An absolute masterwork and essential reading for anyone developing aplications in Access 2000 and VBA. If you only buy one book on the subject, then make it this one.


The Best Access Book I Ever Bought!   August 31, 2000
 3 out of 3 found this review helpful

If you buy Mastering Access 2000 Development by Alison Balter (SAMS Publishing - ISBN 0-672-31484-3), and Office 2000 Developer, you'll be well on your way to making a fully-working, distributable, Access Runtime app.

This book has a specific chapter on using the Package & Deployment Wizard, and takes you through the steps of Splitting your db into back-end and front-end. She even provides a fully-working 'table re-linking' routine (so that when the path to the back-end is not the same as your own machine, it will look for the back-end, and if it can't find it, it allows you to browse to the back-end, and then it re-links all the tables for you - okay, a little fiddling is required but not much).

It's a wonderful book and I would recommend it to everyone, no other book I have read has gone into so much depth concerning deployment. Buy it, now!


An excellent reference for any aspiring Access developer   February 16, 2000
 3 out of 3 found this review helpful

This book is an excellent reference book for any aspiring Access developer for all levels of experience.

The book has 5 main parts. Part I the Basics Of Access Development covers all the essential stuff but with enough depth to be of real use, eg Report events was particularly useful. It gives the right amount of attention to VBA, and objectively discusses the key differences between DAO and ADO. The focus is rightly with ADO for the rest of the book.

After giving critical coverage to subjects such as debugging, error handling and optimising applications in Part II, the author deals with more advanced development, notably advanced programming techniques (which she neatly refers to as "black belt programming"), multiuser & enterprise applications, and excellent material on security and using Microsoft Office Developer to package and distribute applications.

It's all there! A highly readable and highly recommended book.


Great for programmers who need to get up-to-speed quickly   November 27, 1999
 9 out of 9 found this review helpful

I bought this book because I needed to get a basic Access application up and running in a hurry. I'll admit -- the main reason I chose it over Jones's Developer's Guide was because it was available from stock. But I'm really happy with my choice. As an experienced analyst/programmer who knows a lot about SQL and has dabbled in Visual Basic programming, I found this book was ideal for me. It doesn't spend a lot of time telling you basic information about databases. It doesn't tell you how to *use* Access either. What it does tell you, very clearly, is how to use your existing programming skills to quickly build real applications. The first half-dozen chapters cover "What every developer needs to know about ..." tables, queries, forms, reports ... A quick skim through these chapters and an afternoon at the computer was all I needed to get the grasp I needed to build my application. It's written in a sensible, professional style, with none of that joky "hipness" that can be so irritating in American computer books. And it's organised in a way that makes it easy to dive in and find the sections you need.

I guess if you didn't already know a little about object-oriented programming, you might find it hard to get to grips with this book. Equally, if you don't know VB at all it probably isn't the right choice. It isn't a full-blown Access reference either (but you've got the help files for that). As for me, the next time I'm in this type of situation, I'll be looking for books by Alison Balter!


The Bible for Access 2000 Development   August 23, 1999
 1 out of 1 found this review helpful

This book is a pleasure to read, it covers everything you need to know in depth. The author's writing style is easy to follow and she knows her subject. I am now half way through it and haven't been able to put it down. She assumes you know something about Access which is refreshing. She still goes over basic points but doesn't dwell on them. This allows her to cover subjects in more detail than other books.