What You Need to Use This Book

To use this book, you'll need a computer capable of running Windows 98 (or later), Windows NT 4.0 SP5 (or later), Windows 2000, or Windows XP, and Microsoft Access 2002 (part of Office XP). You'll find, however, that most of the solutions work just as effectively with prior versions of Access, in case you are supporting mixed-user environments. To demonstrate the topics in Chapter 12, you'll need to have copies of Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook. These items aren't necessary, but they will allow you to try out the example databases. Some of the solutions in Chapter 14 refer to tools that are part of SQL Server, which you may also want to have accessible.