Advanced Microsoft Access Forms TutorialAfter this Microsoft Access tutorial, you may want to go on to bigger and better databases such as Oracle, SQL Server or MySQL. The training you get from this. Microsoft Access tutorials for programming Access database support with lessons and discussions. Programmer training and examples for Visual Basic code, SQL query. Microsoft vouchers. Voucher facts Voucher ordering process Microsoft Partner Network ID information for order form Voucher price list Voucher forms. What is Microsoft Access. This page hopes to explain to you What is Microsoft Access in simple terms. Microsoft Access has been around for some time, yet people often still ask me what is Microsoft Access and what does it do Microsoft Access is a part of the Microsoft Office Suite. It does not come with all versions of Microsoft Office, so if you specifically want Microsoft Access make sure the office suite you are purchasing has it. Microsoft Access has the look and feel of other Microsoft Office products, including its layout and navigational aspects. That is where the similarity ends. Microsoft Access is a database and, more specifically, a relational database. This will be explained in more detail later. Access has an. mdb extension by default, whereas Microsoft Word has the. Although this has changed in Access 2. Advanced Microsoft Access Forms Multiple TablesEarly versions of Access cannot read accdb extensions but Microsoft Access 2. Access. The above is a bried overview of what is Microsoft Access. Now lets look at it in a bit more detail. What is Microsoft Access made up of The Microsoft Access Database is made up of 7 major components Tables Relationships Queries Forms Reports Macros Modules. The following gives a quick overview of each component. Tables. The tables are the backbone and the storage container of the data entered into the database. If the tables are not set up correctly, with the correct relationships, then the database may be slow, give you the wrong results or not react the way you expect. So, take a bit of time when setting up your tables. Queries, forms, etc. The tables that contain data look a bit like a table in Microsoft Word or a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet, when opened. They have columns and rows as does a table in Microsoft Word and an Excel worksheet. Each of the columns will have a field name at the top and each of the rows will represent a record. As an example Relationships. Relationships are the bonds you build between the tables. They join tables that have associated elements. To do this there is a field in each table, which is linked to each other, and have the same values. Queries. Are the means of manipulating the data to display in a form or a report. Queries can sort, calculate, group, filter, join tables, update data, delete data, etc. Their power is immense. The Microsoft Access database query language is SQL Structured Query Language. The need to know SQL is not required in the early stages of learning Access. Microsoft Access writes the SQL for you, after you tell it what you want, in the Design view of the queries window. Forms. Forms are the primary interface through which the users of the database enter data. The person who enters the data will interact with forms regularly. The programmer can set the forms to show only the data required. By using queries, properties, macros and VBA Visual Basic for Applications, the ability to add, edit and delete data can also be set. Forms can be set up and developed to reflect the use they will be required for. Reports. Reports are the results of the manipulation of the data you have entered into the database. Unlike forms, they cannot be edited. Reports are intended to be used to output data to another device or application, i. Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel. Macros. Macros are an automatic way for Access to carry out a series of actions for the database. Access gives you a selection of actions that are carried out in the order you enter. Macros can open forms run queries, change values of a field, run other Macros, etc. Modules. Modules are the basis of the programming language that supports Microsoft Access, The module window is where you can write and store Visual Basic for Applications VBA. Advanced users of Microsoft Access tend to use VBA instead of Macros. If you would like to learn VBA, I have a simple step by step lessons. Click here to find out more. All of the above components are persistent this means that changes are saved when you move from one component to another, not when the database is closed, as in a Microsoft Word Document. I hope the above give you a bit of an idea of what is Microsoft Access and what it includes. Limitations. The total size of a database file. MDB is limited only by the storage capacity of your PC Microsoft quote the maximum database size of 2 Gigabyte 2. Megabytes. These figures are for pre 2. Microsoft Access. Very few realistic limitations exist, though here are some parameters Maximum table size. Gb. No. if fields in a record or table. No. of indexes in a table or a record. Ni. of fields in an index. No. of tables in a query. Maximum size of a form or report. Characters in a memo field. MDB size. 2 Gb. Max Integer. Concurrent Users. No. of characters in object names. What is Microsoft Access as compared to a Relational Database. Now that you understand a bit of what is Microsoft Access. The relational database was invented by E. F. Codd at IBM in 1. The power of a relational database is the ability to bring a lot of information together quickly. I am not going into too much technical detail of what a relational database but hope to explain it in simple terms, so it is possibly not 1. To me these are the rules of a relational database No duplicate data except linked fields explained shortlyInformation is broken into categories. Data is broken down to the smallest useable bit. For example a persons name would be broken down into 4 sperate sections title, first name, middle name and last name. Each record has a unique identifier, this distinguishes a particular record from any other record. To explain this I will give an example below For the purpose of this example, we will be looking at a Library data base from a relational database viewpoint. For a Library database we would want to collect the following information Information about the books Information about the borrowers Information about when a book was borrowed and by whom. You may be tempted to include all this information within the one table. Once you start entering data the following occurs Entering data this way requires multiple entries and duplicate data in some of the columns This can lead to the following problems Data entry errors see bolded items The user having to enter the same information over and over The database would grow very big, very quickly, causing it to run slower. Therefore, to meet the rules of a relational database we would first break this one large table into smaller tables of like information categories. As an example Table One tbl. Book would contain information about the books Table Two tbl. Borrower would contain information about the borrowers and. Table Three tbl. Loan would contain information about the borrowing of a book. The next step is to list all the facts you think are required for each of these tables underneath them. I have included the examples below for each of the tables for the library database. The primary key and foreign key fields will be explained a bit later. Virtual Crash 3.0. Note The fields have been broken down in to their smallest logical part. As an example, a persons name has been broken down to Surname First name Title. The information is only recorded once, i. Loan table. Primary Key Unique Identifier. An important part of determining the fields for each table is deciding which field if any is suitable as the primary key. The power of a relational database is the ability to bring a lot of information together quickly.