Access Cookbook Published by: OReilly First Edition, February, 2002 The Access Cookbook really surprised me by how it covers topics regarding Microsoft Access that none of the other reference books talk about. I have an extensive Access reference collection, and the Access Cookbook far outshines them in practical solutions to real development problems, and also covers innovative ways to do things that you might not otherwise think of doing. Each topic is presented in a Problem, Solution, Discussion format. There are also plenty of illustrations, and a CD that has the code for each of the topics. You can choose to enter the code for the examples yourself, or simply to download it from the CD and follow along with the lesson. Ive been developing in Access for more than a year, and the Access Cookbook has shown me things that I never dreamed could be done inside of an "application" versus a full-blown Visual Basic development environment. The Access Cookbook is an excellent addition to any Microsoft Access developers library. It is written for Access versions 97, 2000, and 2002.
OReilly has a series entitled "The Missing Manual" of books. This could rightfully be the "Missing Supplemental Guide" for Access, for this book opens up a lot of the lesser known tricks that are not covered in the standard text but are part of the problems database managers face all the time. Getz, et al take us beyond instruction into actual working code, and explains the idea behind it. The examples are practical - Ive put a number of them to work in daily business already. And with the accompanying CD, you can see these functions in action through live database examples. The help in the book is not overly technical so only an Access Guru can follow and replicate it. Its written for people who work with Access and are comfortable with it but want to take things to the next level. The book is organized into thematic chapters so you can delve into what you want or need to know and get the full range. My copy is covered with post-it flags for different examples I want to refer to again and again. It is not often that a book can fill the void in instruction, but Getz and the Access Cookbook had done just that. User friendly, practical, and understandable make this book a permanent resident on the shelf only an arms length away.
This is one of my all-time favorite Access books (Next to Wroxs Beginning Access VBA). If you want a cool solution to common situations/problems, you can find it in this book. The search textbox for the listbox control code is one of my favorites! There are some really good ideas in here for user interfaces. This book is for folks who have some VBA experience, so its really not a beginners book. Get some VBA experience and youll totally appreciate the value of this book!
