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141 of 142 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Definitive Resource for Microsoft Access And VBA Developers, November 6, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Access 2000 Developer's Handbook Volume 1: Desktop Edition (Paperback)
The Access 2000 Developers Handbook is an essential resource for developing quality applications in Microsoft Access. It is the fourth book in the series, with equivalents written for each version of Access starting with Version 2.0, and all of them sit right next to each other on my bookshelf. The code included with the book's companion CD is worth the cover price alone! Although the book specifically targets Microsoft Access, it easily ports to Visual Basic and Active Server Pages applications. The book contains thousands of lines of highly portable, usable and bug free code. The code included is more than just sample code; it is highly optimized, fully functional and rapidly incorporated into your project. Some outstanding examples include popup calendar and calculator controls, a Text File class which makes it simple to read, write and manipulate text files, form scaling code, Common File Dialog and Office File Open/Close Dialog wrappers, excellent automation samples including manipulating Outlook to generate time reports, and Word to print an invoice. Many of the code samples literally paste straight into the Visual Basic development environment with no modification, and have worked bug free in my applications for quite some time. Additionally, where appropriate, all code included with the Access 2000 Developers Handbook has been incorporated into class modules, which further makes it simple to incorporate into your projects. The book also has some of the best information about relational database design, SQL syntax and, much more. Microsoft Access encompasses many new technologies, and this book does the best job of providing a navigational guide through them to enable its readers to become high quality, proficient developers. Access Developers can find work developing applications without reading this book, but it isn't a good idea! If you buy only one book for Access 2000, the Access 2000 Developers Handbook should be the one.
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61 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Simply Outstanding, January 6, 2000
This review is from: Access 2000 Developer's Handbook Volume 1: Desktop Edition (Paperback)
As the word 'Developer' should imply, this book is not for MS Access beginners, but once you qualify yourself as 'intermediate' or better, you will feel right at home. Very little of this book is devoted to boring you with rehashes of stuff in the help file (as most other books seem to do). There is a great deal of depth and insight into areas that apply to everyday usage, complex projects, and solutions to many problems MS tends to ignore version after version. The writing is excellent and they have a web site devoted to updates, errata and such which is very helpful. Chapters 10, 14 and 15 have had an extremely positive impact on the quality and usability of my projects in MS Access as well as VBA and Visual Basic. Many of the code samples are outstanding and written so that you can just drop them in to your projects with no modifications. Many of them are done so well they seem like natural extensions to MS Access (stuff MS 'should' have included in the 1st place). Complaints? None. Well, okay, I do have 1 minor complaint. They devoted almost 30 pages to The Office Assistant. IMHO these pages and the Office Assistant itself are a complete waste. This book and its previous versions are the best money I have ever spent. They continue to save me hundreds of hours while adding reliability and capability to all my projects. Highly recommended!
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55 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Essential Reference, November 5, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Access 2000 Developer's Handbook Volume 1: Desktop Edition (Paperback)
I purchased the Access 97 Developer's Handbook and was very impressed with the content. With it my skills in VB and in Access were greatly boosted. When I purchased Office 2000 I went ahead and purchased Access 2000 Developer's Handbook, not really expecting alot of new content - just updated content, which I felt I needed. This book covers all of the Ins/Outs of Access programming. While it might be a bit much for an absolute beginner who has no prior programming skills, it is a good book for anyone who intends to do a significant amont of work in Access. This book has basic information as well as some rather advanced concepts and techniques. All topics are presented clearly and with good examples. There is even a touch of humor interspersed throughout the text. Be sure to look for the discussion of the evolution of COM. In comparison to the earlier version of book, the same general topics are covered but many of the solutions are even better than they were in the Access 97 Handbook. There are many examples of class modules and collections. The examples themselves are useful (I love the TaggedValues class - I only wish I had thought of it myself)and they provide a good jump off point for someone who wants to build his own class modules. I would definately recommend this book to anyone using Access 2000, whether or not you already have the earlier version.
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