Product Description

• Go beyond Excel(r) with Access's more powerful analysis capabilities
• Get better visibility into your data with custom views
• Scale up your data pool without limitation
• Master the four fundamentals of data analysis
• Discover shortcuts with the helpful Input Mask Wizard
• Integrate your data with the web and enterprise data sources
• Avoid the common pitfalls of data crunching
• Harness VBA to improve data analysis
• Leverage information from the field with real-world scenarios

Companion web site
See examples from this book firsthand, in our companion web site at www.wiley.com/go/accessdataanalysis. The site also includes templates and tools to get you started.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26308 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 552 pages

From the Back Cover

• Go beyond Excel® with Access's more powerful analysis capabilities
• Get better visibility into your data with custom views
• Scale up your data pool without limitation
• Master the four fundamentals of data analysis
• Discover shortcuts with the helpful Input Mask Wizard
• Integrate your data with the web and enterprise data sources
• Avoid the common pitfalls of data crunching
• Harness VBA to improve data analysis
• Leverage information from the field with real-world scenarios

Companion web site

See examples from this book firsthand, in our companion web site at www.wiley.com/go/accessdataanalysis. The site also includes templates and tools to get you started.

About the Author
Michael Alexander is a Microsoft Certified Application Developer (MCAD) with more than 13 years experience consulting and developing office solutions. Michael started his career in consulting and development at the White House Communications Agency in Washington DC where he spearheaded the development of a standalone HRIS system for the White House’s Military Office. He parlayed his experience with VBA and VB into a successful consulting practice in the private sector, developing middleware and reporting solutions for a wide variety of industries. He currently lives in Plano, TX where he serves as the director of an analytical services department of a $700 million company. In his spare time, he runs a free tutorial site, www.datapig technologies.com, where he shares basic Access and Excel tips with intermediate users.

Customer Reviews

Wonderful!
So, there you are at your Access job interview. You are a whiz at VBA, ODBC, SQL queries that boggle the mind and creating cool forms. And the hiring manager hands you over to the IT team you'll be working with, Data Analysts who know their numbers inside and out and how to wrangle them.
The IT leader says, "OK, please show me how to build an Access Pivot Table - with parameters. Nothing complex, just a simple example."

You give her blank look. Huh? "OK..a pivot table..yeah..ummm...I think I can do that.." And you fumble and stumble through the process until the Team Leader sighs and says, "OK, we'll skip this. Do you have any questions for me?". And you, blushing with embarrasment, are toast.

Why? Because you forgot about the DATA!

And how to manipulate it. You've been pre-occupied so long with cool tricks to make your db app do neat things, that you forgot that people have to take data from a raw source and present it in a meaningful way.
This great book, from Michael Alexander is NOT another whiz-bang developer book, but an intro to Access for Data Analysts.

Alexander takes you from simple concepts to intermediate areas like pivot tables and sub-queries, etc. to advanced topics like VBA and automation.
Everything from soup to nuts, but, the difference is, doing something really USEFUL, instead of making you wade through complex ODBC setups and the like.

For me, an IT consultant, this book was like a refresher, taking me down familiar paths and concepts but reminding me that it's the DATA in the end that really counts here.

If you are a DA who works with Costpoint, etc. you'll really appreciate this book, because it gives you an alternative to working with those blasted limited Excel sheets when your manager finally realizes that Excel isn't cutting it for archiving your growing sheets.

Well organized but poor explanations for "on the go" use.
Perhaps the biggest short coming of this book is the author's assumption that you will sit down and read the book from cover to cover. He writes each chapter under the assumption that you have just finished the chapter before and completed all prior exercises. Rather than explaining concepts "cold turkey" he references earlier examples and give short, curt explanations for functionality. If you're in the working world and need a quick answer, this is not the book for you. You're better off with another book of even Access help on Microsoft's web site. Although the author clearly knows his material, this book is only best used in a classroom setting and not for real-world reference.

Very useful book
Yes, that's a very useful book. And the title don't lies, is a book for people that know the basics of access and wants to walk on the possibilities on data analysis.