Rating: 
Summary: great book on vb database
Review: this is an extremely good book on visual basic and the development of database applications. the author's writing style is quite easy to follow. Highly recommended.
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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