Directions: You will need to read up on this article to get a full understanding of Access before you move onto the actual tutorial. Read through this section, answer the questions, and then go on to the tutorials at the bottom of the page.
Microsoft Access is all about generating a database for the storage of a lot of data. A paper filing system can be very hard to keep track of and control. Access makes the storage of data a little more reasonable. It acts like an electronicl filing system.
What is a database? Quite
simply, it’s an organized collection of data.
A database management system (DBMS) such as, Access, FileMakerPro, Oracle
or SQL provides you with the software tools you need to organize that data in a
flexible manner. It includes
facilities to add, modify or delete data from the database, ask questions (or
queries) about the data stored in the database and produce reports summarizing
selected information.
Microsoft Access provides users with one of the simplest and most flexible Database Management Systems (DBMS) solutions on the market today. Regular users of Microsoft products will enjoy the familiar Windows “look and feel” as well as the tight integration with other Microsoft Office family products. To further our discussion, let’s first examine three of the major components of Access that most database users will encounter – tables, queries, forms. Once we've completed that we'll look at the added benefits of reports, web integration and SQL Server integration.
Tables comprise the fundamental building blocks of any database. If you're familiar with spreadsheets, you'll find database tables extremely similar. Take a look at this example of a table.
The table above contains the employee information for our organization -- characteristics like name, date of birth and title. Examine the construction of the table and you'll find that each column of the table corresponds to a specific employee characteristic (or attribute in database terms). Each row corresponds to one particular employee and contains his or her information. That's all there is to it! If it helps, think of each one of these tables as a spreadsheet-style listing of information.
Obviously, a database that only stored information would be useless -- we need methods to retrieve information as well. If you simply want to recall the information stored in a table, Microsoft Access allows you to open the table and scroll through the records contained within it. However, the real power of a database lies in its capabilities to answer more complex requests, or queries. Access queries provide the capability to combine data from multiple tables and place specific conditions on the data retrieved.
Let's look again to the example database. Imagine that your organization requires a simple method to create a list of those products that are currently selling above their average price. If you simply retrieved the product information table, fulfilling this task would require a large amount of sorting through data and performing calculations by hand. However, the power of a query allows you to simply request that Access only return those records that meet the above average pricing condition. Additionally, you can instruct the database to only list the name and unit price of the item. Sample output is shown below:
So far, you've learned the concepts behind organizing the information in a database and retrieving information from a database. We still need mechanisms to place information into the tables in the first place! Microsoft Access provides two primary mechanisms to achieve this goal. The first method is to simply bring up the table in a window by double-clicking on it and adding information to the bottom of it, just as one would add information to a spreadsheet.
Access also provides a user-friendly forms interface that allows users to enter information in a graphical form and have that information transparently passed to the database. The figure below provides an example of the form method of data entry. This method is less intimidating for the data entry operator but requires a little more work on the part of the database administrator. Future tutorials on this site will deal with the creation of Microsoft Access forms.
Questions
Define
1. tables
2. queries
3. forms
4. database
5. attribute
Short Answer
1. What are databases used for?
2. What does DBMS stand for?
3. List 4 DBMS tools.
4. What are the three major components of Access?
Activities
Day 1
Reading and Questions above.
Go to Access Tutorial Part 1 and follow along with all of the steps in the tutorial.
Day 2
Go to Access Tutorial Part 2A and follow along with all of the steps in the tutorial.
Go to Access Tutorial Part 2B and follow along with all of the steps in the tutorial.
Day 3
Go to Access Tutorial Part 3 and follow along with all of the steps in the tutorial.
http://www.techtrainteam.com/services/olt/office95/access95.html
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