Product Reviews

It's easier to learn how to do something if you have clear examples to follow; it certainly beats grappling with abstract ideas. Building Access Applications is based on the learn-by-examples approach, with author John Viescas concentrating on four typical databases: membership tracking, inventory management, customer support and reservations management. Each is presented as a sample database with all the table designs so you can see what you need and how it fits together.

One of the great things about Access is the fact that it has its own excellent range of sample database applications from which you can learn. What this book offers over and above that is an expert's view of how to get the best

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from your designs. Viescas shows you how the databases might be used and discusses why particular ways of doing something are better than others. Furthermore, he explores some of the pitfalls you may encounter.

In each database, the discussion starts with why the table structures have been designed the way they have. You're then shown the best way to get input from users in your forms and how you can get queries and reports based on those tables.

The best parts of this book are the expert discussions of key areas. For example, there's a good discussion of the performance implications of using linked tables. There's an interesting discussion of the 10 most common design problems. You are also alerted to ways of making your design expandable into a client server model if necessary. This kind of information isn't easy to find by digging around in the Microsoft Knowledge Base and reveals the author's depth of experience.

The databases considered in the book are just samples. You're probably going to have to do a lot more work to create a fully working database for your own needs. However, by following through the examples here, you'll get a much clearer idea of how to put a real database together and what you should and shouldn't do to arrive at a working solution.