MicrosoftВ® Office Access(TM) 2007 Inside Out (Microsoft Office Access Inside Out)

Throughout this book, you’ll see examples from three sample Office Access 2007 applications included on the companion CD:

• Wedding List (WeddingMC.accdb and WeddingList.accdb). This application is an example of a simple database that you might build for your personal use. It has a single main table where you can track the names and addresses of invitees, whether they’ve said that they will attend, the description of any gift they sent, and whether a thank you note has been sent. Although you might be tempted to store such a simple list in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or a Microsoft Word document, this application demonstrates how storing the information in Access makes it easy to search and sort the data and produce reports. The WeddingMC database is automated entirely using macros, and the WeddingList database is the same application automated with Microsoft Visual Basic.

• Housing Reservations (Housing.accdb). This application demonstrates how a company housing department might track and manage reservations in companyowned housing facilities for out-of-town employees and guests. This application includes data access pages that could be published on a company intranet for use by employees logging in from remote locations. You’ll also find HousingData-Copy.accdb and HousingDataCopy2.accdb files that contain many of the query, form, and report examples.

• Conrad Systems Contacts (Contacts.accdb, ContactsData.accdb, Contacts.adp, and ContactsSQL.mdf). This application is both a contacts management and order entry database-two samples for the price of one! This sample database demonstrates how to build a client/server application using only desktop tools as well as how to “upsize” an application to create an Office Access 2007 project and related Microsoft SQL Server tables, views, stored procedures, and functions. You will need to install Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition to be able to fully use the project version of this database. You’ll also find a ContactsDataCopy.accdb file that contains additional query, form, and report examples.

Please note that the person names, company names, e-mail addresses, and Web site addresses in these databases are fictitious. Although we preloaded both databases with sample data, the Housing Reservations and Conrad Systems Contacts databases also include a special form (zfrmLoadData) that has code to load random data into the sample tables based on parameters that you supply.

The examples in this book assume you have installed the 2007 Microsoft Office system, not just Access 2007. Several examples also assume that you have installed all optional features of Access through the 2007 Office release setup program. If you have not installed these additional features, your screen might not match the illustrations in this book or you might not be able to run the samples from the companion CD.