Chapter Demonstrable Skills
After completing the Access Chapter 2 portion of the Access unit, students will be able to:
| Demonstrable Skill | Learning Activities & Informal Assessments |
Formal Assessments (excluding Exams) |
|---|---|---|
| Design database tables and fields. |
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| Choose primary and composite keys. |
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| Determine necessary relationships and foreign keys. |
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| Create and modify database tables. |
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| Create database relationships and use referential integrity, cascade updates, and cascade deletes. |
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| Use criteria to restrict text, numeric, date, and yes/no field values. |
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| Apply sorting to query results. |
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| Specify outer join relationships in a query. |
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| Control if query fields are shown in the results. |
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| Specify wildcard query criteria. |
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| Copy existing queries. |
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Chapter Notes
Designing tables
Tables provide the framework for all of the activities you perform in a database [1]. The first step is to list all of the tables you need for the database and list all the fields, assigning each field a data type. It is very important that the tables contain all of the necessary fields so that the system can produce the required information.
Relationships
A primary key is unique identifier that will not be repeated in a table [1]. Access does not require that each table have a primary key. However, a good database design usually includes a primary key in each table. When no primary key occurs, you can create a primary key with the AutoNumber-type field which automatically increments each time a record is added.
A foreign key is a field in one table that is also the primary key of another table.
Queries
A query asks a question of the database [1]. The Query Design tool is used to create select queries. A select query is a specific type of query that displays only the records that match criteria entered in the query Design View.
Once you design the query, you may need to add criteria. Criteria can consist of all kinds of delimiters to include or exclude records.
Tips & Tricks
Relationships
When you are relating two tables, look at the primary key of both tables. See if you can find either primary key in the other table (as a foreign key) [2].
References
- A. Poatsy, K. Mulberry, C. Krebs, L. Hogan, A. Rutledge, and E. Cameron, Exploring Microsoft Office 2013, 1st ed., vol. 1. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2013.
- R. G. Phipps and B. M. Powell, “Access Chapter 2,” Computer Science 101, May 18, 2016. Available: http://cs101.wvu.edu/materials/units/access/access-chapter-2/.