Relational Databases

A relational database is simply a database displayed as a table with rows and columns that contains relatable data.  Each piece of data within the database is related to another by at least one specific field.  For example, if you were to view a customer database table it could have multiple customers listed with their identifying information and related to another table by their location.  Being able to group these customers by location allows easy manipulation and retrieval of the data.  For instance, if you were holding a sale for a specific location you could query the database for everyone within a twenty-mile radius to send them an email about the upcoming sale.

Another relation that could be considered with customers are the orders of which they have purchased in the past.  These orders are stored within the database as a relation to each customer and can be found by searching through the customer’s history.  This can be extremely helpful if a customer plans to reorder an item or even return a recently purchased item.  An instance of which a return customer is purchasing another item, once you enter the customer’s name in the lookup field it can pull in all their data from the database.  Such as their full name, billing and shipping address, and sometimes even their specific size of clothing.

There are six database objects of which are available within Access and they are as follows; table, query, form, report, macro, and module.  All of these listed top-level objects are extremely useful and a key part to utilizing Access properly.  A table is what technically holds all the data and a query can be used to search, sort or even retrieve the specified data from the table.  For example, if you were to query a table within the database to find all customers who live in Texas it would look similar to this, SELECT * from customers where state is Texas.

The database object form is more user friendly than entering the data directly into the datasheet.  Considering these data-entry and display forms look very close to a paper document you would fill out on a regular basis, such as an application or during a doctor visit.  “Forms can display specific fields from within a table which can help limit the user’s access to sensitive data while still allowing access to other fields within the same table” (Alexander & Kusleika, 2013).  A report can be extremely useful as it allows a user to be able to print data out in an easy to read format.  Reports can be modified and customized to list specific information from a specified table.  For example, if you would like to know how many customers have bought a specific inventory item within the past month you could set the criteria to query the table and it would be able to return a printable version.

Macros are considered to be tools of which allow automation among specified tasks without the need to program.  They can be used alongside any report or form and can add functionality to them.  These can be stored for later use by accessing a drop-down menu within Microsoft Access.  Modules contain programming statements written in the VBA programming language (Alexander & Kusleika, 2013).  Utilizing modules within Microsoft Access would require a collection of VBA code that can be called from within the database.  Such VBA code would contain a variety of subroutines, global variables, and even user-defined functions.

The five step design method offers any novice database user to learn the fundamentals for creating a database.  Each step can take time depending on the database being created.  The first step involves research and information gathering, to find out whether the user would like full functionality of the database or simply to run reports from it.  The next step involves designing the reports, as the end users are much more likely to continue being involved with user friendly data.  Step three of the five in this method is designing the data, which requires gathering all the information needed for the reports that were designed in the previous step.  Step four is probably by far the most difficult, which is the table design, this is when you decide which fields are needed for the tables that create the report.  The very last step is the form design, which require three objects, labels and their text-box entry fields, special controls, and graphical objects for enhancement (Alexander & Kusleika, 2013).

References

Access. (n.d.). Retrieved from Tech on the Net: https://www.techonthenet.com/access/modules/

Alexander, M., & Kusleika, D. (2013). Access 2013 Bible. John Wiley & Sons.

Harrington, J. L. (2009). Relational Database Design and Implementation, 3rd Edition. Morgan Kaufmann.

Introduction to macros. (n.d.). Retrieved from Microsoft Office Support: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Introduction-to-macros-a39c2a26-e745-4957-8d06-89e0b435aac3