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58 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great beginning book, but one significant shortcoming..., March 7, 2008
This review is from: Access 2007 For Dummies (Paperback)
My spouse volunteered to take on a data collection and manipulation project for a non-profit using Access. Here is her report:
I was familiar with the basics of relational database design, and had used Access to a limited extent about 8 years ago. I had a good understanding of the data and how it would be used, so designing a robust database was pretty straightforward. My limitation was the nuts and bolts mechanics of using Access, especially the new 2007 version. I collected about 5 books on Access 2007 from the library, and this is the one really dove into, and ultimately ended up buying. I would say that if you are using Access 2007 you should be sure to buy a book specific to 2007, not earlier versions.
I really like the format of the book--it is organized into logical sections that are easy to follow. I especially like the way the infomation is presented-- there are plenty of examples with adequate illustrations, but the basic ideas are well explained before the examples, so that I found it easy just to sit down and read it to absorb most of the basic ideas. Then after I had acquired a good overview of, say, forms and their applications, I went back to the examples to try them out on my own data. Many of the other books I used explained the concepts only through the examples, so unless you were actually sitting at the computer following each and every step it was difficult to gather the fundamental concepts.
I think the sections on basic database design concepts would be adequate for those not so familiar with relational databases.
I did find one major omission that is critical enough that I ended up buying another book to supplement this one. I did not find any reference to action queries such as update, append, and delete. These have been really crucial to me as I consolidate date from many different sources, and the lack of info on action queries is glaring! (I'll admit that I didn't read EVERY word of this book, so I guess it is possible that I somehow overlooked it, but I was read the first 250 out of 350 pages pretty carefully.) I ended up buying "The Unofficial Guide to Access 2007" by Jim Keogh to supplement, but I'll warn you even that one has misinformation on the format of update queries...
All in all, though, I found this book to be a great basic introduction--concisely written, in an easily digested style. Very useful.
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49 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Lots of issues ..., July 23, 2008
This review is from: Access 2007 For Dummies (Paperback)
I bought this book for the same reason I buy any "For Dummies" book, to decrease my ramp up time on a particular subject. Generally I can blow through one of these books in a few days and move on to more advanced books on that topic. Disappointingly, I was unable to achieve this goal with 'Access 2007 for Dummies'.
First of all this book starts out assuming that you have a database to work with and makes no effort in teaching you how to build a database from the ground up. Continuing on the assumption that you have your own database (filled with data) that you are going to be working with, the author has to stay in a "high level mode" for the rest of the book. Most of the book has vague references and examples that read something like "If you have X type of data in a Y type of structure you may want to try something like Z". Well, I don't have a my own database filled with this type of data, so, I went looking on the publishers web site for example databases to work with. I was happy when I found out there were example databases on the publishers site, but further disappointed to find out that these examples are rarely used. This makes following along by example next to impossible. The few times when these example databases are used they don't entirely match up to the screenshot's in the book . Which brings me to books use of screenshots. Screenshots are generally a good thing when working with a GUI application such Access. However, the screenshots are off little use due to the fact that the screenshots are of the entire application window, rather than being cropped to show you the control in question. So, when the author is referencing a specific control such as a small button you have to hunt and peck your way through the grayscale image trying to find the button that looks depressed.
After all of the fore mentioned pitfalls I still continued through the book. I was really interested in getting to the sections on charting and switchboarding. Once again, I was disappointed. The author claims that Access 2007 has no charting capability and the reader should use Excel or PowerPoint instead. First of all, this is incorrect. Charting is available in Access 2007 via the "Design View" in a report. Secondly, the author gives no instruction on how to create charts in Excel or PowerPoint as he advises the reader to do. The chapter on switchboards is all of 11 pages long (mostly screenshots) and contains next to no information on how to get these set up and working. As a matter of fact I could not get any of the switchboard examples to work properly with the example databases provided by the publisher.
In the end I ended up learning quite a bit about Access. However, most of what I learned was done with online research while trying to stumble through this book. Getting through this book took me about 4 times longer than it should have due to a the above mentioned problems. All and all this ended up being a waste of time for someone who was short on time in the first place.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good Introduction to Access and the new Ribbon, February 20, 2007
This review is from: Access 2007 For Dummies (Paperback)
Access is the most popular database program in the world. The reason is two fold:
1. It's very easy to use. Microsoft has gone to a great deal of effort to make the program fit in with the rest of the Office system so that knowing Word or Excel gives you a good bit of the background you need to use Access.
2. Access is part of the Microsoft Office package, so you probably get it when you get Word and Excell.
There's always a question about just how good Access really is. And the answer is that it's pretty good for databases up to perhaps 50 megabytes with no more than a few thousand accesses a day. Above that go to something bigger like SQL Server.
This book starts with a discussion about databases in general and what you might use one to do. Then,like all of the books on the other Office 2007 packages, it begins talking about Microsoft's new Ribbon interface that replaces the look that Access has had for years.
The Access front end is very powerful. It has been worked on for years to keep you from having to learn how to program in the direct language the database engine understands -- SQL.
That's my main complaint about people who use Access, and the books written for them. Just a few pages introducing SQL and giving the reserved words for the Access (Jet) database would be a big help.
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