Participation Project #14 - Access Database Design

Note

This assignment is very differnt from any other assignment you will have all semester. It is that way on purpose. This assignment is to show you which program, Excel or Access, is better at handling specific information. You'll find that Excel is better for analyizing the information such as creating charts, or graphs and performing calculations. Excel is easier to work with than Access. Access can store a lot more information than excel, and the data between tables can talk to each other when you create relationships between them. Access is much more complex than Access, but this course will hopefully break that down for you a bit. 

You are working with an Excel spreadsheet for this project, not with Access. This assignment is all about how to structure your data. You’re basically grouping information from a spreadsheet together so that you can import the data into tables that make sense. This one will be graded on effort, not on accuracy, so do your best to understand why things are being grouped together, as well as how they’re grouped. And please don’t spend more than an hour on it. If you can’t figure it out, let me know, but this is more or less to help you understand how data bases are structured. I don't expect for you to actually recreate the entire data base. You should have multiple tabs in your Excel spreadsheet when you submit it, but if you don’t get to all of them, I’m not going to take off points.

The tables in your spreadsheets should more or less be structured like they are defined in step 13. You can't actually set your keys in Excel, so just pay attention to what fields should be used for them.

You also can't create relationships in Excel. Step 14 is meant to be informative rather than directions for you to complete.