Professional Access 2013 Programming

9

Solving Business Problems with Macros

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Examining the capabilities of UI and data macros and understanding how to use them together
• Effectively using table events to manage and enforce business rules
• Leveraging parameter queries and aggregate queries

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

The code and sample downloads for this chapter are found at www.wiley.com/go/proaccess2013prog.com on the Download Code tab. They are in the Maid To Order Sample App download. Refer to the Readme.txt for installation instructions.

You read in Chapter 6 about the new macro designer and how Access 2013 macros are different. In intervening chapters, you've read about how you can design tables and views, and with that information you are ready to consider the crucial questions all developers ask about their tool: “Is it the right tool for this job? Am I using it the right way?” In this chapter, we discuss some practical scenarios and quickly view some edge cases not only to show you what you can accomplish with macros, but also how to accomplish it easily and smoothly.

We will start by reviewing our toolkit, and then move to a discussion on typical scenarios where an Access application will have to fulfill the customer's requirements, and finally, work through some examples step by step. We will start with simple macros to insert a record into a table and copy a record, move on to using table events to automate maintaining a history of changes, and then turn to performing ...