Overview of Microsoft Access

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Vitally important though the power of relationships is, this is not the only trick Access has up its sleeve. Because of the sheer amount of data that can be contained within a database, it is important that users have an easy way of accessing, retrieving and manipulating the data. Access achieves this through the use of forms. These can be designed to look like their paper counterparts so that users are familiar with the layout of the information, or can be set up to show information from more than one table at a time (see figure 2). They can be restricted to allow users to enter new records only, or to enter and edit records but not delete them. They can include images, links to web pages and even elements such as dynamic calendars.

Figure 2 - A form showing data from 2 tables

When it comes to printing the data out, Access allows the user to create complex reports, again showing the data from one table or several related tables. It can link reports together as sub-reports (perhaps a main report might show a list of staff, and a sub-report the sales achieved by each staff member), group items together in various ways (for example alphabetically, by month or by any field you choose, such as by region) and even dynamically create such items as charts showing the pattern of data. Reports are typically based on queries which allow the same report to be used for muliple sets of data, depending on the requirements of the user. It mught be, for example, that a report prompts for a date range of transactions in order to produce a customer statement. Alternatively, a user might choose a product from a drop-down list, before choosing to print a complete inventory or specification list for that product.

All in all, Access is your product if you want to:

• Store data in a structured way
• Relate distinct sources of data
• Allow users to access data according to their needs
• Implement a security policy to define who can do what to the data
• Design a customised front-end to you data to make it easier to find or less intimidating to work with than a simple spreadsheet format
• Print reports of the data, with charts, graphics, photos and summaries
• Sort, find, calculate, update, delete and move your data regularly

Finally, perhaps it's worth mentioning that Access is your choice if the data you have, or may have in the future, exceeds 65000 records. This is the limit of an Excel spreadsheet, but no such limit exists in Access - the limit is simply that of the file size.

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