Good reference book for MS Access?

I already have a bit of experience using PHP/MySQL as well as C++ so database design and normalization isn't my biggest concern. I was considering doing this entirely in PHP/MySQL, but seems I can save a lot of time and effort on the user interface part by using Access.

as with any reference type book, simply too many to pick from...so any sugestions would be greatly appreciated

also, would there be any advantage for me to upgrade to the newest version of access?...currently using Office XP but it defaults to Access 200 file format

I read the Access 2000 bible. If you're already familiar with it, you can scim/read the entire thing in a few days. It's pretty good, I guess. I mean it's only a "this is what this button does" book with some good examples.

Best thing to do is go to amazon and look up related book reviews and make up your own mind.

yea, that is what i typically end up doing...but sometimes i can find someone that has a lot of experience with a topic to narrow that down even more, still tons on amazon with "good" reviews cause i looked already

just use php/mysql instead.

i really was planning that, but when i cracked open access and setup ugly ass versions of a few of the forms including formating for stuff like time/date/phone numbers in the matter of a couple minutes i decided to cheat and just stick with Access

oh and it will need to be updated down the road at some point most likely, if i leave just a php/mysql hacked together version it would be very difficult for some random person to come in from outside and add onto it

it'll cover stuff like inventory control, customer database, payroll, timeclock, tax stuff, work orders, and everything inbetween....although all for a very small company, only 3 people will ever touch it and rarely more than one at a time

Access IS great for rapid development w/ strong functionality. A well-designed access DB can be upscaled to any good DBMS.

As suggested, the Access Bible is a very good book.. I also recommend "Running Access xxx" as a great one and also a basic book on database creation..

I'd learned almost everything by using the HELP in Access - coupled with reverse-engineering the Northwind and FORMDEV databases that are samples under the Access install directory.