July 1999
Intermediate to advanced
432 pages
13h 10m
English
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Chapter 7. Database System Architecture
Why Program?
There is no doubt that SQL is a powerful language—as far as it goes. However, it is a somewhat unfriendly language and it lacks the sophisticated control structures of a more traditional language, such as For...Next... loops and If...Then... statements.
This is not really a problem, since SQL is designed for a very specific purpose related to database component creation and manipulation. SQL is not designed to provide an overall programming environment for Microsoft Access itself. This role is played by Visual Basic for Applications , or VBA.
VBA is the macro or scripting language for all of the major Microsoft Office products: Microsoft Access, Excel, PowerPoint, and Word (starting with Word 97). It is a very powerful programming language that gives the programmer access to the full features of these applications, as well as the means to make the applications work together.
One of the major components of VBA is its support for the Data Access Objects model, or DAO. DAO is the programming language interface for the Jet database management system (DBMS) that underlies Microsoft Access. It provides a more-or-less object-oriented data definition language (DDL) and data manipulation language (DML), thereby allowing the VBA programmer to define the structure of a database and manipulate its data.
Of course, it is natural to wonder why you would want to use DAO, and VBA in general, rather than using the built-in graphical interface of Microsoft ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.