Alison Balter's Mastering Microsoft Office Access 2003

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Summary: Application development and real-world solutions
Review: Alison Balter's Mastering Microsoft Office Access 2003 (0672325500, $59.99, 1464 pages, Intermediate Level) focuses upon Master Microsoft Access 11 development from Access insider and expert Alison Balter. Included in this comprehensive instructional are application development and real-world solutions to specific development and programming problems; professional level programming techniques which are consistently backed by concise, no-nonsense explanations of the underlying theories; as well as timely debugging and troubleshooting methods necessary to solving problems quickly and get a stalled development projects back on track.

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Summary: If you only buy one book on Access development. . .
Review: Do you want a book that will cover more area about Access development than you could ever imagine? This is it. Don't even think about "Should I buy this" - just get it. Alison has a superb way of writing, and her organization of topics is just short of perfect. I have always believed that a woman writes better than a man, and this book proves it. Well documented with code examples. And the CD has all the book's code included. Click the Add to Cart button now!

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Summary: New Title / Same Material
Review: I have found Alison Balter's work to be of great benefit and highly helpful in the past. However this book has very little new material compared to Alison Balter's Mastering Access 2002 Desktop Development (With CD-ROM). Besides the title and cover design little else has changed. If you don't have a previous edition in the Mastering Access series this is a good book, if you do have one you will find little new material here.

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Summary: Great book for intermediate to advanced user
Review: I have read many intermediate to advanced books on Access and this book beats them all. Alison Balter is focused on taking the intermediate Access programer and bringing them to the advanced level. Lots of helpful programming tips, examples and a CD with the code to help you out. Need I say more this is a great book.

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Summary: Still good, but very little new material.
Review: I own every edition of "Alison Balter's Mastering Access Development" published since 1997. This week, I compared the previous "Mastering Access 2002 Desktop Development" with the latest "Mastering MS Access 2003" (1416 pages); I compared them side by side, chapter by chapter. This book is an almost exact copy of the previous edition; there is very little new material, except for a few new paragraphs mentioning what is new in Access 2003 and some basic steps here and there that are now in bullets rather than in a sentence as they were before. In many instances, if you want more explanation, the author refers you to another of her books "Mastering Access 2002 Enterprise Development" which is frustrating. Despite all these weaknesses, this book is still among the best in the field. I have a tremendous respect for the author. However, the printing doesn't do the book justice; the paper is of low quality, there is less line spacing than before, the ink is faint, making it harder to read, the screen shots are tiny miniatures, the book covers are flimsy. It seems as if the whole printing and binding were done somewhere in the Third World. A book like Alison Balter's should really be printed on good quality paper in hardcover, with consideration for the reader.

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Summary: Get up to speed
Review: If you're the type of person who's constantly asking your computer-savvy kid for assistance, this is not the book for you. On the other hand, if you are that computer-savvy kid, this book will get you up to speed with Access.

I've been using relational databases for a very long time, but I never really used Access. Sure, I created a few small Access databases for some VB programs. But that's about as far as I ever got with Access. Then I recently wanted to create a database application for my own personal use, and I thought: "why not use Access?"

Well, I quickly found out that not everything in Access is all that obvious to an old database pro. But, Ms. Balter's book helped me to get going. She has a knack for just touching on the essential basics and then covering the more advanced topics in greater detail.

The book is very well organized. It's easy to find what you're looking for. But it's also organized in the sense that, if you think you know something, you can safely skip that chapter without feeling as if you missed something important in the next. And for a book with some 1400 pages, that's pretty important. Especially if your goal is to finish a project and not to read a five pound book.

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Summary: Still a great book
Review: Previous reviewers mentioned that there is not much new in this book. That's true, BUT that's because Access 2003 is NOT a major upgrade from previous editions, despite what Microsoft wants us to believe.

This is still a great book and the quality of the print and paper is excellent in my copy of the book.

If you use Access 2003 and you don't have Alison's 2002 book, buy this one. You won't be disappointed.