Microsoft Access 2010 Bible

Part III: More-Advanced Access Techniques

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After you link tblSalesPayments, Access returns to the object list and shows you the newly

linked table. Figure 16.6 shows tblSalesPayments linked to the current database. Notice the

special icon attached to tblSalesPayments. This icon indicates that this table is linked to an

external data source. Hovering over the linked table with the mouse reveals the linked table’s data

source.

FIGURE 16.6

The Navigation Pane with tblSalesPayments added. Notice the icon indicating that this is a linked
table.

Tip
You can link more than one table at a time by selecting multiple tables before you click the OK button in the
Link Tables dialog box. Clicking the Select All button selects all the tables. Note that, once you’ve selected all
the tables, you can click on individual selections to unselect them.

Linking to ODBC data sources

One significant advance with regard to data sharing is the establishment of the Open Database

Connectivity (ODBC) standard by Microsoft and other vendors. ODBC is a specification that soft-

ware vendors use to create drivers for database products. This specification lets your Access appli-

cation work with data in a standard fashion across many different database platforms. If you write

an application conforming to ODBC specifications, then your application will be able to use any

other ODBC-compliant back end.

For example, say you create an Access application that uses a Microsoft SQL Server database back

end. The most common way to accomplish this requirement is to use the SQL Server ODBC driver.

After developing the application, you find that one of your branch offices would like to use the

application as well, but they’re using Oracle as a database host. If your application has conformed

closely to ODBC syntax, then you should be able to use the same application with Oracle by