Professional Access 2013 Programming

6

Creating Macros

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Why we need macros
• Identifying differences between UI and data macros
• Understanding the scope of macros and variables
• Using the new Macro Designer effectively
• How data macros work with web apps

Macros in Access web apps fulfill a couple of critical functions. First, they allow you to enforce your business rules and automate many tasks to support data entry and management. In addition to enforcing business rules, macros also handle the necessary plumbing between the web client and the server. In order to provide the best possible coding experience for non-developers, without requiring that they learn multiple programming languages, Microsoft has created a set of macro actions to abstract away the underlying structure.

If you have been using VBA to augment your Access client solutions, you may have avoided macros in favor of VBA's greater power, especially in previous versions. However, to create a rich web app, you will need to delve into macros and put them to the best use.

Macros are an essential element of quality custom web apps. You must know how to develop quality data macros that make your web apps powerful and flexible enough to meet the needs of businesses and individuals. Your ability to create quality web apps depends upon being able to leverage the power of the Macro Designer, which is the tool you'll use to create macros. You learn about the Macro Designer in the first part of this chapter.

After you become familiar with the ...