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  Welcome To The Access Unlimited Newsletter - Edition 40
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Access Unlimited is an email newsletter that provides free tips, help and information for skilled Microsoft Access users and related software disciplines.

Produced by Garry Robinson (known below as "Ed") from Sydney, Australia.

In this edition

Software Prizes
Junk Email < 75%
Review Of Access 2002 VBA Handbook
Final Word On Html Emails
The Workbench Has Been Revised
Speeding Up Query Development
Good Reading

VB OR VBA EDITING HOT KEY
A good hotkey sequence is Ctrl+Y for any VB or VBA editor. This deletes the current line and places it in paste buffer. 

SOFTWARE PRIZES

Heather Floyd of New York won a copy of The Toolbox for her terrific suggestions regarding The Access Workbench.

For this months competition, let Garry know what improvements you would like to see in the next version of Graf-FX. The best submission(s) will receive a copy of either The Toolbox, Graf-FX or the Access Workbench.

WELL DONE SCOTT !

Scott McManus who does a lot of work for us has written his first solo computer article. This one is on using Visio Professional to produce data modeling and relationship diagrams for Access.

http://www.pinpub.com

REVIEW OF ACCESS 2002 VBA HANDBOOK

Been comparing styles of different Access books in research for a book that I am writing on MS Access. One book that has caught my eye is the Access 2002 VBA Handbook by Susan Novalis. This book is well organized and written in the style of the old reference books that used to come out in tandem with users guides. In other words if you like to understand the technology behind the product, this book provides lots of good background reading. Probably most suited to those people moving from the basics to intermediate level or those who feel that they need to get an overview of the different parts of programming Access. It tends to read like a graphical guide/introduction to programming. Unfortunately not so hot on the useful samples but as I said, it is more of a reference guide. There is also a 2000 version of the same book.

Click here for the Access 2002 VBA Handbook

Click here for the Access 2000 VBA Handbook

GARRY IS WRITING A BOOK

Yep Garry is grinding his way through a computer book for Apress.com. Its going to be all about MS Access and its going to cover one big topic really well. Whilst there will be a fair smatter of techno babble, there will be an emphasis on solutions and pictorial descriptions where required. And for those of you that like samples, there will be no shortage of forms and code that you can import into your database (for instant gratification). The samples and discussions will be relevant to Access 97, 2000, 2002 and 2003 developers and DBA’s and there will even be some discussions directed at IT Managers.

More information will be forthcoming when the book gets closer to launch time.

THE WORKBENCH HAS BEEN REVISED

The workbench has lots of new features resulting from readers requests including

* A Favorites Tab
* A Do Not Select Workgroup check box to make it easier to turn off workgroups
* Support for all the command line switches such as readonly, runtime mode or the decompile switch.
* You can transfer these command line scripts to a desktop shortcut. This means building complicated shortcuts for Access is now just a Cut and Paste away.

* The workbench can detect if a database is encrypted. Did you know that an encrypted database is 15% slower than an unencrypted database ?

Rather than trying the software, a number of people seem to like downloading the help file to read about the program. Otherwise click on the Workbench link on the LHS of this email.
http://www.vb123.com/get/wb_help.zip

ACCESS PROGRAMMERS TIP – SPEEDING UP QUERY DEVELOPMENT

When you are working with a number of interrelated queries, sometimes it is hard to keep track of what query belongs where. If you are working with an Access front-end database, try this trick.

Open the relationship window. This should be empty (or out of date) as the database relationship diagram will be in the back end database. Click the show table button and add the queries that you are working on to the relationship window. Now position those queries in locations that reflect the hierarchical design of the queries. If you like, you can even join them on the screen using the referential integrity lines. This will not enforce integrity so it will not amend your database design. You can also add the tables that these queries relate to in the relationship diagram as well. Now you can right click on any query in the window and go directly into design mode. Generally, I find that this approach is far easier than sifting through lists in the database container to find the different queries that you are working on.

Note that it is hard to maintain too many of these query hierarchies on the screen at once due to an awkward bug in all versions of Access. This bug causes the X-Y location of the query in the relationship window to change occasionally.

FINAL WORD ON HTML EMAILS
If you want to switch to HTML emails from text emails, remember that the size fof the emails may make a difference if you are charged for sending data by the megabyte. This email is about 60k per email * 3,500 readers which amounts to 200 megabytes in traffic or thereabouts. If the spammers were charged for traffic like in Australia, they would quickly give up !!!

GOOD READING

Lots of interesting reading Access reading and links on this page
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnacc2k/html/acacclinks.asp

Running multiple versions of Office including Office 2003 (11)
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=218861

A few web sites to promote your web site plus books on successful internet promotions.
http://www.vb123.com/books/searchengines.htm

Discussion on the Decompile option in Access (easy to do in the workbench)
http://www.trigeminal.com/usenet/usenet004.asp

Integrating Flash with an Access database
http://www.15seconds.com/issue/010605.htm

Interfacing an Informix database from Access.
http://www.inquiry.com/techtips/info_pro/10min/10min0300/10min0300.asp

Adam Cogan has a list of email good practices here
http://www.ssw.com.au/SSW/Standards/Rules/RulestoBetterEmail.aspx

February 12, 2003
Neil Boyle explains the mechanisms SQL Server uses to secure itself from
unauthorized access, and discusses best practice for selecting and
administering passwords. http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/1582981

Microsoft to add reporting services to SQL Server
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,886780,00.asp

Expensive but interesting way to write your own email application (not tested)
https://www.quiksoft.com/newsletter/issue003/default.asp?page=1

Super Kids Site (my 3.45 year old has a great time anyway !)
http://www.nickjr.com/
 

If you like this newsletter, why not try the websites of others who contribute to this newsletter.
http://www.vb123.com/explore/links.htm

So thanks for reading our popular newsletter. Feel free to make comments, copy the email to a friend or maybe even contribute to the next edition.



Garry Robinson - Software Consultant

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Published  2004-02