Customer Reviews

Access 97 VBA Programming with CDROM (Beginning)

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As a beginner in the world of Database development, I have been longing for a book of this sort. I have bought book after book on programming have nearly always been disappointed. Most of the books I have bought either have next to useless code. Or have very unclear descriptions of how the code works, making it difficult or impossible to edit the code for a custom application. This book falls into neither of these traps. It offers useful code and clearly explains each line of code, allowing me to alter it for my own apps. This book is a must have for anyone who wants to use VBA to maximize their applications. If you already understand the basics of MS Access 97 then this book might be the ticket becoming a "power user". Great book guys.... Two thumbs up!

This is not a true beginners book. The word "Intermediate" should appear somewhere on the cover. I am divided on this book, some chapters are fantastic, while others are terribly written. On the negative: the authors make constant reference to how easy this is, however they are forgetting that the readers of this book do not have the multi-year experience that they possess. Certain chapters are extemely complicated are clearly intended for seasoned professionals. They also spend considerable time on procedures that would likely never be used in the real world. On the positive: there is a great deal of information here, the chapter on recordsets in sensational. The authors and I agree that recordset (note this is a broad subject) manipulation is one of the most crucial issues in Access VBA development. After employing what I learned into my real world applications, it is clear why this subject is so critical. They did a great job of writing the chapters that cover recordsets (and all of its' subsets) as well as program logic (If/Then, Do/Loop, For Each/Next, Arrays, etc.). If you are truly a beginner to VBA then buy "Step by Step" first. I would warn that the reader should not be taken in by the word "Beginner" in the title. Do not buy this book unless you are serious about application development. If you can understand this book, then you are moving into an elite status. I would not recommend this book unless your goal is to be compensated (to at least some degree) for your Access programming skills.

I've created and SOLD Access programs since version one. All I can say is that after all of this time this book made a lot of my DAO questions clear. I love it when I spend my hard learned, hard earned money for a book to increase my knowledge and potential and it pays off! If these guys keep writing like this they will have a steady income from me! I have probably 6 Access books and half of them regurgitate how to create tables, forms, what a database, is Etc. After a while all a DB Developer needs is "the meat" not "the fluff". This book works and i'm glad I purchased it because now I will be able to charge more for my Apps.... There may be some errors; all books have them. What is important is that this book delivers the info I purchased it for. And to me that's what counts...

To those who grumble that the book is not for beginners--people, it does say on the cover that some knowledge of Access is required! Let me say that the book has been a godsend for me, as it enabled me to develop a one-of-a-kind application for my employer (the oil industry) in a short amount of time (it was actually also a project for my information systems class that my professors liked enough to give an honors rating!). I should add that I had endured four programming classes in the past so the book was a fairly easy read for me. Although I might find myself moving on to the next level of VBA programming in Access and hence, more technically challenging books that might not be as enjoyable to read, I will always have a spot on my bookshelf for this invaluable tome. Yeah, there are some typos here and there, and there are also sections (particularly the examples concerning list boxes) that could have incorporated better solutions, but for a technical book that's targeted to budding VBA programmers, I've seen a lot worse. Well done, Robert and Dave!

There does not seem to be a good book on VBA written, but this book is the best of a bad lot. If you have no programming or computer science background at all, then this book would be considered an intermediate text and you may wish to try one of the SAMS learning series books instead. However, if you have any background in programming, this book will help you acquire the nuances of using Visual Basic with Access.

The book takes a very practical approach of walking the reader through the various elements of how a VBA application is structured and developed. The chapters are: Designing Applications, Events, Creating Code, Flow Control, Objects, Recordsets, External Data, Reports, Advanced Techniques, Error Handling, Class Modules, Optimization, Libraries, OLE, Internet interfaces and miscellaneous notes. Using a consistent sample application, the reader is walked through each step in the construction of a VBA application.

I find that the use of single demo, which builds upon itself, to be much more effective that snippets of code and incomplete/unrelated examples. With little effort, many of the techniques in the sample code may be modified to fit your own needs.

Overall, the book is a good text as well as reference for sample code. It is not organized as a reference text (use the online help instead). As a systems integration professional, I have purchased this book for more than one of my junior programmers in order to get them started.

I had taken a five day class in Access by Executrain and had been working for a few months both before and after that in Access. I was creating some nice databases at work but needed to do more. I bought this book to learn how to use VBA and make more dynamic databases.

This book was everything I had hoped for and more. It is an excellent tutorial and has a perfect match between the book and the sample files on the disk. I tried to learn Access with the "Access 97 Bible" but it had a terrible tutorial and the sample files did not even resemble the book. This book is a must for anyone who wants to create complex, full-feature datbases with great functionality. I have only completed the first six and a half chapters and have learned so much. The text is clear, easy to read, and very well ordered. Despite not having programed basic since my PCjr it was a great reintroduction to programming. It starts off very basic and does not leave you behind.

I could not recommend this book more highly for anyone wanting to program VBA in Access 97.

As you know by now, most programming books fall into one of two categories: expert references, or trivial introductions. Wrox books usually fall somewhere in between. As an result, these books usually create some controversy over who should read them. If you have had any programming experience, either in class or self-taught, you should do fine. It does NOT cover relational database design, nor does it teach SQL.

This book covers most of the basics: responding to events, building forms, using form modules, using code modules, programming reports, creating classes, etc. While it does these things well, it also has many errors that can trip up novice programmers. In one chapter, some sample code uses the "IsMissing" function with optional date parameters. This function only works with variant data types. Chapter 16's OLE example ("Communicating with Other Applications") simply cannot run as listed. You have to make some serious code changes in order for it to work as advertised. These oversights made me feel like the authors did not test all of their examples first. If the rest of the book were not excellent, this book would have received a 3-star rating.

Unlike most other Wrox books, this one includes an accompanying CD-ROM. I found it to be indispensable to completing the in-chapter examples and the end-of-chapter problems. It dovetailed nicely with the text, allowing me to move rapidly through the material.

This book is also a good launching point for developing more complex VB programming skills. It is a good buy, but make sure that you visit the errata pages on Wrox' web site while you work your way through this one.

Over the past three years, I have been able to successfully complete several sophisticated projects in Access using SQL and macros- I stayed away from extensive use of VBA because you use what you are confident in. My new job as a DBA and developer required extensive use of VBA due to the complexity of reporting from several different databases. I needed a "quick-start" to increase my skill-set and this book gave me what I needed. Unlike other books on the subject- the authors provided easy to understand explanations and "hands-on" examples with the CD that came with the book. This isn't a beginning Access 97 reference- it's a GREAT beginning Access 97 VBA reference. You can immediately get techniques you can implement on your job, with results that will impress the end users. More importantly, it provides a good foundation of the basics to build on. THANKS.

Though titled "Beginning" this book gets up to speed quickly but does so in a clear step-by-step way. I searched countless books, looking in bookstores and reading online reviews. I even ended up ordering 3 Access/VBA books with the intention of returning 2. This is the book I kept. Wrox books in general seem to be written in a way that is easy to understand and not unnecessarily repetitive. My advice: get this book if you want to program in Access (as well as learn to get behind all of the Office suite, using VBA.) I recommend at least checking out what Wrox Press has to offer before buying a technical book. I own 3 Wrox books (after much research) and have read/seen many more. They're just well put together.

I'm a hobbiest programmer and recently purchased this book to start to work on databases. With little previous experience of VBA I have managed to now create quite sophisticated databases that pass information to other MS Office applications. I thought the chapters were very well written, and provide the depth of information that I needed. I would say this is an ideal book for anyone wishing to get a toe hold in this area of technology and a must buy for any serious would be programmer.