Introduction to Access
Monday, October 18, 1999
Class: CIS 13A Access
Instructor: Duncan Brand
Duration: 8 Weeks
Time: 7:30 – 9:20pm
Access 97
-DATA Is a valuable resource to any business. Could be names, address, order dates, and cash amounts.
-ORGANIZING DATA Critical activities include organizing include organizing, storing, maintaining, retrieving, and sorting. This is making effective use of the available data. Before storing data, it must be organized.
-FIRST STEP Identify the individual data fields. A field is a single characteristic or attribute of a person, place, object, event, or idea. For example, customer name, order number, customer phone. Then you group fields together into tables.
-TABLE A table is a collection of fields that describe a person, place, object, event, or idea. See example in book, Figure 1-1, Page A1.5.
-FIELD VALUE The specific value, or content, of a field is called the Field Value. The first set of field values in the book’s example are 104; Meadows Restaurant; Pond Hill Road, Monroe MI 48161; and (313) 792-3546.
-RECORD This set of values is called a record. In the customer table, the data for each customer is stored as a separate record. Each row of field values is a record.
-DATABASE A collection of related tables is called a database, or Relational Database.
-COMMON FIELD You can connect the records in the separate tables through a common field that appears in both tables.
-UNIQUE Each customer Number in the Customer Table must be unique, so that you can distinguish one customer from another and identify the customer’s specific orders in the Order table.
-PRIMARY KEY The Customer Number field is referred to as the Primary Key of the Customer Table. A Primary Key is a field, or collection of fields, whose values uniquely identify each record in a table. In the Order Table, Order Number is the Primary Key.
-FOREIGN KEY When you include the Primary Key from one table as a field in a second table to form a relationship between the two tables, it is called a Foreign Key in the second table. Customer Number is unique in Customer Table, but it is not unique in Order Table. Customer Number is unique in Customer Table, but it is not unique in Order Table. Each Foreign Key value must match one of the field values for the Primary Key in the other table. The Customer Number value in the Order Table must match the Customer Number value in the Customer Table. The two tables are related, enabling users to tie together the facts about customers with the facts about orders.
-A THOUGHT FOR THE FUTURE By the year 2002, it is estimated that over 90% of all jobs will require some kind of computer skills.
-RELATIONAL DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS Today, most large companies employ a database management system (DBMS). This is a software program that lets you create databases and the manipulate data in the databases. Most of today’s database management systems, including Access, are called relational database management systems (RDBMS). In an RDBMS, data is organized as a collection of tables. The relationship between tables is established through a common field. An RDBMS controls the storage of databases on disk using the following functions:
