Professional Access 2013 Programming

16

Programming Using VBA, APIs, and Macros

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Using VBA to maximize your database solution
• Using enhanced query techniques
• Leveraging APIs from fundamentals through tips

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

The wrox.com code downloads for this chapter are found at www.wiley.com/go/proaccess2013prog.com on the Download Code tab. The code is in the Chapter 16 download and individually named according to the names listed throughout the chapter.

In this chapter, you will briefly review some VBA fundamentals before you delve into writing VBA procedures and user-defined functions to support your business rules. As you proceed, you will review how to enhance queries and how to create queries on the fly using VBA.

This chapter then provides a brief review of APIs and how you can use them to expand the reach of your Access solutions. The discussion uses a real-world example to explain the steps required to create and implement a Windows API call. It also includes valuable tips and techniques to assist developers already familiar with APIs.

Finally, the chapter reviews how data macros can offer new toolsets that can be effective for performing data validation and maintaining data integrity. You will see a few scenarios where data macros are superior to the traditional approach of using VBA in form events and validation rules.

VBA

When developing an application, you rely on events to perform actions based on user actions. Some of the commonly used events are OnLoad ...