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Summary: Full coverage of the new features of Access 2000
Review: Access 2000 is the sixth iteration of Microsoft's market-leading relational database management system. "Special Edition Using Access 2000" is the sixth edition of this series, which has sold more than 700,000 copies since Access 1.0 arrived in 1993.Access 2000's new Access Data Projects (ADP) take advantage of the Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE, aka "SQL Server Lite") to create robust, department-level client/server applications. Data Access Pages (DAP), which most Access developers consider a work in progress, let you deploy simple decision-support and transaction-processing apps to your intranet. Adding chapters for ADP and DAP, plus coverage of all the other new Access 2000 features, results in a hefty (1,300 pp.) book. What's more, this edition finally includes a CD-ROM. Here's hoping you learn as much by reading "SE Using Access 2000" as I did by writing it.
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Summary: If you want to learn Access, this is the book
Review: Access seemed pretty easy to handle at first. Once I got down to the bare bones in programming, I wasn't liking it one bit. When I purchased this book, I noticed that there was a lot of information that can help me fix and have me back on track with Access. I recommend it because it is simply a hardcore tool and gets down to specifics. From beginner to Advanced, I can count on this book. I still haven't finished it but I have found it very useful!
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Summary: A disappointment
Review: For such a big book, I expected more. I have a decent amount of computer experience, although I had none with Access. The book starts out doing a fairly good job of introducing the reader to the more mundane uses of the program. But I soon realized that if I wanted to put together some more creative applications, I would need to combine Access with structured query language (SQL) and some Visual Basic (VBA) programming. For instance, I wanted to put together a custom data base for keeping track of my expenditures, and summarize the data in a specific format. I've programmed before - back in the ancient days of mainframes - and looked forward to the challenge of learning something new. And this book contains chapters on SQL and VBA - which is one of the reasons I bought it. But they turned out to be virtually useless. For instance, the book gives you examples of how to use SQL to write very specific kinds of queries, and how to use VBA for very specific programming routines. But there's no explanation of the logic or the programming "grammar" behind the examples, so you can't generalize to create your own queries or routines. Unless your needs happen to coincide with the examples Jennings sees fit to give you, you're fresh out of luck. Oh, yes, he does give you lots of tables of functions and expressions and god-all-knows what else. But they are virtually useless out of context. It's like giving someone a dictionary of the English language, but no grammar book, and then expecting them to learn how to converse. The sample data base also got a little old after a while. Every example in the book is based on it. I can appreciate that, for the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other types, it might be a teaching technique that works well. But personally, I don't want to spend a lot of time working with someone else's data base; I want to do my own. This book has been helpful in the sense that it made me realize how much there is to learn to use Access' full potential -- and that I'd better start looking for a much better book to do it with!
Rating: 
Summary: No better than mediocre as a reference
Review: From my perspective, someone with plenty of computing experience but not much Access knowledge, this book is well below par. I was hoping for a reference volume that I could quickly dip into to answer questions I have when I am using Access at work. However this book isn't much good at all as a reference. The main problem is the format, it is set out as lessons which you follow step by step. Which is fine if you want to do exactly what they are describing. But if you want to leave the authors path to do something slightly different forget it. The other thing is that this book is over 1200 pages long. It definitely doesn't need to be that long, lots of the words are completely redundant unless this is your first time using a computer. Here's an example, picked at random:
'Position the mouse pointer over the copied option group so that the pointer becomes a hand symbol. Hold down the mouse button and drag the option group to a new position.' With an editor this might have read:
'Drag the copied option group to a new position.' I bought this because I hadn't been particularly impressed with Access Database Design & Programming, published by O'Reilly, which I had used in the past. I don't have the O'Reilly book anymore, so I can't directly compare. However as I remember my problem with it was that it was too focussed on DB design theory. However if it was only half as good as the books that O'Reilly usually put out it would still definitely be worth a look before buying this one.
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Summary: What a greaet book!
Review: I am only on chapter six of this book, and I already LOVE it. I've read MANY Access books, and have never gotten much out of them. Roger has a real gift of being able to guide you thorugh the program smoothly, in a "real world" way. I don't feel like i'm being fed "menu item descriptions". I'm being led thorugh database development, with procedured bewing described on an as needed basis... and yet NOTHING's being left out! Just trust me. If you are new or not 100% competent with Access 2000, and want to ENJOY learning MORE that just how to "click on this to do this", BUY THIS BOOK.
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Summary: Another Let Down....
Review: I find it amazing that someone can dedicate an entire chapter to making forms look pretty, but leaves a mere 4 pages for a barely comprehensible discussion of DAP and ASP. The Microsoft Press is better.
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Summary: One of the best software books I own
Review: I had used Access 97 in two previous jobs, and had to build a small database in one of them. I knew, however, that I could do much more with it, and since I had Office 2000 at home I bought this book to improve my skills in Access 2000. I sought a good, thorough, one volume reference work and found it! As the author discusses early on, the first fifteen chapters walk you through a solid understanding of the basics of Access 2000 (e.g. building an application, tables, queries, forms, and reports). Each chapter has exercises that make use of the sample database that comes with Access, and I strongly recommend that you do these exercises (I only wish Excel had something comparable). I am now interested enough in Access 2000 to go ahead and want to learn SQL and perhaps even VBA. Later chapters of this book contain introductions to those topics, as well as a good chapter on relational database design. I have not used the CD-ROM that comes with the book as much as I had expected, but it contains much material that supplements what is in the book (e.g. an additional database to practice with). My only caution is that this may not be the best book for those who are totally, completely new to Access (you can get the Dummies title for that). However, if you want a well rounded one volume reference book on Access, I strongly recommend this title!
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Summary: I would recommend this book for experienced Access users.
Review: I have enjoyed reading this book. It gives detailed information on every subject except for deploying DAPs and ASPs to the web, as someone already mentioned. Please add more info on these subjects in the future. I can't seem to find any book on Access 2000 that fully covers these topics. As an Access support engineer, I would highly recommend this book to those already experienced with Microsoft Access.
Rating:
Summary: not a good reference book
Review: I purchased this book hoping to use it as a reference. There are many interdependencies between chapters. As a result, I am unable to jump to different topics without having to go back to some other chapter to create the tables needed for the new topic. It seems the only way to learn with this book is by reading from cover to cover, in order...1200+ pages! There must be an easier way, so I will return the book tomorrow and try another one.
Rating:
Summary: Very well written and comprehensive coverage of Access 2K
Review: I recently used SEUMA2K as a reference in an introductory course in Database Management Systems. Over the duration of the class I became progressively more impressed with both the breadth of the content and the clarity of the presentation. Obviously, this was not Mr. Jenning's first encounter with Access. I also found that the new features of A2K were very well delineated and the production quality of the book was quite high. I don't quite understand what the reader felt about .asp belonged in a text on A2k - but certainly ADP's were given an adequate discussion given their novelty and lack of specifics from Microsoft. It was also apparent that the author really has a grasp of database systems that goes well beyond Access. The short section on Data Warehouses and OLAP was typical - well beyond Access, but nicely added in context. I can recommend it well.
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