All parts of the relational database in Access will be mathematically defined and proven. It will have a name you most probably will find confusing, and far from what you are used to from the Access interface. Apparently the author follows the naming standards established in the academic world to prove the algebra. After all, he is a professor of Mathematics !

In the programming part of the book you will be introduced to the DDL, DML and DCL components included in Access. Also, these components will probably be completely unknown to you, if you have no previous programming experience. Further, the book makes use of DAO as opposed to ADO.

The book is perfect for someone, who has completed courses in Computer Science, Programming and Algebra, or with the equivalent knowledge and a mathematical/academic way of thinking. They will be able to read through the book in a fast pace, and immediately make use of Access at a high level.

If your background is different, I would recommend another approach to database design and programming. For database design, I recommend "Inside Relational Databases" by Whitehorn and Marklyn (ISBN 354076092X). To learn programming I recommend "Learn to Program with VB 6" by John Smiley (ISBN1902745000).

This book is going to split its readers in two groups: The mathematically and academic minded who will love the book for its concise language. And the "grass roots" among the Access users/developers, who will be looking for database samples or VBA code snippets to learn from, and find none.

You will probably ask yourself if you need to know this much theory and detail. But remember, a relational database operates purely on mathematics. It is difficult and tiresome to learn, but your reward will be well worth the effort.

38 of 39 found the following review helpful:

A Gem  Feb 13, 2000

So you're familiar with the Access interface and are comfortable with tables, forms, reports and macros. So what's next?

Simply put, choose this book if you have little to no programming experience and you're ready to go to the next level with Access database development. This book is truly for the advanced Access user, but the novice VBA programmer. Having spent many frustrating hours with other books that claim to be for this audience, I can wholeheartedly recommend this one. I needed a "primer" in VBA before moving on to more advanced treatments, and this one fit the bill.

For me, a bonus was the section on normalization. Well written and clear, it solidified and enhanced my understanding of sound database design .

Steven Roman...thanks so very much!

23 of 23 found the following review helpful:

Good and to the point.....  May 27, 2000
By Khalil Ahmad
This book provides good overview of the database design in the first four chapters. Good tips to avoid data redundancy without losing data. Chapter 5 and 6 throws light on SQL, DDL and DML components of Access SQL, not too much but some how enough. Chapter 7 gives a little bit idea about the Database Architecture.

Then Chapters 8-13 provide basic introductory and definitive approach of VBA in Access with different data types, functions, sub-routines, control statements, etc.

Chapter 14-16, here goes the real thing about DAO. With couple of examples, author explained in very good manner about different aspects of Data Access Objects and how to open, create and query database/tables from within code.

Chapter 17, explains breifly about ActiveX Data Objects incl. ADO and OLE DB.

So over all, this book is very good and to the point. I would definitely recommend to the beginners who wanna learn MS ACCESS or who has a little bit knowledge and wanna improve it without wasting time and going through huge books. As far as, MS Access professionals are concerned, they may not find it very informative but still if they go direct through chapters 14-17, they may find something useful.

18 of 18 found the following review helpful:

If you're looking for screenshots, look elsewhere  Oct 14, 1999
By Keith R. Lammon
I have yet to go wrong buying an O'Reilly book. This book is no exception. Few screen shots clutter up the book, which is great. It seems that most other Access books jam a bunch of screen shots in the book just to make the book thicker and therefore command the greatest bookshelf real estate. Do I really need screen shots showing me how to use a wizard? Isn't the wizard supposed to walk you through the steps so that you don't need a book? This book doesn't insult you like so many others. I bought the second edition. It was excellent at explaining database theory. Considering that Microsoft will eventually phase out DOA and move to ADO, I was a little bit disappointed to find heavy coverage of the former and light coverage of the latter. However, once you understand the theory behind DAO, the light coverage of ADO is all that is needed to explain the differences.

Excellent book.

17 of 17 found the following review helpful:

If you own 2 Access books, this should be one of them  Jun 07, 2005
By Frodo Baggins
I first read Steven Roman's book on Access a few years ago when it was written for Access 97. I recently bought a copy of the current version as a reference.

What I liked about Steven's books was that he took seriously his coverage of normalization, which is rare amongst books on Access. If you're new to database programming, you need to learn the basics of normalization. In my experiences, I've come across a lot of databases designed by beginners that exhibit a "spreadsheet" type of understanding towards Access tables. The beauty of the relational model is that once you have your database set up, ongoing maintenance is minimal. If you learn how to program Access, but don't learn the basics of normalization and the relational model, you may as well just keep your data in Excel spreadsheets.

My complaint with this book is his coverage of ADO. The author clearly prefers DAO for MS Access, and he states as much, and his coverage suffers. He covers the material, but he makes using ADO appear to be very difficult. In an entire chapter on ADO, he fails to show the user the most basic thing: how to generate a recordset for a table in your Access database. Instead, he shows you how to use ADO to query other databases, such as SQL Server and even Excel, but not the Access Database that you're currently using.

In DAO one of the fundamental details that you need to know about is the CurrentDB object. Steven gets a gold star, because he not only covers the CurrentDB object, but he spends 6 pages on it. In ADO, an object that is used for a somewhat similar purpose is the CurrentProject object. You won't find coverage on it anywhere in this book - just check the index. Perhaps the author's surreptitious goal of the chapter is to frustrate you so much with ADO that you will return to DAO, his preferred choice. Tsk, tsk Steven.

After reading the books section on ADO over and over again, I cannot recommend this book if you plan on owning only one Access book. Instead, I would recommend Alison Balter's Mastering Access Databases. It is the best Access book on the market(as most Amazon reviewers will attest to) and covers nearly ever topic that you'd want to know about Access.

Even so, Steven's book covers normalization so much better than the other Access books out there that I would advise serious Access programmers to buy two books: Alison's and Steven's.


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