Microsoft Access is sometimes viewed as a simple database application that isn’t ready for prime time in the enterprise. While it certainly isn’t a full-scale enterprise database, it does provide a robust relational database engine that can be useful for many enterprise purposes. And, for small to mid-level needs, it can be a perfect database development platform. The audience for this book is literally any database developer—that is what makes Access so great. If you have requirements for a small database application, then Access is a great engine that is easy to learn and cost-effective. If you need a great “Swiss Army knife” for your enterprise database work, then Access is an excellent tool to utilize. It can be great for prototyping and manipulating enterprise data, and can function as a general database productivity tool. It is also a great platform for departmental databases and applications.

The goal of this book is to explore how professional database results can be achieved by using Microsoft Office Access. You will find tips, tricks, and explorations for the many capabilities of Access 2003. What you will not find is yet another book that covers the basics of Access. There is no extended coverage of building forms, reports, etc., found in these chapters. In Chapter 1, the new features and capabilities of Access 2003 are explored. While there is nothing truly revolutionary about the new version, there are new capabilities that are important to be aware of. Chapter 2 focuses on designing databases in Microsoft Office Access. One of the great things about Access is its graphical user interface (GUI) environment. Databases can be easily prototyped in Access 2003. Those database designs can then be easily upsized to a full enterprise implementation on Microsoft SQL Server. In Chapter 3 and 4, we will explore the query building capabilities of Access. If the tools are leveraged properly they can significantly increase productivity by making complex and tedious queries easy to build. These chapters walk you stepby-step through getting professional results from the Access query capabilities.