Member Avatar for Doonie

Folks,

Many years ago I worked as a dBase III programmer. In my early 30's I left the field of IT to persue another career. Today I am required to develop databases for a variety of stand-alone (PC) applications. I have Access to construct the database but I need advice on if and how I can write routines to add records, update, select based on criteria, etc.

I am hoping to use a simple tool with either pseudo-english commands (as with dBase), wysiwig or some other relatively simple method. And no, I cannot contract the work to a professional ;). Wouldn't I be so lucky.

Those of you who are familiar with dBase will hopefully be able to steer me in the right direction.

Thank you and kind regards,
Doonie

"Remember, 100 years from now...all new people"

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— practical path for simple, single‑PC Access apps: design the data model first, then use Access designers to cover most tasks. Start by sketching entities, fields and keys, enforce relationships and pick sensible data types. Use bound forms for data entry and saved queries for selection; add small macros to automate UI flows and only add VBA when the designers no longer suffice. and highlighted community resources and third‑party scaffolding; those are handy once the basic model and UI are working.

Concrete, repeatable steps: normalize tables, set primary keys and indexes, and enable referential integrity to avoid orphan rows. Create one form per main entity (or a master/detail pair) and bind it to a table or parameterized query for filtered lists. For programmatic routines, prefer the native DAO approach: use CurrentDb.Execute with INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE SQL (use the dbFailOnError option) for action queries, and use DAO.Recordset.OpenRecordset to read and AddNew/Edit+Update to change rows. Wrap multi‑step changes in BeginTrans/CommitTrans to keep data consistent. Use data macros or macros where a full VBA solution would be overkill. Compact & Repair regularly and split front‑end/back‑end if the project later needs sharing.

Authoritative starting references: , Access VBA overview, and a quick SQL primer (SELECT statements). For modest, stand‑alone tools this workflow minimizes code while giving reliable add/update/select routines; consider a server engine later if scale, concurrency or file size become constraints.

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Member Avatar for Temmu

dbase! me too. long time ago.

dr. cod's rules for normal databases still apply...
however, depending on what you want to do, access eventually stops being easy.
there is lots you can do without learning visual basic, although learning that is extremely helpful.

google "mvp access" for some good tips from microsoft mvp's.

simple forms are easy to create to add or update records.
record selection... you need to learn sql; but access has its "query" writer that allows you to do simple selection by column.

simple tool? not aware of any for any database... it all gets "interesting" when you want to build apps that users can use (and not break).

ps, look at the northwind database included with access, it does a lot.

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