Customer Reviews

Access 97 Expert Solutions

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have been reading through this book off and on for the past 6 months. Each time I pick it up to read about one area of interest I end up reading on and on. Very practical information that helps eliminate time consuming experimentation on my part. I like his style and clear explanations. I find PRACTICAL information. He has obviously been around the block with Access 97. This book has saved me countless hours of experimenting. I like his approach to giving advice. He states: Here are 3 ways to handle this situation: 1) X 2) Y and 3) Z Then he says X is good but has this drawback. Y is better but lacks this flixibility. Z is my choice for the following reasons. Now THAT is practical and straight forward. If there is not a clear 'best choice' approach to solving a problem he just tells you that. Again, very PRACTICAL, DOWN TO EARTH, NO HYPE information. I like this book very much. I prefer writing VBA code so I find the book extremely worthwhile. Again, I have a hard time closing this book.

There are tons of books about Microsoft Access, but if you're a serious developer, there are only a very few that offer wisdom you haven't seen before. Books by Ken Getz and Scott Barker have been on that short list; now you can add this great new book by Stan Leszynski.

Stan's book has quite a lot of clearly-explained techniques and how-to's. He includes some great technical information on how to make the most of new features in Access 97. If this were all that the book offered, it would still be well worth the investment in dollars and reading effort.

But Stan's new work includes something that just hasn't been available before -- a "framework", or overall approach, for developing in Access. This framework is a set of principles, guidelines, standards, and tools that make Access development quicker, more consistant, and error-free.

I highly recommend this book for corporate developers, consultants, and anyone else who is (or wants to be) really serious about Access.

Stephen Rosenbach
President, Maryland Access/Visual Basic Users Group<BR

I found this book to be of tremendous value in defining my own method of building a design specification for a database project.

While this is only part of what is presented, Mr. Leszynski's development Methods are what I use the most. The book tends to be a bit intellectual and is at times ponderous, but as it presents volumes of material, it is worth it.

Mr. Leszynski is a noted expert in this field, and is perhaps the best known name (my apologies to Ken Getz & Paul Litwin <g>) The samples provided were applicable and of immediate use to me in my developments.

In short, this book is for Advanced Access developers, but intermediate level users (like me) will still find it of use.

John P. Reed, Metatronics, Ltd.

There are hundreds of Access books out there, from the "learn Access in 20 minutes" variety to the real power programming academic thesis type. This is the best book I've read on Access. However it's not for beginners. It won't take you step by step. It will give you many options on how to deal with a problem mentioning the pros and cons of each while recommending his firm's own approach.

Once you're comfortable with Access and are ready to build serious applications for yourself or others you must read this book. The first chapters (420 pages)teach you great techniques about development in general, from naming conventions (this guy literally wrote the book on Access naming conventions!) to completing and deploying a solution. Even an experienced developer can benefit from these chapters.

The rest of the chapters deal with expert techniques for all development aspects (e.g. creating tables and queries to forms, reports and client server issues).

I started highlighting passages I found useful and now the book is really hard to read because of so much highlighter that I'm thinking about buying another!

One of the best things about this book is the accompanying CD and the code listings since he includes an awesome amount of actual library functions that he uses in his practice and that will save you hundreds of hours of code. All the examples and the complete book are in the CD so you can experiment and really learn Access anywhere you go.

Buy this book with your eyes closed. The only thing you'll regret is not being able to learn it by heart after day one!

Marco V. Gutierrez, Costa Rica

I was a bit daunted by the first few chapters which tend to be a bit over-wordy and self-praising. However the rest of the book is excellent. full of useful tips and advice. I found it hard to put down and read it from cover to cover like a novel... not many tech books can get me to do that! I am not a professional computer type, just an access user.

Sure Stan is self referencing, but if this book bores you then you're not serious developer material. This is a "how to do it right" book. Access beginners are often more distracted by the wow of code writing then the beauty of an organization that can produce exceptional results time after time. This book is clearly focused on the latter.

This is an excellent book for consultants and serious corp. developers. Even provides estimating tools, a framework, and serious VBA solutions. By far the best book on Access 97 I've read.

I am an Access programmer, so I'm always on the lookout for good Access books. This is one of the best. He has a lot of tips and ideas on how to think about your program. I have this book on my desk at work. Some of the sections have already been extremely useful.

This is the best Access book I have seen, and I have several. Before anyone ventures beyond the wizards in Access, they should read this book and keep referring to it often. Access is very powerful and useful when used correctly, and this author brilliantly shows how.

1. The included database was not completely functional. It looked like there were some bugs in it.

2. A lot of space was devoted to explaining things, but I think some of that space should have been given to more code examples. A code snippet is sometimes worth a thousand words.

Still, this book has lots of great ideas about how to deal with Access IF you are prepared to learn the basics (forms, VBA, algorithms) somewhere else. The naming conventions and application design principles are priceless. However, if you are starting out, I recommend buying this book after buying a simpler book such as John L. Visecas, Running Microsoft Access 97 or Robert Smith and David Sussman, Beginning Access 97 VBA Programming.