I have been using Access and VBA for a few years, without any formal training in relational database or programming. In this concise book, Steven Roman managed to give a strong foundation in the theory of relational databases, VBA and DAO.

Armed with this knowledge, I now have the confidence to dig deeper in these three topics and study more advanced material.

One downside though: I found the last part of the book on ADO quite confusing. Steven Roman prefers DAO to ADO and it shows.

I nevertheless give the book 5 stars, as the first three parts of the book are stellar.

In seeking out materials to train myself on Access 2003, I have found several books that have done adequate or good jobs of teaching the program. Most of them, however, did not do so well on teaching database theory or on instructing in how to use the native programming environment. This book helped to fill in the gaps. It is not perfect but it certainly was a good place to start.

The treatment of database theory is just that. It is a treatment of theory. It explains the concepts in a semi-rigorous manner which is dry but still informative. The notation is sometimes a trial to follow but that is the nature of the beast. When things are put in terms of equations, they just do not read as interestingly as a prose novel. Although this information is presented with Access in mind, it would be applicable to anyone who wants to learn about databases.

The treatment of the programming elements is no less dry but it too is informative. Again, reading lines of code does not strike me as an exciting way to pass the afternoon but it got the job done. The examples are as clear as the syntax allows and make the points well.

I should point out that I did not actually try the code presented in this book. I read the examples to learn the concepts. I cannot testify as to how well the code worked in a "real" environment.

While I will certainly be looking for other references and learning materials, this was a good choice for my first foray past just learning the basics of the application itself.

Years ago, I've picked this book up to learn Access... I haven't used Access for quite a while now (mostly an Oracle person now), but I still have fond memories of this book. Not only does this book teach you Access, and it does that very well, it also go through the database fundamentals. An overall great book, imho.

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.

I haven't read this book, yet. But, reviewer, Shannon, complained about not being able to get it to work with DAO. The problem is in References. Her database is probably set with a reference only to ADODB.

In Module View, just select Tools | Reference and select DAO (Data Access Objects) as the reference. Then, you should be fine.