Because technology should be the means, not the end.
Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more. All the wealthy, unhappy people you’ve ever met take sleeping pills; Mobile Infantrymen don’t need them. Give a cap trooper a bunk and time to sack out in it and he’s as happy as a worm in an apple—asleep.
Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
From the introduction to Self-Guided SQL – I continue to define my use of A.I. every day as the tools evolve and I face new situations but this still sums it up well. There is one thing that will not change as long as I continue to create and share content and that is that…
I’m starting another review of my recently published book, Self-Guided SQL: Build Your SQL Skills with SQLite, looking for anything I might have missed, and one thought I had was adding more material on how to access SQLite from programming environments. A couple of months ago, I uploaded a video on how to create a…
The SQLite console, also known as the command line interface or CLI, is a powerful tool for working with SQLite databases. While many people, myself included, often prefer a graphical environment, there are a lot of things that can be done quickly in the console with its collection of commands. There are dozens of commands…
(The following is adapted from a chapter of the upcoming book, Self-Guided SQL: Build Your SQL Skills with SQLite. You can download the sample databases referenced on the Github project page.) Database software often comes with different types of interfaces including graphical, menu-based browsers and text-only console programs. While browser programs are easier to navigate,…
If you work with big data, SQL is an essential skill. It’s also a great introductory language for those wanting to learn programming. The good news is that it’s easy to learn and you don’t have to spend big money to do it.
Microsoft Access parameter queries enable you to pass criteria from outside a query. This article shows how they can be called from VBA.
It’s actually possible to populate specific cells in an Excel worksheet with information from your Access database. Here’s how you do it.
In early 2020, I created the online course Managing Your Data with Microsoft Access which showed how to create an entire Access application from start to finish. This course has over 5 1/2 hours of video instructions covering the creation of tables, forms and reports along with specialty topics like printing Dymo labels from Access….
Read More “FREE Course – Managing Your Data with MS-Access” »
Update, June 2025 – I’ve updated the Github repository with a version of this project for connecting Microsoft Access to SQLite. In my latest video, I demonstrate how to use Microsoft Access as a front-end for MySQL without having to create a DSN entry on the client machine. Access easily connects to MySQL through an…
Read More “Connecting Microsoft Access to MySQL and SQLite” »
Combo boxes are extremely useful in Microsoft Access and other design environments. They provide a compact control from which your users can access a drop-down menu that enables them to choose from a variety of options. In my applications, combo boxes often pull their rows from lookup tables such as product or customer lists and…