Working with Data in Office Solutions

This content is no longer actively maintained. It is provided as is, for anyone who may still be using these technologies, with no warranties or claims of accuracy with regard to the most recent product version or service release.

The chapters in this part cover the fundamentals of accessing and working with data, analyzing and presenting data, and working with multiuser database applications.

The first chapter in this part, Chapter 14, "Working with the Data Access Components of an Office Solution," provides an overview of the data access technologies supported by the Microsoft® Office 2000 applications. The primary focus of this chapter is on using ActiveX® Database Objects (ADO) and Data Access Objects (DAO) code to work with data stored in Microsoft Access databases, but it also includes information about working with data in Microsoft Excel workbooks and Microsoft Outlook® folders, as well as in other sources, such as Microsoft SQL Server databases, HTML tables, dBASE files, Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets, and tabular text files.

The second chapter in this part, Chapter 15, "Retrieving and Analyzing Data," describes some of the tools and techniques available in Office 2000 for retrieving, analyzing, and presenting data in a manner that makes it easy to understand. This chapter describes the query-building tools available in Access and Excel and covers the basics of creating SQL statements. It also describes how to create reports in Microsoft Office solutions, how to sort and filter data, and how to work with PivotTable® and PivotChart™ reports.

The third chapter in this part, Chapter 16, "Multiuser Database Solutions," provides an overview of the tools and technologies available in Microsoft Office for creating multiuser database solutions. This chapter focuses on the three multiuser database architectures you can use with Microsoft Access to create desktop application-based solutions: file-server, client/server, and replication architectures. The fourth database architecture, Web-based database solutions, is covered in Chapter 5, "Working with Office Applicationss," and Chapter 12, "Using Web Technologies," in Part 2, "Developing Office Solutions." Chapter 16 covers issues such as managing record locking, using transactions, and optimizing file-server solutions. It also provides an overview of how to create client/server solutions by using the new tools available in Access 2000, and how to use database replication in your Access database solutions.