Having done several courses in programming (one costing thousands and another a couple of hundred pounds) I'd definately advise anyone to save their dosh, and buy this instead! It's the best 30 I've ever spent.


Excellent Book which taught me all i needed!   November 28, 2001
 9 out of 9 found this review helpful

Not A very long review, but this book was great.
It covered nearly all areas of VBA in Access and was very useful for my IT coursework.
If you want to learn VBA in simple steps then this book is for you!


Some good stuff, but a bit too gentle at times.   August 12, 2001
 10 out of 11 found this review helpful

I started working as a database developer in January, and "Beginning Access 2000 VBA" was the first book that I read on the subject. There was much in it that I liked, particularly the code showing users currently connected, and the error logging table (both of which have been added to our company databases). I understood everything without any problems, and that perhaps, is my criticism -- perhaps it could have shot a little higher at times? Take for instance, Chapter 16 which shows how to gauge user permissions via bitwise AND operations; the authors state that it's not important to understand how these work, but it would only have taken a second to explain it anyway. When difficult concepts were introduced, they seem to be in an uneven fashion. Chapter 2 contains an interesting discussion of the software development process and principles of normalisation, only to be followed by chapters on the basics of programming. I can't imagine there are too many people who would understand the former and not know the latter. In terms of teaching VBA, I think it is a mistake to try and explain function arguments before you've covered variables, but that's just my opinion...


Excellent for the beginner in VBA   July 5, 2001
 4 out of 4 found this review helpful

This book was a great help to me, in that on the strength of what I learned in it (together with a 3 month VB course) I was able to get my first programming job. A bit lacking in depth maybe for some, but the title does say "beginning..". If you work through the code in areas you don't understand it really does help you to see how things work. The light jokey writing style also makes this book a bit less dry than some and therefore easier not to fall asleep, although these guys obviously really know their stuff. Only uses DAO however, so maybe getting a bit dated now. Maybe the next version will be updated (the authors mention ADO, but dismiss it as not rich enough at the time of writing). In short, a good book.