If you have Microsoft Office, you have definitely written a document in Word, worked with some figures in Excel, or prepared some sort of presentation using PowerPoint without great difficulties. Although these tasks can be initially baffling to a new user, they require far less extensive theoretical knowledge for one to be able to produce something that more or less serves one’s purpose. However, with Access, the situation is different. As a new user, you work in Access with hesitation, even trepidation. You can’t use Access successfully unless you have a conceptual understanding of how a relational database works. Achieving an understanding of relational database modeling concepts is a major hurdle that many new Access users face. This book helps readers understand these concepts with a conversational style that uses some hands-on examples and detailed explanations.

This book assumes that readers have some knowledge about Access. One just needs to know how to open an Access database and get to work in it. Though the Access package provides numerous wizards for beginners, these can become a crutch, and users who rely too heavily on them will often be at a loss when they need to make even minor modifications to the wizard’s output. This book helps in understanding what the wizards actually do by providing background knowledge on relational database theory and concepts.

Fourteen chapters are organized into four primary sections. The first section, chapters 1 through 4, covers the basic concepts and terminology regarding relational database design. Apart from explaining one-to-many, many-to-many, and one-to-one relationships using various examples, the first three rules of the normalization process for relational databases are also described. Chapters 5 and 6 deal with building tables and getting data into them. Chapters 7 through 9 explain finding and retrieving the data using filters and queries. Chapters 10 through 12 explain building forms and reports. Finally, chapters 13 and 14 cover exporting and importing and pivot tables and charts in an understandable way, even though these topics are more difficult, even for seasoned Access users. The book starts with a preface, and ends with a useful glossary of terms and an adequate index.

The presentation, layout, and length of the book are strengths. However, it lacks references or a reading list for the curious and interested user who wants to learn more about relational database design. Apart from covering this limitation, a future edition of the book might also include a CD with a copy of the entire sample database used in the illustrative examples.

This book is not a substitute for the Access user manuals or the help facility, nor is it supposed to be a treatise on the theory of database modeling and design. It does not cover specialized issues like security and data protection, nor does it touch upon the computer language Visual Basic for Applications, despite its importance in doing advanced work in Access. However, it covers the gaps between the Access user manuals and the theoretical works on database design for an intermediate-level user of the Microsoft Office suite. It makes one’s first use of Access quite comfortable and less intimidating.

In short, this is a desired book for any lay user of the Microsoft Office suite (particularly the 2003 version), who has been little apprehensive about leveraging the potential of Access because of his or her lack of theoretical knowledge about database theory and design.