1. BS1904 Week 10 1 Computer Applications for Business (10) l Last week: Using Databases »Queries combining multiple tables »Mail Merge – expanding documents with query results l This week: »Wrap-up of Database work »Practical – Seminar confirmation letters »Mail-Merge with Spreadsheet data »An aside on presentation graphics »Completing practicals

2. BS1904 Week 10 2 Lessons learnt from your peers l Where external data exists, create table by importing it l Get table design right before doing anything else »When you create a query, it can imply a relationship »Once a field is in a relationship, it can’t be changed So you may be stuck with 255 characters for a number l Avoid spaces in field names »Mostly it works, BUT you can’t use them in an Expression l Next create relationships »Referential integrity will protect you from erroneous data l Finally create the query »Secure in the knowledge you’ve done everything to avoid processing garbage

3. BS1904 Week 10 3 Relational Database Terms l Red names are the formal ones, Blue are what we’ll use l The whole thing is a Relation or Table 53730Jones Bill W1031003550447320000 28719Blanagan J E1051010391724318000 53550Lake Mary0070909520440211000 79632Rubble Barney1110111520901150000 51883Smith Tina0030911500447321000 36453Thomas John1081109610440212000 Domain Column/Field Tuple Row Primary Key (unique)

4. BS1904 Week 10 4 Redundancy in Databases l One of the goals of a database is to reduce redundancy »If you store a piece of information in two places, –it wastes space –and creates the risk that the copies will get out of step l Most business records do involve redundancy: Emp#NameSalaryProjectCompletion 120Jones20000 x061125 122Marx17500 y070119 222Able21000 y070119 310Enson30000 z060922 355Spoto29000 x061125 l Need to get rid of this by going to Third Normal Form

5. BS1904 Week 10 5 Reducing Redundancy l One approach is to look for functional dependency between fields: »Emp# and Name »Project and Completion date l Can then split these between separate tables »As we did with Delegates and Seminars Project Project# Completion Project Name Employees Emp# Name Salary Project# 1 M

6. BS1904 Week 10 6 Using the Database l We often want a view of chunks of the original large table, complete with redundancy. But… »Usually only selected rows »and often only a selection of columns l So we only need to ask the DBMS to reconstruct a small part of the conceptual table »Still saves space »Guarantees integrity of data (did that frustrate you last week?) l With Access, we used Queries to do this work »SQL is the underlying language for selection/sorting »You can inspect the SQL generated by Access by using the View menu

7. BS1904 Week 10 7 Extracting Access Data l Access is a cheap but powerful database tool »Lets you do most of the things expensive relational database packages can do »Has a standard interface (ODBC) to communicate with other programs »If you need to upgrade to (say) Oracle or SQL Server, ODBC helps with the migration l Microsoft has improved Report generator in Access »Do the exercises in Week 8 to practise Reports »If you want to generate certain fixed multi-page reports, Mail Merge may be a feasible alternative

8. BS1904 Week 10 8 Handling Customer Orders l As we saw, most businesses need tables for: »Customer records (name, address, contact, customer-ref) »Orders (customer-ref, order-ref, date) »Order items (order-ref, product-ref, quantity) »Products (product ref, description, price) l Another example might be to confirm orders by letter »Each letter must be correctly addressed »Must list all items included in the order »Information is scattered amongst the tables »Generate report from order items and orders to show all orders placed today – reporting beats mail-merge here

9. BS1904 Week 10 9 Mail-Merge from Spreadsheet l All you really need for Mail Merge is tabular data »Can come from a Database Table »Or an “on the fly” table like an Access Query »A spreadsheet »Even data from another Word document (easy with tables, very hard otherwise) l An example is sending out exam results »There is a document and suitable data source in: http://www2.winchester.ac.uk/bm/courses/bs1904/ http://www2.winchester.ac.uk/bm/courses/bs1904/ »We are interested in rows 3 to 23, columns A to M – name that area first (e.g. call it results) »Use the mail-merge wizard to perform the merge

10. BS1904 Week 10 10 Aside on Presentation Graphics l Single Hons will cover PowerPoint with Mike Davies l Many tools are common to all Office Applications l Example: the drawing tools »Generate vector graphics in your files (fairly economical) »Standard “autoshapes” for arrows, flowcharts »Also text boxes and “callouts” l Some hints »You can change a text box into any autoshape »But it’s hard to add text to most other drawing objects »Use “No Fill” to avoid obscuring objects behind shape (filling with white looks similar, but obscures them) »Don’t rely on fill to hide things, it fails on some printers! This is a callout

11. BS1904 Week 10 11 Optional Exercises These are less important than completing the ones you have been set, which resemble the tasks of the exam We’ll do practice exams next week

12. BS1904 Week 10 12 Mail-Merge from Word Document l The same exercise can be done purely within Word »Make sure your data is in a table (can handle non-table data, but it’s hard to get right) l Create a Data Source document »An easy way is to Copy the data from your Excel sheet »When you paste into Word, it will create a table l Now create a Master document to use the data »Probably best to start from the example built before (saving under a new name) »Go through the Mail Merge routine as usual Optional

13. BS1904 Week 10 13 Excel Database Practical This work all uses the Data pull-down menu »Instructions in Practice.doc page 18 (see Learning Network or module web-site) l To create and manipulate a list of books »Open an Excel worksheet and enter the field names »Type given list of books under the field names »Sort the records on different fields »Filter the records by various criteria »Use a pivot table to display and summarize the data Optional