Customer Reviews

Special Edition Using Access 97 (2nd Edition) (Using ... (Que))

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I found this book extremely helpful in building a database from scratch for work without any prior database experience. What separates this book from the rest of the books for beginners is that it goes well beyond the "and you press the wizard button to create a table" and actually gives you the fundamentals needed to design and architect your database. It shows you how to organize your information to get the most out of the relational database capabilities and minimize duplication of information. It shows you via examples what the capabilities of Access are. The book allowed me to have the basic framework up and running in under 3 days and then build on it modularly. If you want to follow the main design example provided in the book (Jennings designs a database throughout the book) you have to read the book sequentially. I have no time to read 1000+ pages, however, the index and cross references have been extremelly helpful in taking me to the exact point where the author is dealing with my particular problem so I can get a quick answer. No book has a magic wand to teach you a subject but this book is as useful as they come.

If you are learning Access from the ground up this is a great book for you...this is not a VBA programming guide. If you want to learn VBA that is an entirely different topic. However, there is no one Access/VBA magic book that can cover everything because the Access/VBA universe is so large.

I have used Access and VBA for 6 years and this by far covers more topics than most other books do. I use this book as a reference on occasion and it is often borrowed off my shelf by the end users here at my company. Although there is some VBA code and advanced items in this book I would recommend this book to beginners and intermediate users of Access. The book covers: tables, queries, forms, reports, macros, and some VBA code (modules). There is also a little bit of Internet programming with Access 97 but that section is out-of-date with the advent of ASP.

Bottom line is this is an excellent choice for a reference book for more advanced users and an even better choice for people looking to learn a lot about Access 97.

I can't believe that some people gave this book 5 stars. The content of the book MIGHT be worth 3 or 4 stars, but any chance of that is flushed by the way the book is written.

The problem I have with this book is the excessive cross referencing. At the beginning of the book the author says that the book is written in a linear manner: You should read the book from front to back because each chapter builds on the knowledge you gained in the previous chapters. However, it feels like every other paragraph is referring me to some other chapter, either telling me what I will learn later or what I should have already learned earlier. These cross referencing comments are stuck right in the middle of text about a difficult subject, which takes away from the books continuity and readability. And it's not just the cross-referenceing of chapters. Constantly I read about a feature of Access and then read a sentence like 'This behavior is similar to that of Borland's Paradox.' I don't care about Paradox, that's why I (got) a book about Access. The constant references to other book titles, other chapters, and other database managers make this book very hard to read, and thus very hard to grasp the concepts of Access. 1 Star. Dont buy it. Find another book about Access. At this point, I'm tempted to highlight all the garbage in this book and ship it to the author.

Dont bother with the "For Dummies" series as one reader suggested either. I have found the resources I need on the Web and in the quality electronic documentation that comes with Access. If you can read this Web site and have Access installed on your computer, you have everything you need to learn Access inside and out...

I am very pleased with this book. There is a tremendous amount of information presented in a very effective manner. Very thorough, well written and I absolutely love the formatting. The targeted audience appears to be intelligent & experienced computers users not necessarily familiar with Access. I highly recommend it.

I puchased the 1st book and the Special Edition and would recommend them to anyone. Yes, they do have a lot of information and if you are not sure what you are trying to accomplish you are going to be lost. I personnally would never purchase any of the "Dummies" books because they are confusing and I have never found they very helpful. They really are for dummies. If you have a high intelligence and can understand what you are reading then I would recommend that you purchase one of these books. Depending on your version of Access you will have to choose one that applies. They have been very helpful to me and since I have never taken a class in Access and am self taught they have helped me design the 3 databases that my company currently uses in our business.

Many times in the past I have found that books from Que where very well written, and very good reading if you wanted to start from zero (or little knowledge) and get up to speed fast.

This is not one of those books.

The book frequently takes a detour to discuss things that are way off target (and I mean over and over and over again). For example, there is no need to
1 discuss the command syntax of other databases,
2 or explain that ATM used to mean automatic transaction machine, but now it stands for automated teller machine
3 tell people how to do basic Microsoft windows stuff like maximize a window
4 etc.

As thick as the book is, there really should be a good example of developing an Access database from scratch, instead of just modifying sample files that come with Access.

If you want to buy a good book for Access 97, do a search and find one that has around 4 stars. Not this one. I have only had this book for a few days. If the book store will allow me to - I'm going to return it.

I found that I got up to speed faster by following Access Tutorials that I found on the Internet.

I agree with many of the other reviewers in that this book has a lot of fluff. In my particular case it didn't supply me with the VBA information I needed nor information on object properties. I can understand why VBA wasn't an important part of the book, afterall, that is a subject of its own. Object properties, however, should have been well documented because they define how the database functions. Readers can get along just fine by pressing the F1 key everytime they encounter an unknown. Don't buy this book.

My comments, posted on this site on June 23, 1999, apply to the book Special Edition Using Microsoft Access 97, ISBN 07897-0916-3.

They do not apply to the book Special Edition Using Access 97, ISBN 07897-1452-3, which I have not read.

The error was on my part and I apologise for the mistake.

This book is excellenty written to explain the entire database development process, from data modeling to ODBC to security and distribution. A complete reference of SQL functions and easy to follow examples are also included. I recommend this book to anyone who will be involved in using Access. First time access developers will find the book invaluable. I had never even heard of Access when I bought the version 2.0 edition of this book. After a few months I was developing my own programs.

This book is easier to learn from than the step-by-step books that the big publishers issue as textbooks. Once in a while you need to jump from chapter to chapter, but if you've ever used a Microsoft interface then this is an easy way to learn Access.