Creating a simple system in Access need not involve any programming but it certainly involves understanding the concepts of tables, records, fields, forms, queries and reports. An elementary system which only involves one table is fairly easy to construct, but in any system of practical use with multiple tables the relationships between the tables soon become far from simple IMHO.
That's kinda what I meant. You won't get the most out of Access unless you understand the more complex functions of what you can do. But when you do understand that, its amazing at what you can pull off with it.
You can create a single table like it was a spreadsheet and then create an auto-form for viewing the records, but it doesn't come close to what you can do. Which is why I think its a great product. If you know what you are doing, its incredible.
He must have been. We had to use all the more complex stuff and create a relational database or something. We had to use queries, primary keys, forms, tables and god knows what else. Most people (including me) found the Access part of the assignment really hard.
Well I never would have used it on my own accord but I was forced to for a university assignment and we only had a few weeks to do it. Don't ask me how the lecturer expected us to be able to use such a complex program in a few weeks! I don't think anyone knew anything about programming. I was studying business, not IT/Computer Science!
hard to run a business without a database.
as you say though - is it the businessman's job to do the work, or just ask the questions?
Access isn't rubbish though. it should be up there with spreadsheets, and word processors as a vitally important business tool.
< Most people (including me) found the Access part of the assignment really hard. >
Now you know why in a reasonably large organisation one of the highest paid ordinary workers is the data analyst. Almost nobody will understand normalisation, even if they can quote the rules for having data in third normal form. But the data analyst must have this understood on day one.
So don't think that you found it hard because of some failing on the part of yourself or the lecturer. You found it hard because it is hard.
When I worked in tech support for NTL we used to get more calls about ME than all the other Windows OS's at the time put together. A true masterpiece in awfulness
Till now i never had any bad experienced so that i can say that the software was the worst one. But surely i have some bad experience with some softwares and the worst was with Norton when my PC stopped responding and i had to re-format again.
Comments
That's kinda what I meant. You won't get the most out of Access unless you understand the more complex functions of what you can do. But when you do understand that, its amazing at what you can pull off with it.
You can create a single table like it was a spreadsheet and then create an auto-form for viewing the records, but it doesn't come close to what you can do. Which is why I think its a great product. If you know what you are doing, its incredible.
He must have been. We had to use all the more complex stuff and create a relational database or something. We had to use queries, primary keys, forms, tables and god knows what else. Most people (including me) found the Access part of the assignment really hard.
hard to run a business without a database.
as you say though - is it the businessman's job to do the work, or just ask the questions?
Access isn't rubbish though. it should be up there with spreadsheets, and word processors as a vitally important business tool.
Now you know why in a reasonably large organisation one of the highest paid ordinary workers is the data analyst. Almost nobody will understand normalisation, even if they can quote the rules for having data in third normal form. But the data analyst must have this understood on day one.
So don't think that you found it hard because of some failing on the part of yourself or the lecturer. You found it hard because it is hard.
That's what I would have thought. Creating databases should be left to the IT guys who know what they're doing.
I like business people creating databases, they usually make a complete mesh then pay someone like me lots of money to sort it out
That's why they must be encouraged to keep doing it
Whilst you sit on your MBP looking like your doing work
I do work on my Macs too! I've given presentations at university on them and written essays and everything.
At least it keeps IT people in work
When I worked in tech support for NTL we used to get more calls about ME than all the other Windows OS's at the time put together. A true masterpiece in awfulness