Preface

Business users are often surprised at Access' power and flexibility. People frequently say to me things like "Access won't work for this—we have 13,000 records!" I just have to laugh when I hear such statements. As I (and, I imagine, many of you reading this book) know, Access can easily handle that much data, and then some.

So, just how powerful is Access? Access has the goods under the hood to do a lot of things that may not be obvious. How can you find out about them? Well, you've come to the right place. This book showcases many mini-solutions in Access that have likely befuddled some and had others wondering what other types of data Access can be coerced into providing.

Access Data Analysis Cookbook is about solutions to real-world problems. This is not a book about designing forms, learning about primary keys, or discussing the use of built-in wizards to make easy queries or reports. This book is about applying Access to the business grindstone.

Within the dozens of recipes contained in this book, you will learn new ways to query data, how to move data in and out of Access in several different ways, how to calculate answers to financial and investment questions, and much, much more.

As of this writing, Access 2007 has just become available. The recipe solutions in this book apply to all version of Access, and the figures are from both Access 2007 and Access 2003. The bells and whistles and new interface of the new release are not factors here; across versions, SQL, VBA, DAO, and ADO have remained constant.