Beginning Access 2000 VBA

What is this book about?

Access 2000 is an important part of the Office 2000 program suite, and is available on both the Premium and Professional editions of Office 2000. Access has traditionally been the Office suite database program par excellence. It still remains that way, but with Office 2000 the face of Access is changing. This book will look at the traditional role of Access and its future uses in the Office suite.

Using VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), the user can program his or her own programs in what is essentially a subset of the Visual Basic programming languages. This is tremendously powerful, as it allows you to create great User Interfaces (forms etc), as a front end to actual database storage and manipulation. This continues to be one of the great strengths of programming Access VBA.

This book updates, expands and improves Beginning Access 97 VBA Programming, in an Office 2000 setting. All the great tutorial content, teaching people how to program with VBA in Access is there, but now majorly rewritten to take account of Office 2000.

• Updated to take account of the Office 2000 facilities
• Constructs a substantial example application with VBA
• Database theory taught in the Wrox Beginning style

What does this book cover?

In this book, you will learn how to

• Construct a substantial example application with VBA
• Master the foundations of Visual Basic for Applications
• Understand the concepts behind classes and objects
• Understand how Automation can be used to link Office applications
• Create custom objects using the Class Module feature
• Debug your programs and implement robust error handling
• Add support for multiple users
• Publish your Access database on the Internet
• Optimize and add polish to your finished database application

Who is this book for?

This book is for users who already have a basic knowledge of databases and the basic Access objects, such as tables, queries, forms and reports. You now want to expand on your existing knowledge of Access and wish to learn how to program in VBA. You don''t need any prior programming experience, although a basic knowledge of Access macros would be helpful.

Access 2000 is the fifth version of the hugely successful desktop database from Microsoft. When it was first released in 1992, Access immediately gained praise for its ease of use and power. Each release of Access has added features and increased usability, and with Access 2000 we now have a unified development environment for the whole of the Office 2000 suite of applications. Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is the programming language that gives Access its real power, allowing you to automate complex tasks and create applications with more scope and flexibility than is possible with its default forms and macros. VBA has a simple syntax allowing even complete novices to learn programming with very little effort, and this book illustrates the concepts with plenty of examples and exercises.

Who is this book for?

This book is for users who already have a basic knowledge of databases and the basic Access objects, such as tables, queries, forms and reports. You now want to expand on your existing knowledge of Access and wish to learn how to program in VBA. You don’t need any prior programming experience, although a basic knowledge of Access macros would be helpful.

What does this book cover?

• Constructing a substantial example application with VBA
• Mastering the foundations of Visual Basic for Applications
• Understanding the concepts behind classes and objects
• How Automation can be used to link Office applications
• Creating custom objects using the Class Module feature
• How to debug your programs and implement robust error handling
• Adding support for multiple users
• Publishing your Access database on the Internet
• How to optimize and add polish to your finished database application

Robert Smith and David Sussman have been programming in Access since it was first released. Using their experience they teach you how the power of Visual Basic® for Applications can transform ordinary databases into great applications.