Introduction to the Microsoft Access Database Why use Microsoft Access

Why not always use Excel? Excel deals with tables of data one table (spreadsheet) at-a-time. What if you need relationships between tables (Customers, orders, order details, products) in order to produce an invoice (Any relational database) What if we wanted advisor-name and advisor- -address in a gradebook?

Why not always use Excel? What if I have more than 1gb of data? Large spreadsheets take a long time to load What if I need to share instantly? – My changes are not available until I save my spreadsheet to a server and someone else loads it – What if many people need access to current data

What is Access? A client (local database) A development environment for screen, forms, reports and queries that use (access) data in a database A database that can be shared by a small number of people (department) If Access is so great, why to people pay to license Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server

Why is it called Access? You can Access data from multiple sources – Relational databases – Other Access databases – Tables from within your Access databases Microsoft Marketing thought it was a good name

Let’s see Access Work Obtain the Northwind database from your Microsoft Office installation or the copy of it that is available in this Unit. Play with it.

Conclusion Spreadsheets alone do not solve all data analysis needs Relational databases like Access, SQL Server, and Oracle facilitate use of relationships between tables, instant sharing of data, and storage of large amounts of data. Get the best of both worlds – maintain master data in a database, use queries to extract just what you need into a spreadsheet.

Introduction to the Microsoft Access Database Why use Microsoft Access