Rating: 
Summary: I soon made $5,500.00 with this book
Review: Prior to picking up John's book I had some familiarity with 'desktop' databases like Lotus Approach and MS Access, and had a beginner's understanding of the Basic Language, but felt to intimidated to actually code my own database from scratch in a major programming language.
After studying John's material and hand coding the examples (no copy and paste), I gained the confidence necessary to bid on a Database contract in the manufacturing sector. I won the contract. The database has been in production for over 4 years now.
The client recently asked me to upgrade it. This IS IMPORTANT, because John's emphasis on good database design, code optimization, and component reuse HELPED me to write code that I can easily return to and understand later when it's time for maintenance or upgrades.
And yes, there were two examples in his code that were broken, but they were minor mistakes and he teaches so well that I was able to fix it myself and make the examples work.
P.S. In the recommended titles below:
The first - is actually a great VB/MS HTML help reference.
The second - is by Dan Appleman. Dan's books are a MUST HAVE for serious VB developers.
Other Recommended Titles:
Microsoft Access 97 Developer's Handbook - MS Press
Developing COM/ActiveX Components with Visual Basic 6 - SAMS
Professional Active Server Pages 2.0 - Wrox
Java 2 Primer Plus - SAMS
Rating:
Summary: Great introductory book for VB 6 and databases
Review: With any book the reader must be aware of the intended audience. Ignorance of this critical information often leads to frustration and, I believe, is responsible for many of the negative reviews received.Having said that, John Connell outlines four intended audiences fot this book including: 1) Those who want to learn how to use VB to access databases.
2) Those who have programmed before, but are new to VB.
3) Those who have used VB before but want to learn of the new ActiveX Data Object (ADO) features for accessing databases.
4) Those who need to learn what new directions VB 6 moves within the strategic UDA paradigm. If you don't fit one of the above audiences then this book is probably not for you. Originally I was part of audience (1) and (2). I've been a long-time C/C++ programmer looking to learn database programming in VB and I have found this book to be a wonderful resource. In this book Mr. Connell doesn't focus on teaching you VB. He assumes that you are already somewhat familiar with that. However, he does review some basic concepts when they arise (like With...End With; and IIF along with others). The bulk of programming databases with VB comes via two controls, the DAO data control and the ADO data control. The ADO control was (apparently) introduced with VB6. (It has apparently been expanded with .NET as well.) The DAO control is/was (at the time) the more "mature" of the controls. He spends time early in the book introducing the reader to both. Much of the book's middle is used dedicated to imparting an understanding of the DAO data control. After doing that he shows how to do equivalent DAO processing without the DAO data control. He then shifts to explaining the ADO data control and object model. I have not completed this part of the book yet, (though I've glanced at it) but it looks to be very comprehensive as well. He also covers things like interfacing with ASP, Data Mining, etc. I checked my copy of the book out from the local library. However, if I ever get to a point when I do serious database development in VB6 then I will definitely buy this book.
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