Alison Balter's Mastering Microsoft Office Access 2003 (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Microsoft Access has the steepest learning curve of all the Microsoft Office applications. Its basic functions aren't really intuitive, and users typically need to do some programming as part of their first Access project. For those reasons, Access is the Office application for which Office users--even experienced, highly competent ones--tend to need help learning. Alison Balter's Mastering Microsoft Access 2003 is a new addition to the shelf of Access manuals, and it's one of the best. Balter does a great job of helping a novice Access user (someone who can open a database and edit fields, but can do little more) become an accomplished user. In other words, this book teaches Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) programming as it applies to Access. The word "Mastering" is appropriate in its title.

Balter's basic approach is to introduce a concept (say, the Implements keyword or ADO Database objects) and quickly explain its purpose with prose, then provide an example of how the concept works in practice. Which is to say, she provides a code sample. Because of this strategy, almost every page of this book has code on it. However, the author appears to have made a conscious effort to keep her code snippets short and easily comprehensible. Long, difficult-to-trace listings that span multiple pages are thankfully absent. Balter also does a good job of illustrating the Access development environment, including many screen shots of Access at work and of the applications that result from her code. This is a detailed, carefully considered book that will make sense to all but the most inexperienced Access users. --David Wall

Topics covered: How to write applications with Microsoft Access 2003. Noteworthy coverage deals with the Access way of handling object orientation, clever form-design strategies, and scores of techniques for performing various procedures on databases. Security coverage is good, too.

Product Description

What Alison's book offers over other books in that she is able to take a highly technical topic and present it in a manner that is easy to comprehend. It is a book that the reader will often want to read from cover to cover, but it can also act as an excellent reference. Readers of this book will learn:

• Access 11 application development and real-world solutions to specific development and programming problems.
• Professional programming techniques backed by concise, no-nonsense explanations of the underlying theories.
• Debugging and troubleshooting methods to solve problems quickly and get stalled development projects back on track.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1392 pages
• Publisher: Sams (January 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672325500
• ISBN-13: 978-0672325502
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.4 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #360,185 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As always, pertinent and readable, March 17, 2005

By	MGMcd (Columbia, MD USA) - See all my reviews

As to the reviewer who said that it is the same old material, it sort of follows that it would be the same old material since it is the same old Access. There are certain fundamental topics that must be covered in any comprehensive work on any application, and if that application doesn't change much from rev to rev, then there will be some repeated material. What is important is that as to 2003, this is about as comprehensive as it gets.
If you haven't seen this book before, it is all new to you, and you will find everything from soup to nuts. I have purchased every Alison Balter book on Access from 2000 Desktop/Enterprise, to this current rev, and each volume is invaluable, depending on which rev I am working in.
I would add that this is a great book for beginners since it takes advanced users into the realm of Access development with thorough and easy to understand coverage, and adds value to the skills of intermediate to advanced users in pretty much every topic.
I find myself re-reading these books periodically to go back and pick up little bits that I might have forgotten, and I always find my development skills improve from these re-reads.
This is THE book to have for Access development (and I have MANY Access development books.)

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Get up to speed, February 23, 2005

By	heartburn - See all my reviews

If you're the type of person who's constantly asking your computer-savvy kid for assistance, this is not the book for you. On the other hand, if you are that computer-savvy kid, this book will get you up to speed with Access.

I've been using relational databases for a very long time, but I never really used Access. Sure, I created a few small Access databases for some VB programs. But that's about as far as I ever got with Access. Then I recently wanted to create a database application for my own personal use, and I thought: "why not use Access?"

Well, I quickly found out that not everything in Access is all that obvious to an old database pro. But, Ms. Balter's book helped me to get going. She has a knack for just touching on the essential basics and then covering the more advanced topics in greater detail.

The book is very well organized. It's easy to find what you're looking for. But it's also organized in the sense that, if you think you know something, you can safely skip that chapter without feeling as if you missed something important in the next. And for a book with some 1400 pages, that's pretty important. Especially if your goal is to finish a project and not to read a five pound book.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Advanced Introduction, February 26, 2006

By	John A Lee III "jal3" (San Antonio, TX) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This text is nothing if not thorough. It covers virtually every aspect of using Microsoft Access 2003 and most of it is done in a clear and thorough manner. It does not only teach the use of the program, it teaches the use of relational databases and some of the theory behind them. Best of all, it teaches good habits which, when adhered to, cut down on problems later on down the line. It is an excellent text.

There are some things it could do better. The book ships with a disk that has plenty of examples of database objects and of VBA programming code. The examples generally make the points they are intended to make, particularly the programming ones, but they could be better. If they were to build upon each other towards the completion of a greater project, I believe some of the points would be better made. Instead, they are generally isolated examples and too much use is made of the venerable old Northwind Trading Company database which ships with access.

This book is meant as an introduction but it is a fairly advanced one. Persons reading it would be well served to have some programming experience in the later chapters although the early chapters should be very accessible for all. After the basics, it goes into more advanced topics such as programming and use as a distributed application.