Access Database Design & Programming, 3rd Edition

Chapter 15. Programming DAO: Data Definition Language

In the overview of DAO, I noted that Data Access Objects consists of two conceptually distinct components: a data definition language (DDL), which allows us to create or access some basic database system objects, like databases, table definitions, and indexes; and a data manipulation language (DML), which allows us to perform the practical operations of adding data (records) to our tables, deleting unwanted data, and modifying existing data. In this chapter, I discuss the DDL aspects of DAO.

Let us begin by noting the following:

• To indicate variables of a certain type, I will write the type name followed by the suffix Var. For example, DatabaseVardenotes a variable of type Database , and TableDefVar denotes a variable of type TableDef.

• In describing the syntax of certain methods, I will use square brackets ([ ]) to indicate optional items.

• I will generally give the full syntax of methods, but will only give details on the more common options. Of course, full details are available through the Access help system.

Creating a Database

Databases are created using the CreateDatabase method of a Workspace object. The general syntax of this method is:

SetDatabaseVar = [WorkspaceVar.]CreateDatabase _
(DatabaseName, locale [, options])

where:

• DatabaseName is a string expression representing the full path and name of the database file for the database being created. If you don’t supply a filename extension, then the extension .mdb is automatically ...