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What This Book Is About
This is an idea book. It's a compendium of solutions
and suggestions devoted to making your work with Microsoft Access
more productive. If you're using Access and you
aspire to create database applications that are more than
wizard-created clones of every other database application, this is
the book for you.If, on the other hand, you're looking for a book
that shows you how to create a form, or how to write your first
Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) function, or how to use the
Crosstab Query Wizard, this may not be the book
you need. For those kinds of things, we recommend one of the many
Access books geared toward the first-time user.
Promotes Creative Use of the Product
Rather
than rehashing the manuals, Access Cookbook
offers you solutions to problems you may have already encountered,
have yet to encounter, or perhaps have never even considered. Some of
the issues discussed in this book are in direct response to questions
posted in the Microsoft Access newsgroups online (at news://msnews.microsoft.com ); others are
problems we've encountered while developing our own
applications. In any case, our goal is to show you how to push the
edges of the product, making it do things you might not even have
thought possible.For example, you'll learn how to create a query that
joins tables based on some condition besides equality, how to size a
form's controls to match the form's
size, how to store and retrieve the locations and sizes of forms from
session to session, and how to create a page-range indicator on every
report page. You'll see how to use some of the
common Windows dialogs from your Access application, how to
internationalize your messages, how to really
control your printer, and how to store the username and date last
edited for each row. There are tips for securing your database,
filling list boxes a number of different ways, and optimizing your
applications. You'll find details on using Access in
multiuser environments, creating transaction logs, adjusting database
options depending on who's logged in, and
programmatically keeping track of users and groups. There are
instructions for using the Windows API to restrict mouse movement to
a specific area of a form, exiting Windows under program control, and
checking the status of and shutting down another Windows application.
You'll see how, using COM and Automation, you can
use Access together with other applications such as Word, Excel,
PowerPoint, and Outlook.If you've never tried data access pages (DAPs),
you're in for a treatthis feature makes it
simple for you to display and edit data using a web browser.
You'll learn enough to really get you started with
this exciting technology, and you'll learn solutions
to common but tricky problems. You'll find tips and
techniques for using Access and SQL Server together, taking advantage
of Access Data Projects (ADPs). You'll learn how
smart tags have been implemented in Access 2003, and how to create
your own smart tags. And you'll also see how you how
Access allows you to work with XML data. You'll
explore how to work with SharePoint lists from within Access as well
as how to use SharePoint and FrontPage to publish Access data on the
Internet or an intranet. Finally, you'll discover
how easy it is to interoperate with Microsoft .NET from Access,
learning both how to call .NET programs and Web services from Access
and how to work with Access data and reports from .NET programs.You
won't, however, find that this book pushes you into
using new technology just because it's new. Many of
the techniques in this book are "old
chestnuts" that Access developers have used for
years to solve common problems. Most of the VBA code that performs
data manipulation chiefly uses the older technology, DAO, rather than
the newer ADO, because DAO is still the most efficient way to work
with Access data. When ADO provides a better approach to solving a
particular problem, you'll learn how to use it for
that purpose. For example, you'll learn how you can
use an ADO recordset to retrieve a list of all the users logged on to
your applicationsomething that was never possible with DAO.
Uses the Tools at Hand
This book focuses on using the right tool for each problem. Some
solutions here require no programming, while others require a little
(or a lot) of VBA coding. Sometimes even plain VBA code
isn't sufficient, and you'll need
to use the Windows API or other available code libraries. In each
case, we've tried to make the implementation of the
technique as simple, yet generic, as possible.We did, however, decide to focus the
data access features of this book squarely on using the Jet database
engine (instead of SQL Server). There are several reasons why we made
this choice, but first and foremost is that most Access developers
still prefer the convenience and simplicity of using Jet. The Jet
database engine remains a cost-effective and capable solution for
database applications used by small workgroups, which make up the
vast majority of the Access user base. Most of the techniques
described in this book, however, will work just as effectively with
data from SQL Server or from other ODBC data sources, even if the
example uses a Jet database. And if you are working with non-Access
data sources, you'll find plenty of tips focused on
helping you do so more efficiently.
Follows a Problem-Solution Format
The structure of this book is simple. The chapters are arranged by
categories: queries, forms, reports, application design, printing,
data manipulation, VBA, optimization, user interface, multiuser,
Windows API, Automation, DAPs, and SQL Server applications. Each
section consists of a single problem and its solution, followed by a
discussion. Each solution contains a sample database (e.g.,
01-01.MDB ) with complete construction details,
indicating which modules you'll need to import, what
controls you'll need to create, and what events
you'll need to handle. In one case, Recipe 4-10, any
MDB file used elsewhere in the chapter will do. To use certain
Chapter 14 examples, you will need to be connected to either the
Northwind or Pubs databases that ship with SQL Server. All the code,
bitmaps, sample data, and necessary tools are included with the
CD-ROM that accompanies this book. (CD content is available online at
http://examples.oreilly.com/accesscook.)
