Rating: 
Summary: You better be an expert in VB if you want to understand this
Review: On the back of the book is a diagram showing each book in the Wrox series written to build your 'Visual Basic career'. Each book represents a logical next step as you move from beginner to intermediate to advanced. According to the diagram, this book is supposed to be the very first book a wanna-be programmer should read. You've got to be kidding me. This book is much more complicated than the next level book, Peter Wright's beginning Visual Basic, yet that book is ranked ahead of this one. The programs are well explained, but even these explanations make it difficult to understand what is truly going on because they expect you to have a pretty advanced knowledge of VB in the first place. If you're a good VB programmer, buy this book. If not, get Peter Wright's book first, then go back to this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Allowed me to "step-up" in Access 97 development
Review: Over the past three years, I have been able to successfully complete several sophisticated projects in Access using SQL and macros- I stayed away from extensive use of VBA because you use what you are confident in. My new job as a DBA and developer required extensive use of VBA due to the complexity of reporting from several different databases. I needed a "quick-start" to increase my skill-set and this book gave me what I needed. Unlike other books on the subject- the authors provided easy to understand explanations and "hands-on" examples with the CD that came with the book. This isn't a beginning Access 97 reference- it's a GREAT beginning Access 97 VBA reference. You can immediately get techniques you can implement on your job, with results that will impress the end users. More importantly, it provides a good foundation of the basics to build on. THANKS.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully written into to Access programming
Review: Smith and Sussman are some of the best technical writers I have ever read. They have a gift of introducing the concepts at just the right time. Most other writers fall into the trip of using jargon before they explain what they are talking about - something Smith and Sussman never do. They also don't go into overkill explaining topics - like those 1000+ pages shelf dust collectors - but neither are they superficial.This is a wonderful book for a person with some technical savvy who wants to make his/her initial plunge into the Access/VBA world. This is not a book for the casual Access user but there is no pretense that it is intended to be such.
Rating:
Summary: Invaluable for anyone working with databases
Review: Solid book for learners. Easy to read, good examples, can be used as a reference. Only a few areas of esoterica.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book !!
Review: The authors assume that the readers know something about Access but not programming. I am exactly the opposite: I know well about C++ and object oriented programming but almost nothing about Access. I find this book is very helpful to me. After I finished reading this book in a couple of weeks, I feel pretty comfortable with programming in VBA.
The authors' humor makes reading a fun.
I strongly recommand my kind of readers to buy this book.
Many thanks to the authors for this great book.
Xiaolong Wu
Loyola UNiv. (Chicago)
Rating: 
Summary: Good but Lacks Solutions and Enough Exercises
Review: The book does rock in terms of teaching you how VBA works with Access and outlining the structure of Access and VBA modules. But after understanding a lesson there should be some exercises which allow you to implement what you may have just understood, like some small procedure to write every five to ten pages relavent to that section....and with a (or one of possible solutions) solution offered in the appendix!...so you can see how to do it! The exercises at the end of each chapter (34 pages on average) are actually too challenging for me/someone with no previous VBA and offer no solutions!!! (And BTW, I taught Access w/o VBA for a few months.) Part of the problem is that these exercises make you do something that wasn't really specifically addressed in the chapter. But I guess it makes you learn all that much more if you can get it done. Some other review here recommends ACCESS 97 Macro and VBA Handbook. Maybe I'll buy that.
Rating:
Summary: A good programming course in VBA
Review: There does not seem to be a good book on VBA written, but this book is the best of a bad lot. If you have no programming or computer science background at all, then this book would be considered an intermediate text and you may wish to try one of the SAMS learning series books instead. However, if you have any background in programming, this book will help you acquire the nuances of using Visual Basic with Access. The book takes a very practical approach of walking the reader through the various elements of how a VBA application is structured and developed. The chapters are: Designing Applications, Events, Creating Code, Flow Control, Objects, Recordsets, External Data, Reports, Advanced Techniques, Error Handling, Class Modules, Optimization, Libraries, OLE, Internet interfaces and miscellaneous notes. Using a consistent sample application, the reader is walked through each step in the construction of a VBA application. I find that the use of single demo, which builds upon itself, to be much more effective that snippets of code and incomplete/unrelated examples. With little effort, many of the techniques in the sample code may be modified to fit your own needs. Overall, the book is a good text as well as reference for sample code. It is not organized as a reference text (use the online help instead). As a systems integration professional, I have purchased this book for more than one of my junior programmers in order to get them started.
Rating:
Summary: A good programming course in VBA
Review: There does not seem to be a good book on VBA written, but this book is the best of a bad lot. If you have no programming or computer science background at all, then this book would be considered an intermediate text and you may wish to try one of the SAMS learning series books instead. However, if you have any background in programming, this book will help you acquire the nuances of using Visual Basic with Access. The book takes a very practical approach of walking the reader through the various elements of how a VBA application is structured and developed. The chapters are: Designing Applications, Events, Creating Code, Flow Control, Objects, Recordsets, External Data, Reports, Advanced Techniques, Error Handling, Class Modules, Optimization, Libraries, OLE, Internet interfaces and miscellaneous notes. Using a consistent sample application, the reader is walked through each step in the construction of a VBA application. I find that the use of single demo, which builds upon itself, to be much more effective that snippets of code and incomplete/unrelated examples. With little effort, many of the techniques in the sample code may be modified to fit your own needs. Overall, the book is a good text as well as reference for sample code. It is not organized as a reference text (use the online help instead). As a systems integration professional, I have purchased this book for more than one of my junior programmers in order to get them started.
Rating:
Summary: Great coverage of VBA
Review: This book covered a lot of ground with VBA in Access. It started out with basic programming techniques, and towards the end covered topics like debugging, creating classes, multi-user apps, and internet apps. I would recommend getting a good understanding of using Access 97 before going into this book though. I went through the "Access 97 Bible" myself.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic! Good nuts and bolts approach to complex items
Review: This book has become a permanent part of my library. I use it extensively in developing access applications for my office.
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