Visual Basic and Databases - Professional Edition 2012 Updateth Edition

Do not purchase this book from amazon.com. The purchase on Amazon only includes the printed version of the text. If you purchase it from the author’s website, you get the printed version and the e-book for the same price or the e-book alone at a reduced price.You will need the e-book of this text because it has no index. Searching this text without the e-book is difficult, unproductive, and time consuming.The book’s size is increased substantially by providing examples for both SQL Server and Access databases. The title of the book states that this is the Professional Edition. From a professional perspective, very few database projects include Access for essential business database applications and there is little to be gained by including Access. Professional developers will either use Oracle or SQL Server but if you’re programming in VB or C# you are most likely interested in SQL Server.The content of the book is very good. It starts with the basics and graduates in small and clear but functional increments. It makes database programming much easier to teach and learn.I have also purchase Mr. Conrod's, "Learn Visual Basic - Professional Edition". It too is an excellent book.The author is also very responsive. He has responded to questions within a couple of hours.I am recommending Mr. Conrod's VB and C# books to our faculty for consideration in our computer science curriculum. They are much better and far less expensive than our current books.

As someone who has always struggled trying to use Visual Basic with databases - this book is my savior! I LOVE the fact that it gives COMPLETE code examples for both Access and Sequel Server. I am also trying to learn how to build good databases and am currently using Access 2013 as my tool, so the Access examples are a huge plus for me. I did hit one small snag though. I am saving my Access databases in ".accdb" format. This required 2 small steps to use this file format: Downloading the small Access database engine, and using "Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0" as the Provider in the connection string. That info is not given in the section on connection strings. However, the correct info is given to use the .mdb file format.Visual Studio Data Wizard? Never again! The book gives you a quick walk through using the wizard but doesn't use it in the book. You will never learn how to program with databases, strictly relying on the wizard to do the work for you. This is where I went completely wrong - looking for the easy way. Fortunately, the authors explain everything you need to know to do the coding yourself - and everything is explained at a level that is extremely easy to understand.Queries, reporting, database management, design, distribution, and more - it's ALL there!So, as a beginner programmer who could never grasp the fundamentals to actually writing the code for database programming, I can honestly say that, for me, this book was worth every penny!Paul

Great purchase experience! Item was exactly what I was expecting.