Suggestions for additional books

[Guest]

Wanted to get some suggestions for additional books. I have the following,
all of which I like, but am looking for additional reference material. The
books I have are:

Microsoft Access 2003 Bible, which I have gone through page by page
Microsoft Access 2003 Inside-Out
Building Microsoft Access 2003 Applications
Microsoft Office Access 2003 Programming by Example with VBA, XML, and ASP
Programming Microsoft Access 2003

These books are very good, good tutorials, lengthy examples, and much
reference material. The problem I have is when I am looking for a specific
piece of information or example, I search through the books and see material
that addresses the topic in general, but does not either completely define
parameters, or I have to go through detailed examples to see if a particular
point is covered.

For example,

1. ADO information does not seem to be fully discussed. Maybe I need a
separate ADO reference manual. The current books I found in the store were
all ADO.Net, which I assume is quite different, or different enough. I could
not find any comprehensive discussion of the parameters to pass to

rsPersistData.Open "tblPersistData", , , , adCmdTable

I see a few examples, but not a comprehensive listing.

2. I wanted to transfer an aggregate SQL function result to a VBA variable
and visa versa i.e. update the contents of a field in a table with the
contents of a VBA variable – I figured it out, but I had to go through
several sources and get pieces here and there.

3. SQL is covered extensively, but no discussion of if/how SQL can be
embedded in VBA. All examples I could find is via ADO. Is there a good SQL
reference manual that is oriented towards Access?

4. I could not find a comprehensive explanation of properties. For
example, in answer to a question I had, a response indicated the state of the
form being Dirty might have an impact on my problem. I could only find
anything about this property in one of the books.


Appreciate any suggestions.
Thanks,

John

 

[Dirk Goldgar]

Wanted to get some suggestions for additional books. I have the
following, all of which I like, but am looking for additional
reference material. The books I have are:

Microsoft Access 2003 Bible, which I have gone through page by page
Microsoft Access 2003 Inside-Out
Building Microsoft Access 2003 Applications
Microsoft Office Access 2003 Programming by Example with VBA, XML,
and ASP Programming Microsoft Access 2003

These books are very good, good tutorials, lengthy examples, and much
reference material. The problem I have is when I am looking for a
specific piece of information or example, I search through the books
and see material that addresses the topic in general, but does not
either completely define parameters, or I have to go through detailed
examples to see if a particular point is covered.

A lot may be different for Access 2007, but if you're working with
Access 2003, you really ought to get hold of a copy of the _Access 2002
Developer's Handbook_, by Litwin, Getz, and Gunderloy, published by
Sybex. It's a two-volume set, one volume for Desktop applications, one
for Enterprise apps.

 

[Bill Mosca, MS Access MVP]

John

You might find Access 2000 (or whatever version you are using) Developer's
Handbook Vol I and II helpful.

But when it comes to finding very specific details, there's nothing like
Googling and plowing through the lousy help files. No book will ever be able
to get detailed enough to hit the little stuff. That comes through reading
Access magazines and articles. MSDN has some good ones listed at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...odc_2003_ta/html/odc_ancoffsol.asp?frame=true

 

[Van T. Dinh]

1. If you are interested in the old ADO, try Mike Gunderloy's "Visual Basic
Developer's Guide to ADO".

2. Execute method or creating Recordset and update data in the Recordset.
Also the RunSQL of the DoCmd object.

3. Use the Contents tab of Access Help to go to the Help "book" "Microsoft
JET SQL Reference". It is most comprehensive by far.

4. No book will be able to cover every tidbit of Access. Access Help /
Access VBA Help are more comprehensive than any book, except it is a bit
hard to understand or cryptic at times.

OTOH, there is always the Net (MSKB / MSDN / Google / newsgroups / ...) and
the Access software (+ a few quick and dirty test databases) so that we can
put together quick tests.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for all of your responses. The recommended books are on order and I
will check and bookmark the links.

John