Synopsis of Access Database Design & Programming

This volume aims to take the reader behind the details of the Access interface, focusing on the general knowledge necessary for Access power users or developers to create effective database applications. When using software products with graphical interfaces, we frequently focus so much on the interface that we forget about the general concepts that allow us to understand and use the software effectively. In particular, this book focuses on three areas: database design - the book provides an overview of database design that carefully shows you how to normalize tables to eliminate redundancy without losing data; queries - the book examines multi-table queries (i.e.,various types of joins) and shows how to implement them indirectly by using the Access interface or directly by using Access SQL; and programming - the book examines the VBA integrated development environment (IDE); it then offers an introduction to Data Access Objects (DAO), ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), and ADO Extensions for Data Definition and Security (ADOX). These sections serve as a handy introduction and primer for basic database operations,such as modifying a table under program control, dynamically adding and deleting a record, and repositioning a record pointer. The concluding chapter focuses on common programming problems, such as computing running sums and comparing two sets.