Customer Reviews

Access 2002 Programming by Example

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

Example: "Every time you open or close a form and [sic] report, you activate [sic] the On Open [sic] and On Close [sic] events."
I've never heard of anyone "activating" an event before. There is no "On Open" event. There's an Open event, which can be associated with an OnOpen method.

The book is full of stuff like this. On the plus side, the writer's weird style is a refreshing change from the documentation regurgitation in other books.

While this book may be a good REFERENCE, it should NOT be touted as a book for beginners. There are so many instances of unclear explanations (and sometimes incorrect explanations, such as on p64 when the "Add new record" button is labelled as being the "Filter by selection" button) in the FIRST PART OF THE BOOK that I don't know how a true beginner could suffer it.
Explanations like "and then click the Show Table button (a thick yellow plus sign)" (p 33) are rediculous when a picture of the icon could have easily been inserted. Another huge problem is how advanced concepts are casually mentioned in the introductory pages of the book - this may be fine for a more experienced user who knows that these terms will eventually be explained, but I'm sure it would be quite overwhelming for a beginning user.

Bob Villareal has done an excellent job throughout this book. From his explanations and examples of tables, queries, forms and reports, to his explanation of VBA, his examples are clear, practical, and useful, and will enhance any database design. Like his chapter on controls, both bound and unbound and their properties, he helps readers understand the power that controls have in Microsoft Access. His technique of explaining and then showing, through examples of databases downloaded, reinforce his explanations. Like his chapter on exploring procedures: an extensive list of string functions that explains and shows how the programmer can create custom functions to deal with data at field level. And Chapter 20, Conquering Big Problems that Come In Small Packages, which deals with the tricky issues of quotes, pounds, and dates, he shows how the reader can program with them and test them using VBA's Immediate window. All of the chapters are useful to the programmer and should be at every programmer's fingertips. I hope he writes another book soon!

This review is for the person who is almost making a decision to buy this book. Don't buy it.
I would have not bought this if I have seen this book in person. It is too small and there are a lot of examples which nobody could understand by looking at the pictures. Overall the book is JUNK.

I bought this book for a school project for a master's level software enginnering class. I have an undergraduate CS degree and have done my fair share of programming but since I do not have any experience with VBA or with Access I thought "Access 2002 Programming by Example" would be the perfect book. Was I wrong. This is a horrible book. Yes the book is splattered with numeours coding examples but I couldn't make heads or tails out of what the book was trying to explain or what feature or technique the author was trying to highlight. I learned more by just playing around with Access than I did from following the book. So now I'm on the hunt for another book to help me with my programming project. I hope that Bob Villareal's students at Tulsa Community College fair better with this book that I did.

I have purchased many computer related books in the past, but none have been this easy to follow. I really thought the format of the book was very well done. I liked the fact that a concept was stated, a visual example given, then a detailed explanation of what you needed to know was given. Being able to download the sample files from the web was also a great idea. I would encourage anyone who is already working with Access or even thinking about it to purchase this book. I am glad that I did. I have already put what I learned to good use at home and at work.

This review is for the person who is almost making a decision to buy this book. Don't buy it.
I would have not bought this if I have seen this book in person. It is too small and there are a lot of examples which nobody could understand by looking at the pictures. Overall the book is JUNK.