Access Hacks: Tips & Tools for Wrangling Your Data [Paperback]

Ken Bluttman (Author)

Book Description

Series: Hacks | Publication Date: April 24, 2005

As part of the Microsoft Office suite, Access has become the industry's leading desktop database management program for organizing, accessing, and sharing information. But taking advantage of this product to build increasingly complex Access applications requires something more than your typical how-to book. What it calls for is Access Hacks from O'Reilly.

This valuable guide provides direct, hands-on solutions that can help relieve the frustrations felt by users struggling to master the program's various complexities. For experienced users, Access Hacks offers a unique collection of proven techniques and tools that enable them to take their database skills and productivity to the next level. For Access beginners, it helps them acquire a firm grasp of the program's most productive features.

A smart collection of insider tips and tricks, Access Hacks covers all of the program's finer points. Among the multitude of topics addressed, it shows users how to:

• work with Access in multi-user environments
• utilize SQL queries
• work with external data and programs
• integrate Access with third-party products

Just imagine: a learning process without the angst. Well, Access Hacks delivers it with ease, thanks to these down-and-dirty techniques not collected together anywhere else.

Part of O'Reilly's best-selling Hacks series, Access Hacks is based on author Ken Bluttman's two decades of real-world experience in database programming and business application building. It's because of his vast experiences that the book is able to offer such a deep understanding of the program's expanding possibilities.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ken Bluttman is the author of numerous computer books and articles. He recently released O'Reilly's Access Hacks as well as Excel Charts for Dummies. Ken is also at work on his next O'Reilly book: The Access Data Cookbook (due out at the end of 2005). His technical chops include Microsoft Office, XML, VBA, VB.Net, SQL Server, and assorted web technologies. Ken is a musician, nature lover, and as time allows spins a good dish in the kitchen. Visit Ken at www.bluttman.com.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media (April 24, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596009240
• ISBN-13: 978-0596009243
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #252,750 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #74 in Books > Computers & Technology > Microsoft > Development > SQL Server
  • #83 in Books > Computers & Technology > Databases > Data Warehousing

More About the Author

It all started with Creative Writing 101 back in high school. There are oodles of unfinished fiction works around my desk, but it has been writing techy and artsy books that are the path I walk these days.

Hope you enjoy what I have provided. It's always a hoot writing a book - keeping late hours, forgetting to eat, and trying to pet my cat and type at the same time.

Thanks!

Ken B

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Poor quality control, December 25, 2005

By 

Anonymous - See all my reviews

This review is from: Access Hacks: Tips & Tools for Wrangling Your Data (Paperback)

I rate this two stars, rather than one, because it's likely that most people will find something in the book which will put them onto a new way of doing something.

Unfortunately, the book (which includes "hacks" from seven contributors, as well as the principal author) is wildly uneven in quality. The poor quality varies from the text (it is noted that hack #9 is not an "eloquent" way of handling the problem) to the solutions presented. For instance, the example code in hack #22 turns off warnings -- but then never turns them back on, which could be rather disastrous (not to mention that any code which sets warnings FALSE absolutely needs an error handling routine which ensures these are turned back on). Hack #74, rated medium hard, introduces domain aggregate functions (DSum, DLookup, etc.), but the example code doesn't protect against situations when nothing matches the Where criteria -- so the example code will blow up if the DSum function returns NULL and tries to assign that to the Single variable. Examples relying implicitly on unnormalized tables abound. Would it have been so hard to think up examples that actually used normalized tables? Hack #19, rated medium hard, provides code to move through an overly-long form relying on SendKeys (!) to simulate PageUp and PageDown key presses. Rather than insert page breaks on the form and buttons relying on SendKeys on maneuver between these, why not just transform the long form into tabs on a tab control?

The above is illustrative, rather than an exhaustive list of hacks that are trivial, dumb or even dangerous. While there certainly are some hacks in the book which gave me food for thought, problems like the above which I could detect in other hacks made me wonder what I'll find out the hard way as I try to actually use these new ideas.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars well integrated with MS Office, June 9, 2005

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Access Hacks: Tips & Tools for Wrangling Your Data (Paperback)

Microsft Access is a little of a strange beast. From the vantage of a SQL user, it is a dumbed down SQL implementation. But it has a very nice GUI that pure SQL engines like SQL Server or DB2 lack.

So most of the hacks in the book relate to GUI issues. But a minority pertain to the SQL limitations, compared to SQL Server. Access cannot make an outer join, for example. But hack 53 provides a workaround, just in case you need to do so.

Another group of hacks illustrate how Access can be used in combination with Microsoft Office. Microsoft has cleverly provided ways for Access users to integrate their tasks with Word and Excel. In one case, Excel can reorient your Access data. Or, more broadly, many of Excel's functions can be used within Access. These methods key off Microsoft's strengths in a mature Office suite.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Case Studies, May 25, 2005

By 

J. Nagy (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Access Hacks: Tips & Tools for Wrangling Your Data (Paperback)

As a database analyst for a large company, I oftentimes am confronted with small scale problems in Access. As always, there are a dozen different ways to solve them. Since I'm not 50 years old chock full of years of experience, the hacks here have saved me plenty of times. Once you read through it, you'll know when to apply the hack to a real world problem at work.
The way I try to solve problems is by not re-inventing the wheel and rather referencing an example with a given solution. This is where the real value of the book lies.
For example, a while back I had to automate a mass email using Outlook and Excel. I created a simple VB.NET app using COM to interface the two. One of the hacks in this book shows you how to automate the task using a given Access database of emails to create an object of an Outlook instance. You create an email object, set its properties (recipient, body, title, attachment, ...) and send it. This is a much more manageable solution I wish I had thought about.