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Access Database Design and Programming (Nutshell Handbooks) Review by Frodo Baggins
If you own 2 Access books, this should be one of them
I first read Steven Roman's book on Access a few years ago when it was written for Access 97. I recently bought a copy of the current version as a reference.
What I liked about Steven's books was that he took seriously his coverage of normalization, which is rare amongst books on Access. If you're new to database programming, you need to learn the basics of normalization. In my experiences, I've come across a lot of databases designed by beginners that exhibit a "spreadsheet" type of understanding towards Access tables. The beauty of the relational model is that once you have your database set up, ongoing maintenance is minimal. If you learn how to program Access, but don't learn the basics of normalization and the relational model, you may as well just keep your data in Excel spreadsheets.
My complaint with this book is his coverage of ADO. The author clearly prefers DAO for MS Access, and he states as much, and his coverage suffers. He covers the material, but he makes using ADO appear to be very difficult. In an entire chapter on ADO, he fails to show the user the most basic thing: how to generate a recordset for a table in your Access database. Instead, he shows you how to use ADO to query other databases, such as SQL Server and even Excel, but not the Access Database that you're currently using.
In DAO one of the fundamental details that you need to know about is the CurrentDB object. Steven gets a gold star, because he not only covers the CurrentDB object, but he spends 6 pages on it. In ADO, an object that is used for a somewhat similar purpose is the CurrentProject object. You won't find coverage on it anywhere in this book - just check the index. Perhaps the author's surreptitious goal of the chapter is to frustrate you so much with ADO that you will return to DAO, his preferred choice. Tsk, tsk Steven.
After reading the books section on ADO over and over again, I cannot recommend this book if you plan on owning only one Access book. Instead, I would recommend Alison Balter's Mastering Access Databases. It is the best Access book on the market(as most Amazon reviewers will attest to) and covers nearly ever topic that you'd want to know about Access.
Even so, Steven's book covers normalization so much better than the other Access books out there that I would advise serious Access programmers to buy two books: Alison's and Steven's.