Access 2002 VBA Handbook [With CDROM]

This book has been all that I hoped it would be. I use it as a tutorial one day and a reference the next. I was a beginner Access VBA developer and now with this book I have become much more comfortable around VBA. So much more comfortable that I have developed 4 financial Access applications that are going to be used by multiple departments. I recently picked up the Access 2002 Developer's Handbook Set which is a little more advanced but I keep coming back to this one.

I started using Access a few years ago as an adjunct of Microsoft Office, creating simple databases for my Christmas card list and such. Then about a year ago, because of work, I had the opportunity to dig deeper. Where to start? I began with Alison Balter's Mastering Access 2002 Desktop Development, a frustrating and disorganised tome that seemed to be missing all of the secret handshakes, signals and knowledge I longed for to unlock the supposed power of Microsoft Access. Every time it appeared Ms. Balter was going to get to the actual point and impart the wisdom I was seeking...she swiftly moved on to another topic. The book didn't even serve to help me clarify the mind-boggling vocabulary necessary to describe and understand the application. To me, Ms. Balter seemed like somebody whom, if they possessed a lot of knowledge, wasn't giving any of it away. A job change took care of my deadline but I was still intrigued and inherited a larger project when I committed myself to writing a custom database application for my partner's administrative needs. I needed help and serious instruction to achieve the application designs I had in my head. I turned to Getz, Litwin & Baron's Access Cookbook (1st edition), thinking I could hi-jack some off the shelf solutions and, if not actually learn to write Access VBA, at least tweak the code they supplied to suit my starry-eyed custom application needs. Not a bad idea. Problem was, as intriguing as the book is, it's really for experienced developers looking to take their skills in another direction (skyward). Very strong on methodology too, which is important, but it wasn't exactly getting me off the launch pad (it wasn't even getting me off my mouse pad, to be more accurate). Seven months on, two books later and still no real understanding of Access VBA. I checked out Getz, Litwin & Gunderloy's Access 2002 Developer's Handbook Set and was ready to dig deep...but one really needs to know the basics and fundamentals of Access VBA to keep up (otherwise it's like reading a foreign language of which you have very little knowledge). One hundred pages in and I sensed that I had skipped a grade and it wasn't going to get any easier. Even Ken Getz & Co. were repeatedly pointing me toward Novalis & Jones' Access 2002 VBA Handbook (useful for 2003 as well) and I can honestly say, after a few months procrastinating and about 2.5 - 3 weeks of focused study, without any previous programming knowledge or experience, I can now read an Access VBA procedure and understand what is actually going on. It's like I'm speaking their language! Novalis and Jones are thorough and precise to a fault. Despite the repetitive vocabulary of Access application development, they do a stunning job of continually moving the reader along, down what is, it has to be said, a very tricky and treacherous path. ("Each AccessObject object has an AccessObjectProperties collection object, sometimes just referred to as Propert

You have done the graphical interfaces of Access to the limit and You need more theoretical knowledge to climb a step further, so your projects can advance for their accomplishments.This book will give You high quality information, meaning knowledge that is in harmony with other sciences, for instance mathematics.You will not find usefull new examples of code, once the book is based on the Access Samples (Northwind), thanks God! You wont find the icecream shop, or the whisky bottlement, or the video rent,etc.These originalities are meaningless to the understanding of the structure of VBA. You will not find that a number divided by zero is zero, or that x = x + 1, without further explanations, and that programming has a special type of logic that blows up whatever You thought credible. So I would advise to buy the book because it is an excellent work, linking the many areas of knowledge in a deep way, although the subjects are managed with as few words as possible, enough to You understand how VBA is conceived.