Preface
Preface to the Third Edition
As with the second edition, let me begin by thanking all of those readers who have helped
to make this book so successful.
The third edition of the book includes two new chapters; the first of which is Chapter 18.
With the sad and, in my opinion, highly unfortunate demise of DAO at Microsoft’s
hands, it seemed necessary to bring the book up to speed on that aspect of ADO that
gives the programmer most of the functionality of the Data Definition Language (DDL)
portion of DAO.
ADOX is an acronym for ADO Extensions for Data Definition and Security. When
making comparisons between ADO and DAO, proponents of DAO will point out that
ADO does not include features for data definition—that is, features that can be used to
create and alter databases and their components (tables, columns, indexes, etc.). This is
precisely the purpose of ADOX. (Our concern here is with ADOX as it relates to Jet.)
Unfortunately, ADOX is not a complete substitute for DAO’s data-definition features.
For example, query creation in ADOX has a serious wrinkle. Namely, a query created
using ADOX will not appear in the Access user interface! I elaborate on this in Chapter
18.
The other new chapter for the third edition is Chapter 19. In this chapter, I present a
number of problems that are commonly encountered when dealing with data, along with
their solutions couched in terms of SQL. I hope that this chapter will provide some good
food for thought, as well as useful examples for your own applications.
Preface to the Second Edition
Let me begin by thanking all of those readers who have helped to make the first edition
of this book so very successful. Also, my sincere thanks go to the many readers who have
written some very flattering reviews of the first edition on amazon.com and on O’Reilly’s
own web site. Keep them coming.
With the recent release of Office 2000, and in view of the many suggestions I have
received concerning the first edition of the book, it seemed like an appropriate time to do
a second edition. I hope that readers will find the second edition of the book to be even
more useful than the first edition.
Actually, Access has undergone only relatively minor changes in its latest release, at least
with respect to the subject matter of this book. Changes for the Second Edition are:
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