Rating: 
Summary: Very poorly organized text
Review: The author covers a lot of ground in this introductory book. Unfortunately, he seems to given little thought to the order in which he presents the material or the clarity of his explanations. As a result, sometimes difficult concepts are made to appear even more confusing than they actually are.For example, in discussing universal data access using ADO the author mentions that you can "use the Recordset object's Open method to execute the query that will return the desired cursor type." (p. 547) This comment could easily leave many readers muttering "Say what" under their breath since, up to this point, the author has made no mention of all of the concept of cursor type. This is but one instance (there are many others) of a level of pedagogical sloppiness that is inexcusable in a book meant to guide beginning programmers.
Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely the best
Review: This is the first time Ive written a review - but felt compelled to for this book. Mr. Connell is an excellent teacher. He sets out to teach you how to program databases - and succeeds mightely. Mr. Connell is the consumate teacher - crystal clear examples and ancillary information that really rounds out the learning experience. IF you want to program databases with VB, this is simply THE book. Hands down.
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Summary: Essential for the VB DB learning process
Review: The reviewer from Syracuse is absolutely right: If you are looking for a book from which to learn Visual Basic from scratch, hie thee hence to Smiley's books. "Beginning Visual Basic 6 Database Programming" is not for you, yet. If, on the other hand, you can write simple VB code and need/want to delve into Visual Basic database programming with an Access backend, click on the "Add to Shopping Cart" button NOW. Thanks to this book, I understand the point of using control arrays and the difference between dynaset and table recordsets. I know when to use ADO and when to stick with DAO. I can finally code a seek function that works. Be forewarned that this book teaches VB programming for *Access* only. If you need to write front-ends for Oracle or SQL Server, look elsewhere. (Wrox Press has separate books on those topics, luckily)
Rating: 
Summary: If you do not have VB background, do not buy this book!
Review: If you do not have any background on VB and ACCESS, you should not buy this book! What's more, you need to have considerable knowledge on VB to really understand what the author is talking about! The author's writing style is basically for those middle-level persons in VB programming, not for beginners. For those wanting to learn VB, I strongly suggest you to buy books written by by John Smiley
Rating: 
Summary: Don't buy unless you ONLY use Access
Review: This book is superb at what it is inteded to do: using VB with Access. What this mean is this book has VERY little information on how to use VB with SQL Databses. Do NOT buy this book if you want to learn how to use VB with SQL. You will waste your money. But if you want to purchase a book on how to use VB with Access, this book will probably blow away most books.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: This is the single best computer text book I have ever read...and I have read many. If you have some experience programming in "old-fashioned" non-visual database environments and are looking for an introduction to Visual Basic this is *THE* book. The writing style is clear and intelligent and I very much enjoyed Connell's somewhat dry British sense of humor. The examples (source code available for download at the publisher's web site) are not trivial...you can put much of this code to work immediately in the real world. Bravo! Mr. Connell. And thank you for an excellent book.
Rating:
Summary: Great book for beginning VB6 database programmers
Review: This book is the best VB 6 programming book that I have ever read. I only wish that the book covered implementing queries using the Data Environment. Another great reference is the Visual Basic 6 Bible.
Rating:
Summary: Another home run by Wrox
Review: I had heard about this book from some class mates. When I read the reviews on Amazon, I found it no less than amazing that over 160 programmers took the time to review a book. I read each of the reviews and then purchased Connell's book. After reading it cover to cover, I can see what the hoopla is about. Starting from page 1, this text is filled with common sense programming gems that go far beyond dataase programming. Of course, this book covers everything you need to know for developing first rate DB progs quickly and painlessly. But I for one also learned how to build bullet proof UI's and some very elegant optimization techniques Im using in all my programs. This book contains information you just don't find in any other programming books. So Im taking a minute to add my 2 cents to the already volumonous list of praise for Connell's book. If you are a programmer, you will learn something useful from this book. If you are programming data bases, this book is a home run.
Rating:
Summary: Very good book
Review: I was not deceived by earlier reviewers. The book has immediate pratical application. I actually read the whole book faster than other smaller VB books and I know I will keep going back to it for tips and techniques. I wish all the VB authors wrote things people can actually put into practice.
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Summary: A book full of errors...
Review: This author doesn't seem to care about actually knowing what he talks about. This book is full of statements that are completely wrong. Look for an example on his view on cursortypes and loactions. (ok, it's easy to make mistakes with cursors, but beeing so fundamentally off...) He tries some ridiculous optimisations in for loops, which easily (by just stepping the code) can be proved wrong. Stay away of this mess, and look at some other book instead.
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