Mug shots of the 16 authors appear on the front cover and a fascinating cross-section of the programming community they look. From bearded arm waving to bespectacled seriousness, all life is here, as indeed is inside Professional Access 2000 Programming, with practically everything you will ever want to know about programming Microsoft's Access 2000.

An overview chapter sets the scene and describes the major differences between this and earlier versions, including a brief comparison of the Jet, MSDE and SQL Server (7.0 not the most recent 2000) database engines. The first chapters cover developing applications from scratch, including a definition of application types and the suitability of Access for their development. Then there's Visual Basic for Applications and Access Objects and database querying with the Query Expression Builder, SQL, DAO (Data Access Objects) and ADO (AxtiveX Data Objects). That's just the first four chapters: there are another 14 and eight appendices that launch into many areas including COM add-ins, security, replication, data on the Internet and creating a help system. Integration with other Microsoft applications gets a chapter too; programmers can add greater functionality to Access applications by calling on Word, Excel and Outlook.

This book is highly opinionated in places (there is an impassioned cry for eliminating error message boxes from your applications) and is occasionally written in the first person though there is no indication of who among the 16 authors wrote which bit. However, a relaxed, approachable and informative tone is maintained fairly evenly throughout, a feat in itself.

Technologies, techniques and methodologies come thick and fast in this excellent book. If you want to know more about programming in Access, look no further. --Mark Whitehorn