Chapter 21: BeyondMicrosoft Access

Overview

So far, this book has focused on using databases within the Access environment and on writing VBA code that runs within the Access environment. However, the tools you’ve used and the skills you’ve developed while reading this book are applicable to a wide variety of programming environments. Similarly, you can leverage the knowledge you’ve acquired in the course of reading this book to programmatically access the data stored in Access databases without actually having to be in the Access environment. This is because Access programming makes use of two relatively standard tools:

• Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), the programming language used by Access. The same programming language is used in the other Microsoft Office applications, as well as in Microsoft’s retail Visual Basic product. In addition, Microsoft’s scripting language, VBScript, is really a scaled-down version of VBA that is most commonly used as the programming language for Microsoft’s Active Server Pages (ASP).

• ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), the data access technology used in Access programming. Although Access can use ADO for programmatic data access, ADO itself is a more or less language- and product-independent technology that exists as a stand-alone component apart from Access. This means that it can be used to manipulate Access data outside the Access environment.

This chapter examines some of the areas in which you can leverage the skills you’ve learned to develop programs that run in environments other than Access.