Week 11 Clear: Skills Track Access

This week we learned the generals of Microsoft Access. It's a great program for business use, but as far as personal use...it is a program that I haven't used very much. The videos discussed this week went over tables, queries, forms and reports. I will discuss each of them briefly below.

Tables

Tables in access are used to store the information in its most basic form. The table wizard can take information that was from an external source and sort it for you automatically by asking just a few questions about how you want the information sorted. Once everything's on the table it is there to be modified and formatted anyway you choose.

Brad Amidon

Queries

These basically are ways to get details on the information in a database. For example, if you wanted to know the seasonal sales for female shoppers in December, you could create a query to give you those detailed results back (if you had the information). 

Brad Amidon

Reports

Reports are used to create information from a source, whether it be from a table or query, and turn it into something that is printable and that can be easily understood by people who need to make decisions.

Forms

They make is simple to enter information so that it can be done quickly and easily without having to waste as much time moving from cell to cell. It also helps prevent wrongly entered items because there is not as much confusion. Microsoft Access gives you the ability to design very nice forms or just very simple ones.

Brad Amidon

Project- Microsoft Access

Microsoft Access is a very useful tool in the business environment, but one that I have never had a lot of experience with. I think this project helped me learn many things that I can take with me in my future career. It wasn't an extremely complicated project but one that made me go through the general aspects of Access so I could understand how all of the data are connected. The table activity showed me that I need to be aware of different "date formats" when trying to modify it. I realized the dates for "Date Left" were all in text format when they should've been in date format. The form creation taught me about how forms are created for the common person to enter data and how it should be made as easy as possible as to avoid confusion. The Query activity showed me that you can pull a very specific set of data and organize it as well. The report activity required me to take the query that I created and make a report out of it. This showed me the obvious reasons access has been vital to a company's core record keeping, because the information can be obtained and organized easily. Further, it can be put in a format that is easy to understand for people who are in charge of making decisions within a company. 


Maybe some additions to the database would include a form for exit memberships. In the instructions it was shown that the date for the end of the membership wasn't necessary because you can't fill out information on someone who is signing up and include the date they ended it as well. I do agree with that but there needs to be an easy way to modify this information about an exiting member through another easy-to-use form. Maybe include some other information on the exit form such as the reason they decided to leave. Another modification is to include more information on the new membership form. Simply filling in a postal address doesn't seem to keep up with the times. It would be nice to have such information as an email address or a phone number so these people can be contacted through other ways than regular snail mail. Another category could be "How did you hear about us?" this can be used for obvious reasons so that marketing decisions can be made to possibly increase membership. 

Clear Week 10: The Data Asset

Database Management


This week's chapters have been talking about Data and how it's used and stored within a company. Data has increasingly become more important and accessible to companies which has led to more money being spent in data management. After reading chapter 11 in the Gallagher text, I got a general idea of how database management works. 

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SQL
I learned about SQL which stands for Structured Query Language. It is the most general language when talking about database management. This language lies at the very core of database management programs such as Access, filemaker pro, and even used in the open source by Oracle's MySQL.

MySQL
This is an open source database management software that has been a very popular choice among businesses and web developers because of it's free nature. Its one of the letters in the LAMP software stack (the M) and all of the programs are based on MySQL

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What is MySQL

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