Advanced

References, Protocols, and Language Specifications

They're not always easy to read, but when you are looking for official answers, it's hard to beat these low-level protocol and language specifications.

Mike Wolfe

Apr 9, 2022 • 1 min read

Knowing who to trust on the internet is an important skill in the year of our Lord 2022.

It's easy to search for something with Google or DuckDuckGo, but how do you know which results to use? If I want a list of all the reserved words in VBA, should I rely on:

The Stack Overflow answer posted by ms_sux that lists only nine keywords: DO, NOT, USE, VBA, IT, IS, A, GARBAGE, LANGUAGE
A PDF shared on reddit by OG_Demosthenes
Keywords (Visual Basic for Applications) from the Office VBA reference
Section 3.3.5.2 of the VBA Language Specification, Reserved Identifiers and IDENTIFIER

As someone who likes to have authoritative answers to these sorts of questions, I love the fact that they are now easily available online...but only if you know where to look.

With that in mind, here are a few such resources that you may find helpful as an Access developer:

VBA Language Specification

[MS-VBAL]: VBA Language Specification

References

Office VBA Reference
Access VBA Reference
VBA Language Reference
Office Library Reference (including Ribbons and CommandBars)
Microsoft Jet SQL Reference
Microsoft OLE DB (ADO)
Microsoft Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)
[MS-ERREF]: Windows Error Codes

SQL Server Protocols

[MS-ODBCSTR]: ODBC Connection String Structure
[MS-OLEDBSTR]: OLEDB Connection String Structure

COM Protocols

[MS-OAUT]: OLE Automation Protocol
[MS-COM]: Component Object Model Plus (COM+) Protocol
[MS-DCOM]: Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) Remote Protocol
[C706]*: Remote Procedure Call (including Interface Definition Language)

^{* Requires free registration}

Windows API Calls

Windows Data Types

User Suggestions

Let me know in the comments below what other authoritative references, protocols, and language specifications you use in your own work.

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

UPDATE [2022-04-12]: Added SQL Server Protocols section (h/t Ben Clothier).

UPDATE [2022-08-22]: Added Windows API Calls section with link to Windows Data Types (h/t Ben Clothier).