile text to supplement the Access 2.0 introductory courses I developed. For beginners, this is the best of the bunch. Many introductory database books immediately dive into the specific program they are about. I think this is a disservice to the beginning reader. There are a few things which everyone needs to know about relational database design before even thinking about using such a program. One of the best things about this book is its initial chapter on the essentials of database analysis. It doesn't get into so much detail as to scare people away, but it successfully emphasizes the benefits of developing a plan before building an application. With this book as a start, the reader is less likely to develop the bad habit of "shooting from the hip". The remaining chapters cover tables, queries, forms, reports, and macros. The book includes useful exercises to develop the rudimentary skills that anyone needs to know in order to work with Microsoft Access. In fact, the exercises are unified in that they all revolve around a common theme: developing an application for a bookseller to track customers and inventory. It's a good example, since many aspects of the sample application can be used elsewhere. There is one major topic this book doesn't address, and that's how to write Access Basic code. But then, coding isn't a suitable topic for an introductory text, is it? If you're at that stage in your Access career, you need to look elsewhere for guidance. For absolute beginners, though, this is the only book I recommend. Steve Swope (Microsoft Certified Trainer, Microsoft Certified Solution Developer

This book is really a CD with some 1323 PowerPoint slides on how to program VBA on Access. This is a way to do computer based training that I've never seen before, and it works pretty well. It's planned for a ten day lesson. It requires that you have PowerPoint 2000 or later installed.

The author is Dr. Gerard Verschuuren. He is a Microsoft Certified Professional specializing in VA, VBA and VD.Net. When used by a pro, PowerPoint is quite a powerful package, offering ways to highlight, emphasize and add notes to the stock presentation. Dr. Verschuuren is ceratainly a pro at Powerpoint. His slides are well done, colorful and a rather painless way to learn VBA.

Every few slides there is a quick multiple choice question to make sure that you've learned what was covered in the previous few slides. I used this disk on my notebook while on a series of airplane flights. It was a rather painless way of learning something new. This concept worked very well for me.

I decided to learn access a few months ago. I brought a few books on the subject and hit a brick wall. Nothing was making any sense. I just wanted to build a database from scratch. I came across this book and it saved me from despair. It was exactly what I wanted. The other books that I had brought started teaching you multi table database right from the start and that's where it got confusing. This book is divided into several sections. The first three sections of this book teach you how to build single table databases and it will have you up and building a simple database in no time. This approach made it all make sense. After reading about 100 pages I built my first phone book, easy!! Part iv introduces you to multi table databases. By the time I finished this book I made a multi table data base for our business which everyone is using and loves. Now people are asking me to build more things for them in access, their goes my weekends??? I can't rate this book high enough. The Author, Mark Whitehorn, has a great way of explaining complex concepts into simple concepts and he also has a sense of humour which most computer book writer's lack. If you no nothing about access and want to learn access then this book is perfect. If there were more Authors like Mark Whitehorn then the world would be a better place.

"The book has three likely uses. First, it can serve as a quick guide for those who can remember any of the author's names for a key article, but need more exact information for location or reference. Second, it can enable those interested in quantitative literature analysis to test and verify much of the work in this area by the authors of this book. Finally, and most likely, the book can help professors identify the seminal works in specific areas of interest. This can be particularly beneficial in designing reading lists for graduate courses.

"The new edition contains three significant additions. First, four additional years are included. Second, the four categories and citation indexes for each article are given in Part I as well as Part II. Third, all indexed articles are listed in the Part II sections, yet readers who scorn the uncited will not be inconvenienced, since unreferenced articles reside at the bottom of each list.

"In summary, this is a significantly improved edition. This unique book shows which works in various areas have most strongly influenced recent academic accounting research. The book should continue to be especially valuable in preparing reading lists for accounting doctoral programs and seminars."
----Accounting Review
"The authors have added citations for research published during the last 3 years to the 22 years of citations contained in the first edition. There is an alphabetical listing of all articles cited, followed by a breakdown according to mode of reasoning, research methodology, school of thought and topical content. Accounting faculty and graduate students will find this to be a useful aid in locating information for their research projects."
---Journal of Accountancy

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