Product Description

Walks readers through building a database, executing queries, creating reports, using wizards, developing forms, and handling other core database activities.
* Helps the reader conquer the basics of database design and building, data entry, and sharing data on the Web.
* Written by John Kaufeld, a bestselling author with sales of over 1.2 million technical books.
* Covers all the new Office "X" features, including increased XML readiness.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14300 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780764538810
• Condition: USED - VERY GOOD
• Notes:
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From the Back Cover
Grab your data and get it on the table!

Meet the wizards, ask the right questions, give data a form, and share it online

What? You’re still letting your data run around loose? Grab this book and build a database you can, well, access! John Kaufeld demystifies databases for even the truly timid. You’ll soon be constructing tables, turning out reports, delving into existing databases, and querying with the best of them, all with the greatest of ease.

The Dummies Way

• Explanations in plain English
• "Get in, get out" information
• Icons and other navigational aids
• Tear-out cheat sheet
• Top ten lists
• A dash of humor and fun

About the Author
John Kaufeld has written all previous editions of Access For Dummies as well as several other books. John also operates shippertools.com, an online shipping assistant.

Customer Reviews

MS Office Dummy
I've taught database theory at university Master's level, used MySql in a
UNIX/Linux environment, and have a Ph.D. in computer science. I don't need to
learn SQL or how to program, but I did need to know how to get something done
with this MS Office product, and quickly. This book was a perfect fit. It's
not strong on VBA or other programming hooks, or what Microsoft calls database
projects, and it's no substitute for learning the fundamentals of database
design and use (though it does have some very good introductory material), it
is quite comprehensible and thorough as a tutorial, guidebook, and reference
on the user interface that is unique to MS Access. Access is a big
application and this is, appropriately, a big book. Again, it was just what I
needed. Regarding another reviewer's dislike of the cute jokes, it's really
not bad at all, a real relief compared to the otherwise excellent O'Reilly
`animal series' computer books.

Access 2003 for Dummies
Though I've not worked all the way through the book yet, it appears to offer what I expected. Sometimes the "cute" remarks that the "For Dummies" series seems to expect of all their authors get a bit old, but by and large the book appears to be a good reference for a first-time database writer. I previously wrote a fairly complex business database in Paradox, and so much of the information I'm looking for is "how" rather than "what" or "why" with respect to writing databases in Access. I've always found the "For Dummies" series of books a good value, and this one is no exception. I'm sure there are levels of depth that this book is going to skip over -- I've seen little reference to VBA programming, for example. Still, a person writing an application requiring those degrees of depth and security is probably not working in Access to begin with. Such a person is probably not self-taught. Nor are they likely to be affordable to a small company such as I work for.

A Good Fast Way to Get Started
This is a quick and dirty guide to using Access to get information into and out of a database. Access is part of Microsoft's Office Suite. It's designed for small, personal use database applications. This book fits that philosophy quite well. It uses the front end philosophy that Microsoft has done so well to enable a database to be designed, an input form to be created and an output report to be generated.

The list of things that this book (and to a lessor extent Access itself) doesn't do is long. There is very little theory on database design. There isn't much on SQL, the language of databases.

The idea here is to get a fairly simple, desktop you might call it, database up and being productive very quickly. And at this task the book does quite well. I also think that this is a good way to get started in learning about databases. If you subsequently find that your needs are more than you can get out of Access, you'll have a bit of background that makes the jump to a real database like Oracle, DB2, or SQL Server that much easier.