Microsoft® Access® 2010 Programmer's Reference

Chapter 1. Introduction to Microsoft Access 2010

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• A short history of the Access product

• A discussion of when to use Access

• An introduction to Access 2010 and its main features

• A discussion of how to create each of the Access object types using the Access designers

Microsoft Office Access 2010 is the latest version of Microsoft Access, the world-class relational database management system (RDBMS) for the Microsoft Windows platform, designed for building small- to medium-scale database applications. Access 2010 provides a rich set of features and tools for designing, creating, storing, analyzing, and viewing data, as well as the capability to connect to a large variety of other data sources. Access combines ease-of-use features with software development capabilities to support a wide range of user skill sets. Access also provides a Primary Interop Assembly (PIA) to allow other development platforms, such as Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2010, to manage data using an Access database or even incorporate Access functionality into an external application. Access 2010, simply put, is a database system that provides a wide variety of functionality and flexibility to build Windows-based applications.

If you're reading this book, you probably already know a good deal about Microsoft Office Access 2010 or a previous version. While this book presents the various aspects of programming Access applications using primarily VBA code, as well as a number of other methods, this chapter ...