A Reference reference?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Roger
  • Start date Start date
R

Roger

I'm relatively new to programming Access applications. As I
learn to work with the various objects and controls, I often
times encounter errors caused by a lack of a particular
Reference that I ultimately find (mostly by trial and error)
under the Access Tools menu (Access 2000).

Is there any kind of guide, book, data sheet, or website that
will help a newbie like myself to be able to select the correct
References the first time or, at least, provide some kind of
insight as to what a particular Reference is for?

Thanks,
Roger
 
Hi Roger

If you are new at this, there may be tempted to use several of the libraries
involved. Don't do it! Not unless you are the only one who will use your
databases, and you will not be moving them onto different computers.

Some refer to libraries that require special licensing. Others occur only if
you install particular components, programming languages, and so on. Your
entire application breaks if any one reference is unavailable, e.g. after a
re-install, change your operating system, upgrade (or downgrade) to a
different version, and so on. Welcome to DLL hell.

The safest and most flexible choice is to start out with only 3 libraries
referenced. If you really get stuck and cannot achieve something
efficiently, then by all means consider adding/purchasing another library,
but ONLY once you have become familiar with the functionality available in
the basic ones.

The essential libraries that you cannot dereference are:
- Access (provides objects such as Forms, Reports, combos);
- VBA (provides the programming language such as Integer, If..Then).
Additionally, if you are working with tables stored in Access, you need the
DAO 3.6 library (or DAO 3.5x for Access 97). This library exposes TableDefs,
QueryDefs, lets you OpenRecordset and so on. This libaray is referenced by
default in Access 1, 1.1, 2, 95, 97, and 2003.

In Access 2000 and 2002, DAO was not referenced by default. Fortunately it's
now back, and DAO *is* the library that Access itself uses internally to get
at all the stuff it uses. Most of the databases I write use only these 3
libraries, and it certainly makes maintenance easier.

For more information on libraries, the files for the different versions of
Access, how to avoid the "DLL Hell" of unregistered/bad libraries, see:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~allenbrowne/ser-38.html

For information about which library supplies a particular object, load the
Object Browser by pressing F2 in a code window.
 
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