Databases: Inheriting a database

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1 Databases: Inheriting a database

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3 About These Activities Software Used Files Used Access 2013 Windows college IT help appointments.accdb IT Helpers.xlsx Finding the Exercise Files All the files for these exercises have been provided for you on a network drive. Your area of the drive is called the Home Drive H:. They can also be downloaded from the ITLC Portfolio (visit and search for databases inheriting or similar search text to find the course pack for this course). Trusted Locations In the IT teaching rooms, the Home Drive has been set up as an Access Trusted Location. To find out more about Access Trusted Locations, read the article in the ITLC Portfolio (visit and search for Access trusted locations or similar search text). Web App or Desktop Database? Copyright Access 2013 can also be used to create an app database: where users work on the data via a web browser. This would require communication using Office 365 or SharePoint 2013 (not currently available at Oxford University), and is not the subject of this course. We will work on a desktop database, which is saved locally on your computer or a network drive. Pamela Stanworth makes this document and the accompanying slides available under a Creative Commons licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA. pamela.stanworth@it.ox.ac.uk The Oxford University logo and crest and the IT Services logo are copyright of Oxford University and may only be used by Oxford University members in accordance with the University s branding guidelines. 1 IT Learning Centre

4 Steps for the Learning Objectives Getting started Start Access Start the computer if necessary Click the Start button on the taskbar at the bottom of the screen In the Start menu, type Access in the search box Open college IT help appointments.accdb (in the Home Drive H:/) In this database, the team of IT support staff in a college are organising the appointments when students come to them for help. Choose Access If you are prompted for any user information, just click on OK (On your office or home computer you might otherwise start the program using an Access icon or tile on the Desktop) Choose Open other files Browse to the Home Drive H: (or another place as directed by your teacher) Locate the database file college IT help appointments.accdb and open it In this database, the team of IT support staff in a college are organising the appointments when students come to them for help Learning Objective One: Review the structure of an existing database Make a backup copy of the whole database The new file opens, showing the Navigation Pane with various saved objects Maximise the window, if necessary Choose File Save As Save a copy of the database with a new filename, as a backup 2 IT Learning Centre

5 Examine the tables and their data Confirm that you can enter data values and make corrections in Datasheet View Open tblstudents in design view, and explore the fields already in place, noting their properties and changing some if necessary Open tblstudents Initially, the table is shown in Datasheet View Enter some plausible data values A table is the place for storing data facts & figures Move between the records and fields, and make some corrections Working in Design View, examine the fields in tblstudents, and their properties Task 4 In tblappointments, add a new field for Location Task 5 Save the table design It has been decided that there is no need to record a student s gender: delete the Gender field in tblstudents Learning Objective Two: Review the structure of existing fields Continue work in the database for IT help appointments, In suitable tables, change some properties of fields: UniversityCardNumber can have maximum 9 characters AppointmentDate and AppointmentTime have the formats Long Date and Long Time respectively SchoolName needs to be a mandatory field In tblstudents, look at the properties of the UniversityCardNumber field Change the maximum number of characters for this field to be 9 In tblappointments, look at the properties of the fields Set the format of AppointmentDate to be Long Date Set the format of AppointmentTime to be Long Time Find the SchoolName field, and set the Required property to Yes Step 5 Type a few words as a Description for each field At some point, the software offers to check that the data in the table still conforms to the new settings you have made Agree to this when asked 3 IT Learning Centre

6 In a suitable table, add or find a field for the location where an appointment is to be held: provide a lookup to help users answer this question with one of these responses: Dining Hall, IT Office, King s Arms, Other Task 4 Save the table design In tblappointments, add or find a new field for Location Use the Lookup Wizard to create a lookup for this field Look at the bottom of the list of data types, for the command to start the Lookup Wizard Agree to type in the values that will appear in the lookup: Dining Hall, IT Office, King s Arms, Other Limit users so they must choose one of the values offered Do not allow them to give multiple responses 4 IT Learning Centre

7 Learning Objective Three: Make relationships between tables In the database for IT help appointments, review the relationships diagram On the Database Tools tab, click on the Relationships diagram to display If the Show Table dialog does not appear, click Examine the joins between tables: tblappointments and tblstudents Add any missing tables (If a table gets added twice, then after closing the Show Table dialog you will be able to select a table field list and press the DELETE key to remove the duplicate) Notice the fields that are included in each table Drag the field lists to convenient positions on the diagram Step 5 Drag the borders of field lists to stretch or shrink them until all the field names are visible in each Examine the fields included in each table tblnotes and tblstudents between the table of schools attended and the table of students Join the Advisor fields in the table of IT support staff and the table of appointments Point to Advisor in tblappointments Drag to the corresponding field in tblithelpers, and drop The direction of dragging does not matter, but it is important that you point accurately to the correct field name Task 4 In the dialog that appears: Confirm the table names and field names Confirm that this is a One-to-Many relationship Choose to Enforce Referential Integrity Choose not to Cascade Delete nor Cascade Update 5 IT Learning Centre

8 Task 5 Close the Relationships diagram, saving any changes Review the Relationships diagram, and confirm that suitable joins have appeared between the tables Look carefully at the 1 and symbols that have appeared around the tables: are they sensible? 6 IT Learning Centre

9 Learning Objective Four: Planning your own project Spend a few minutes thinking about your own project. If you were building this database from scratch, what would it contain? What fields, tables, properties and joins would be needed? Sketch out an ideal structure for your data. Use this to decide how much of the existing database you can re-use. The IT Teachers in the IT Learning Centre would be happy to discuss with you your own database project 7 IT Learning Centre

10 Learning Objective Five: Import more data It has been decided to introduce a table which lists the members of the IT staff team. This will reduce the need to type in the names and details of the staff members, repeatedly. Import the list of staff from IT Helpers.xlsx The details have been provided as a spreadsheet, IT Helpers.xlsx in your home drive In the External Data tab of the ribbon, click Import group, to start the Import Data Wizard in the Click In the File Open dialog, ensure that Files of Type is set to Microsoft Excel Locate the Excel file IT Helpers.xlsx Import the list of staff into the database, as a separate table called tblitadvisors Step 5 Choose to Import the source data into a new table Step 6 When asked, allow a new field to be created, which will act as the primary key in this new table Open the new table and look over the data, to check that it has imported successfully 8 IT Learning Centre

11 Learning Objective Six: Working with data using forms In the database for IT help appointments, review the forms already in place In the Navigation Pane, examine the forms listed Double-click frmstudents to run the form This displays the data stored in tblstudents Use the record controls to page between the records Locate the record for Peter Green Step 5 Edit his address to be 23 Waterson Street, Iffley, Oxford Step 6 Check that you can edit existing data and add a new record for a new student invent some plausible data You are editing the raw data that is stored in the table Some existing forms and reports may continue to be useful, but others may now be out of date and can be deleted, without affecting the data Try some of the other forms, and think about how you might use them to work on the data in this project 9 IT Learning Centre

12 Learning Objective Seven: Creating new forms Use the Form Wizard to create a new form, for editing and adding data about the appointments Test the form Start the Form Wizard (look on the Create tab) Choose tblappointments Include all the fields from tblappointments Choose an appearance that you like Step 5 Save the new form, naming it frmappointments Try out the steps that would be needed for editing details of an existing appointment Try out the steps for adding a new appointment for an existing student As you are working, notice the features of a form which make it easier for a human user to work safely and accurately on the data (contrast with the experience of working on data in a table) If student Terry Snell wants to book an appointment for next Tuesday morning, how would you do that? Think about whether suitable forms are provided, and the workflow that would be needed for this situation 10 IT Learning Centre

13 Learning Objective Eight: Altering forms Open frmstudentsneedswork and improve the appearance and usability of some controls Each of the address boxes has a separate label, but these are not all needed Align and arrange controls neatly on the form Task 4 Change the formatting of sections of the form Open frmstudentsneedswork in Design View Click once on the FamilyName box, to select it Drag the handles to make the box wider and taller This will make the box more noticeable, and better able to fit in long names In the header section, select the label Student details Step 5 Use buttons on the ribbon to make the text bold and give it white letters Select the Address2 label and delete it (press the DELETE key) Delete the Address3 label and any other labels that you consider unnecessary Edit the Address1 label to read Address Move the address boxes closer together Select the Title, GivenName and FamilyName boxes (Tip: hold down CTRL key while clicking the boxes in turn) Use the Align button to line up the left edges of the selected boxes Experiment with other buttons on the Align tab Right-click in the background of the footer Examine the options offered in the context menu Choose a Back Fill colour that matches the colour in the header 11 IT Learning Centre

14 Task 5 Try out the form in Form View Make further improvements to the form appearance and usability, as needed 12 IT Learning Centre

15 Learning Objective Nine: Using queries Try out the queries already provided in the database Run qrystudentdetails, then examine its structure Notice the criteria set in this query, and experiment with setting different criteria Double-click the name of a query in the Navigation Pane The query runs, the relevant data is collected from the tables and it is displayed in a datasheet view Each query has been designed to answer a different question, retrieving specified fields from tables and applying selection criteria The queries provided may prove useful for your future work, but any which are not needed can be deleted Run qrystudentdetails and examine the data that it presents In Design View, examine the structure of the query notice the tables and fields included In the design grid, notice the sort order that has been set Change the sort order, then run the query again and confirm that it behaves as you expect 13 IT Learning Centre

16 Learning Objective Ten: Working with queries Create a new query showing appointments with their time and date information, sorted in date order Add student names to the query Experiment with setting criteria Task 4 After each experiment, make sure you delete all previous criteria before setting up new ones Create a new query with tblappointment Add the AppointmentTime and AppointmentDate fields Set the sort order to Ascending, in both columns Ensure that the AppointmentDate field is to the left of the AppointmentTime field, so that the records are sorted first in date order Run the query to test it When you are sure that the query works as required, save it as qryappointmentdetails Click Show Table and add the table tblstudents to the query design Add the GivenName and FamilyName fields to the query design grid Run the query to test it Add the AppointmentKept field In the Criteria row, under the AppointmentKept field, enter 0 (that is a zero), which means an appointment was not kept Run the query to see a list of students who make appointments but did not keep them Remove the AppointmentKept column Under AppointmentTime, enter <10:00 in the Criteria row Run the query to see a list of appointments that have been booked very early in the morning (before 10am) 14 IT Learning Centre

17 Add the PostCode column Enter the criteria OX4* Step 5 Run the query to see a list of appointments with students who live in the OX4 postcode area Task 5 Try out AND and OR criteria adding 2 or more criteria on the same row or on different rows Task 6 You might save some of these queries if they seem to be useful give each one a memorable name beginning qry 15 IT Learning Centre