Summarize the three most important things you have learned in this pdf.

Felician University | Access 2016_ Basic Database Introduction.mp4

What is Access? Access is a database. What is a database? A database is a software program, where you can

store and organize all of your data into. For example, let's say, I want to keep track of all of the employees in my

company. I want to be able to store their information, like their first name, last name, date of birth-- so I can send

them a big, fat birthday card on their birthday-- and also their phone numbers, maybe their hourly rate or salary.

All of that information, I can create and store.

And for each employee that I have, there's going to be a record. So for example, me, Kirt Kershaw, I'll have my

first name and last name in this database. Also, I can add my home address, the hourly rate that I make. All of

that creates one record of information and one record for each employee.

OK, other things I can keep track of are products. My company sells products and I want to keep track of them

separate from my employees. Now, in Microsoft Access, to keep track of them separately, they have what are

called tables. So this is a table of information all about the employees who work for my company. And in a

separate table about products, in here, I can create and store things like the product ID, the product name, how

much I have an inventory or on stock, all about products.

I also have orders. So every time a client makes an order, I want to keep track of that order. Maybe I have the

order ID, also, the date when the order is made. So in case, if we have things like a warranty issue and the client

says, hey, man, totally want a replacement or a refund. Well, we can look inside the table, and if we have the

order date, and if we see it's 90 days out, well, then we can tell the client it's no longer under warranty. Again, we

can keep track of those things within the Orders table.

And then, we finally have clients themselves. We can have the company's name, or the first name and last name

of the client, their address, shipping address, credit card information on file, things like that. Now, Microsoft Access

is what is called the relational database. A relational database means that these tables can relate to each other.

Let me put it to you this way, when you have a filing cabinet, and you have information on your employees,

products, your clients, those who purchased your products, do you dump them all into one filing cabinet or all into

one folder? Yeah, as if. And let's say, later on, you want to pull up just an employee. Ah, well, that's really

inefficient. Because first of all, you have to have this 20-pound folder out, and then, secondly, you have to sort

through the products, the orders just to get to and find your employees. I mean, what a waste of time.

So in a relational database, for example, you create, again, what are called separate tables or separate folders.

And what that means is that, for example, if I want to pull up the clients, that's easy to pull up. But if I want to pull

up the clients and I want to keep track of all of the products that one client has purchased, like Client XYZ, then

when I want to do is I want to create, again, Microsoft being a relational database, a relationship between the

products and clients.

So I can come over here to the Products and say, look, I want to extract some of this data. I want to find out all of

the clients who purchase product X. And maybe I want to do some target marketing to those clients. So there's no

way I can pull up the products just by themselves without this relationship and take a guess and say, hm, they

purchased this. Or go to the Clients and say, OK, I wonder which products they purchased?

But if I go ahead and create a relationship, again, Access being a relational database, then for every product

that's purchased, it's going to be tied to a client here. Not only that, but for every product purchased, it's through

an order. So we'll have a relationship between the products and the orders as well. And we've got the order ID

and have the date of the purchase, things like that.

So we'll have the clients relate to the orders for every time they want to purchase a product because the orders

are going to keep track of that, the date that they made the purchase. Again, breaking it down, I'm not going to

pull all of this information up. If I just want to find out how many orders a client has made, I'm just going pull up

these two tables, and of course, have a relationship between the two. And it will be accurate because they're

relating to each other.

So for every order a client has made, it will show me the date that they need the order. And if I just want to keep

track of how many orders they made, then I just need these two tables. I don't have to pull up the employees. I

mean, that makes no sense for the products. So it really becomes more efficient when you break it down into the

smallest, most meaningful parts, or, in this case, tables. All of my orders are in one. All of the products are in one.

All of the clients are in one, and so on.

So you're really organizing your data and breaking them down, and you're going to relate them or create

relationships. So if you do need a pull up related items, like the products or the clients, you can do it in a jiff.

Now, Access is more than just tables of information. In fact, what makes Access so powerful is that once you

create your tables, or your data in these tables, is the ability to manipulate that data and pull up what you want,

when you want. So for example, let's say I've got 200 employees. I don't want to go through each employee's

record and find out if the employee has benefits or doesn't have benefits.

I want to be able to instantly create a query and pull up all of the employees who don't have benefits, just filter out

those who have it, and filter in those who don't. Let's say, out of 200, it automatically pulls up 25 I mean, that's

fast. That's efficient. And that's what they call a query in Access. And then, based on the query, I can create a

report, print or email that off to HR, and I have them go ahead and contact those employees to be able to offer

them benefits.

Also, you can control how the information is being entered into your database and, in this case, into your tables,

the employees. So for example, if I hired a new employee, I want to be able to have the first thing they enter is the

employee ID, and then the employee's first name, last name-- well, just think of it this way. Have you ever done

shopping over the web, and you've gone to a web page, and you put in the first name, last name, and they have

those fields up at the top?

Well, in Access, you can control where you place those fields and what fields come first, and even the data to be

entered, like the maximum and minimum number of, let's say, a five-digit zip code. So you can move the fields

around and what you want to see first up at the top or at the bottom or in the middle, also control the amount of

data or the type of data being entered into a field, like if you want a unique identification number for the employee,

maybe it's going to be their social security number.

Well, you can just say only nine digits can be entered into this field, so nobody hits an extra key or types in eight

digits without a validation that says, ah, you're missing a digit, or, oh, that's too many. So you can get more

accurate data results by being able to control the user's input. In fact, let me go to the next slide in my PowerPoint

presentation and break this down.

Now, Access has what are called objects. And as we just learned in the previous slide, the foundation of all objects

are tables, because, let's face it, without a table of data, you don't have a database. So we've got to have some

data. And to store the data, we create a table. And we break the data down into its smallest, most meaningful

parts-- in this case, tables. For example, we had a table all based upon employees, a separate table for our

orders, our clients, our products, and so on.

Now, before we go any further, I strongly recommend that you actually watch our Microsoft Excel 2016 training

videos. That is, if you're not familiar with Excel, because Access has a lot of similarities to Excel, except that Excel

is a bit more simplistic. And it's a great introduction to the Access tables.

For example, I'm going to go ahead and click on this link here to open up my Excel 2016 workbook and give you

an introduction into tables, because Access tables in this Excel, what they call a spreadsheet here, are the same

in that they have cells. And these cells make up a spreadsheet or, in Access, they would make up a table.

And you can see over here on the left-hand side, I have a database here on my Dream Force's payroll. And I'm

keeping track of all of my employees, their first name, last name, social security number. You see, I've got all of

this information here, and so that makes up a database. And you can say, look, if I can create a database in

Excel, why don't I use Excel?

Well, you may want to use Excel to store your information to keep track of it because, in Excel, you can actually do

some sorting, like you can sort it by last name here, and you can also filter as well, like over here, in the Benefits

column, those who have benefits and those who don't. But on a very simplistic level, because Excel really wasn't

meant to be the end-all of end-all databases. It's something to get started on.

Also, Excel performs functions and calculations, like, for example, I have the hours for Max Klinger here. There's

his hours, how much he gets paid per hour. And what I did is I multiplied these cells together to get his gross for

that week. And those are the things you're going to be learning and doing an Access.

So in other words, if you want to come in here and learn about Excel, and you feel comfortable with moving

around in these cells and typing an information into the cells, and performing calculations and being able to sort

information in Excel, then you've got the grasp, or the basics of how to work with tables in Microsoft Access.

In fact, think of Access database built for small to mid-sized businesses. Well, what about large businesses? Let's

say you're a huge business and you've got thousands of employees and millions of clients, you'll want something

perhaps a little bit more powerful, maybe like Oracle. But when it comes to the hierarchical structure within

Microsoft, Excel is the way to start learning about databases and how to perform calculations. And then Access is

the next step up.

For example, in Excel here, you can't print reports or design a report as far as the face value goes, because what

you see is what you get. So if that works better for you, go ahead and stay with Excel. But if you want to continue

with Access, I strongly recommend that you watch my Excel 2016 Level 1 training videos and get the basics of

Excel until you feel comfortable with it. So let me go ahead and close out of Excel here and go back to my

PowerPoint presentation and finish off our objects.

So once we have our data, our raw, organized data, the tables, then we can go ahead and query out the

information from those tables. We can say, look, we want to see all of the employees who don't have any benefits.

That's what's called a query. It instantly filters out those employees who do have benefits and only pulls on those

who don't without having to scroll through perhaps dozens, hundreds, or thousands of records to find those who

don't.

On top of a query, Access has what are called forms and reports. Again, a form is something you can create as a

place where you can organize the fields and control how the user inputs data into the table-- because again, a

table is where you can store all of your data. So this form is just basically a place where you can actually type in

information. Once you type it in, it dumps it right into the table. And forms you can make look really nice when it

comes to organizing the fields and what people see and what they see first.

Think of it like this way, like a report. A report is information you're taking from the table. So you can actually print

it off and/or email it to somebody, but in an organized way. Just as a form is a way of entering in information, a

report is a way of pulling out information in a nice, organized manner. And then finally, you want to be able to

define those objects a little bit more in detail, so let's go to the next slide.

So a form, by definition, will display information from the table or query because, again, a query is based upon a

table. Or you can enter in new information, new data, new records. It's a way of being able to control what the

user inputs that's going to store in the table. And again, a table is raw, organized data. Now, a report is the

printable results of forms or queries. You can actually turn a form into a report and email it or print it off.

And again, forms are based upon either queries or tables. And queries are based upon tables. So as long as you

have that link, that it's based upon the table or tables, you're going to be able to create a report. And what are

queries? It's just another way to retrieve data from a table, to be able to filter in and filter out specific information,

what you want to see or don't want to see. And finally, again, emphasizing the table. Without data, without

information, without records, without names, addresses stored, you don't have a database.

So as long as you have records, everything's all right, because then, you can query those records, create a report

based upon those records, and also have a form to input information to store in the table to continue on creating

additional records. I'm going to go ahead and end my PowerPoint presentation and close out of here.

And what you're looking at here is Windows 7. And what I want to do is, to open up Access is-- I can do it one of

many ways. But for the sake of this training video, every time you open up Access, I don't want to come down

here on the Start button to go find it. Well, I'll find it the first time.

But I'll want to create a shortcut to that program and put it on my Desktop or down below on the Taskbar, so I can

just click on it once on the Taskbar, or double click it on the Desktop, again, without coming down here to the Start

button, and going to All Programs, and then trying to find it. OK, there it is. See, that took quite a few clicks. So

when I find it, if I right-click on it, and I pin it to the Taskbar, see, it's down there. Ooh, that's fancy.

Or I can right-click on it and send it to the Desktop as a shortcut. And then I click off. It's right there or it's right

there. So now we're ready to go, either with a single-click to open up Access or double-click on the shortcut on the

Desktop. Thanks for watching. Hey, as a quick reminder, if you like my video, please give it a thumbs up. You can

also click on me and subscribe to my channel, get notified of the latest videos. And for only $2 a month, you can

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