learning curve

Access beginners often become discouraged when they start to realized that the learning curve is actually quite long and involved. “Learning Access” is quite unlike other learning they may have experienced. Frequently a question that seems to be quite simple leads to several other questions at a more fundamental level. Each of those questions can lead to yet additional even more fundamental questions.

background knowledge and skills

Frequently “learning Access” as in learning how to manipulate things within the Access environment, is only part of the issue. I can teach you the simple mechanics of designing and creating forms and reports from the perspective of how they will look, the size and relative position of their components in a few hours. Those skills, however, barely scratch the surface of “learning Access.”

Identifying the right tool for the job is an important skill that can save you hours of frustration and wasted effort. To identify the right tool you first need to understand the job, then you need to understand the possible tools. The Crabby Office Lady has an article with some guidelines about whether Access or Excel would be the better tool for particular jobs.

Think of it this way. I can teach you to use a calculator, how to press the keys to make numbers appear on the display and how to press the operator keys to add, subtract, multiply, and divide, reasonably quickly. But, unless you know what combination of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division you will need to apply to solve your immediate problem, knowing how to use a calculator, how to punch numbers, won’t really help you much.

Access is like that on a grand scale. Unless you learn or already know, how to analyze data, and organize it according to relational data design principles, knowing how to create a table and add fields to it, won’t get you very far. Unless you learn, or already understand, the math behind the business problems you want a database to help with, knowing how to create calculated controls on forms and reports also won’t get you very far.

Not every database involves arithmetic calculations, of course, but there are many skills that go into developing a database application that go far beyond merely having “learned Access".”

learning by doing

There is nothing quite like experiential learning to build and enhance a permanent knowledge base. Identify a problem and then work at devising a solution. Unfortunately, if you are doing your experiential learning all on your own, what you learn and what may become a permanent part of your skill set, may not always be the best or even the ‘right’ way to solve your problem.

Experiential learning can also be a frustrating process. You may run into roadblocks that, once you have overcome them, seem to be quite inconsequential but, until they are overcome, stop you dead in your tracks. Sometimes the solution is a simple as missed dot or a missing space.

courses

There are a number of on-line or DVD based courses available. However, as good as their content may be, such courses, are unable to rephrase or modify how they explain topics in response to questions you may have. If you run into a concept that you have difficulty understanding, you may find yourself beating your head against the proverbial stone wall if an on-line or DVD course is your only learning resource.

I have to confess that I have a somewhat biased opinion when it comes to computer training courses. I facilitate instructor led training sessions for Office applications. I believe that such courses have a distinct advantage over on-line or DVD courses precisely because learners can ask questions, can say, “I don’t understand that point,” and the trainer or instructor can rephrase the explanation, suggest alternative analogies, or otherwise help the learner overcome hurdles in a timely fashion.

Check out courses that may be available through your local community college or other adult training facilities. If you live in or near my part of the world (north-eastern Ontario, Canada, pay a visit to The Enterprise Centre Computer Software Training & Development web page to see details on the training sessions we offer there.

Quote of the Day
Recommend to your children virtue; that alone can make them happy, not gold.
–Ludwig van Beethoven

print resources

Even in today’s electronic age, hardcopy books and articles can be excellent learning resources. I have found that no one book is the best for me. Where one book or author may do an excellent job on many topics, there may be other topics that one particular author or book does not touch or explains in a way that isn’t clear to me. Reading a different author’s treatment of the same subject frequently gets me on track.

In the recommended reading section below, I have listed two books that I have found helpful in understanding Access and what it can do.

on-line resources

In the past, newsgroups, and more recently on-line forums are excellent learning resources where you can ask questions about specific problems you are having and get helpful answers and suggestions. Although you may have to register in order to post questions, many on-line forums are free. In fact, I suggest you try the free forums first. Again, my bias may be showing, but one of the best Access forums is UtterAccess.com, where I am an administrator. George Hepworth, author of one of the books recommended below and several of the co-authors of the other book are UtterAccess members, moderators, or administrators, and frequent posters at UtterAccess.

recommended reading

George Hepworth’s Grover Park George on Access is a good introduction to relational database concepts in simple layperson’s language. If you are already comfortable with relational concepts and want to see more of Access in Action, you might find Microsoft Access Small Business Solutions a worthwhile read.

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Even the best design in the world sometimes needs some revisions and tweaking when we start to develop queries and reports. Feedback from the Output phase of the process sometimes sends us back to revise and refine some aspect of the design.

The query at the end of part 2 is a good example of this. As is, that query can only provide the id of a representative, not the representative’s actual name. So we need to add a another table, tblHumanResources  to the query.  This change enables the query to provide representative names for the report.

Rather than including the three representative name fields in the query grid, the first column of the query is defined by a calculation: Representative: [hrlname] & ", " & [HrFName] & " " & [hrmname].

All that remains now is to design the actual report.

Building the detail section of the report is simply a matter of dragging and dropping fields form the field list in the correct position. The naming convention described in part 2 helps ensure that the fields are situated in correct product column and weekday Sales or Quotation  row. While the field names obscure the actual product name.

Because there are multiple controls for each product in two different categories, individual addition expressions must be created in order to display weekly totals for both Sales and Quotations. For example the expression for the weekly sales total for Widgets is:

=Int([SAPr1_MO])+Int([SAPr1_TU])+Int([SAPr1_WE])+Int([SAPr1_TH])+Int([SAPr1_FR])

Here again, the naming convention make it easy to create the expressions for each product without a lot of typing. After creating the first control (for product 1 – widgets) and typing the expression as its data source, simply make five copies. Edit the data source for each product total in turn and replace the ‘1’ with ‘2’, ‘3’, ‘4’, ‘5’, or ‘6’, depending on the product. This technique will also work for the Quotations totals.

After adding all the controls, adding appropriate labels then formatting and aligning them, and setting up report grouping on Representative, this is what the final report looks like:

You should keep in mind that, because queries are limited to a maximum of 255 fields, this approach will only work if 255 or fewer ‘cells’ required in the report details. This report has 60 ‘cell’ (6 products x 5 days x 2 categories) so it is will within the limit. 

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• who made the sale or quotation
• what product was involved
• was the action a sale or a quotation?
• when did it happened

These descriptions suggest the need for certain tables:

• salespeople
• product lines
• sales activity
• sales activity types

Here’s how the tables are organized in the database:

Obviously this is a minimal structure designed to illustrate what’s needed for the reports. The Human Resource table has only three name fields whereas in a real application much more information about people would be required.

The data is normalized to the third normal form. The problem here is to create a report from a flattened version of the data. The client’s requirements in part one specified that the report require one column for each product group sales on one row followed by a similar row or product group quotations. Keeping in mind also that the desired report should have some vertical space between each pair or rows and that there be one pair of rows for each day of the week, it should be apparent that a simple datasheet or even a continuous report will not meet these requirements.

Before designing the actual report it is first necessary to flatten the data. Crosstab queries are specifically designed to do exactly that. The data we will need in the query includes the sale representative, the date, the type of action, and the number of times the action happened on each day. So the basic crosstab design will look like this:

Notice that the query has included a field to restrict the results to a particular time frame (July 26 – 30, 2010). In this example the criterion has been hard-coded. In a working database the query would most likely refer to a user-specified time frame from a form or memory value.

What’s missing from this query, however, is any sort of specification of the activity type (sale or quotation) and the relevant day of the week. To further refine the specification, it is necessary to add two additional Where fields to the query.

Actually, in order to report on each product for each day of the week, a total of ten queries will be needed (5 days x 2 action types.) Before creating these queries, however, it will speed things up greatly if you specify column headings in the  queries properties. (Remember that cross-tab data has to have pre-defined column headings if the data is to be used in a report.

This basic query is only needed as a model for the queries that will ultimately be used in the report. By setting the query up with as much generic detail as possible, you can quickly create the ten queries simply by modifying the product and day of week criteria and using save as repeatedly for each set of criteria.  Subsequent work with the queries will be much easier if you use a consistent naming style for these day/product queries.

The names used in the example database are:

Sales queries: Monday to Friday

• qxtbActivity_SA_MO
• qxtbActivity_SA_TU
• qxtbActivity_SA_WE
• qxtbActivity_SA_TH
• qxtbActivity_SA_FR

Quotation Queries: Monday to Friday

• qxtbActivity_QU_MO
• qxtbActivity_QU_TU

• qxtbActivity_QU_WE

• qxtbActivity_QU_TH

• qxtbActivity_QU_FR

Notice how these names follow a consistent pattern. The names all begin with qxtbActivity, indicating that the query is a crosstab of the Activity tab. The next two characters after the first underscore indicates whether the query is retrieving sales or quotation data. The final two indicators indicate the weekday that data represents. Using consistent naming patterns like this simplifies both the creation and identification of the queries. For example, you can use a text editor to search and replace the distinguishing characters to create the other queries in the set.

These queries will return the sales and quotation date for each sales rep for each day on which each rep, respectively, had activity. However, in the unlikely event that a rep had no sales or no quotation activity, that rep will be missing from the days sales or quotation data or both. What we really need is for the rep to be included in the query output with zeros for each product column.

What we need is a list of sales reps who were active in the reporting period. A simple query of representatives in the activity table grouped by rep with a criteria limiting the date range will do the trick. The SQL of the query is:

SELECT tblActivity.Rep
FROM tblActivity
WHERE (((tblActivity.ActDate) Between #7/26/2010# And #7/30/2010#))
GROUP BY tblActivity.Rep;

Now this query can be joined to each of the crosstabs to produce a set of ten selection queries. These queries all follow a similar pattern and use an outer join to ensure that all representatives will be included whether or not they have sales.

In these queries, the product names have been “aliased” so that they can be distinguished as to sales or quotations on a day by day. Again a consistent naming pattern helps speed up the creation process. For example, QUPr1_MO is the alias for Monday’s Widget quotations and SAPr1_MO is the alias for Monday’s Widget sales. The Pr1 simply indicates that this is the first field of products which is widget data. The queries themselves are names “qsel” followed by the part of the crosstab name after “qxtb”

For example, the query in the diagram above is named qselActivity_QU_MO, indicating that it will provide data for the Monday column of the report.

We need one more query to give us the data that the report will display. Think of this as an umbrella query that will combine the results of the ten queries just created into a single query:

The order of the sub queries doesn’t matter much but it will be easier to work with query when designing the report if the field list are arranged left to right, Monday to Friday. Each table should be joined to the table on its right by the Rep field. In this diagram the field list are arranged in two rows simply to make it easier to display in this article. In the actual query, qselActivity_QU_MO is to the right of qselActivity_SA_FR.

The final query has 61 columns – rep plus one column for each of the SAPr… and QUPr… fields.

In the final part of this series we will see how to display this query data in a grid format grouped by representative.

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In the organization requesting the report, sales people generate quotations and sales for each of the company’s six main product lines. (In case you haven’t guessed, the product lines here have fictitious names.) The client wanted a weekly activity report that showed the number of quotations and sale for each salesperson for each product.

What clinched the decision that this report needed a data management solution and not a spreadsheet solution was that client wanted other, similar reports, that summarized data over time. In order to produce such on-going reports, sales and quotation histories had to be maintained.

Choosing the best data manager for the job is a whole other decision process. Suffice it to say that, in this case, Access was determined to be adequate for the client’s business volume.

As you may or may not know, relational database management systems (RDMS) work best if the data is properly normalized. The mock-up above shows the data laid out in what some refer to as a flat-file format. The layout seems natural and easy to understand and that is how most people envision their data should be set up in a database.

Sadly, therein lies a trap however. Flat file organization is very inefficient and error prone, in part because there is a lot of repetition of data values. One of the goals or normalized tables, on the other hand, is the elimination of data repetition.

In short, there is a simple rule of thumb that applies here, To get the report right, first get the data right.

In part 2, I will illustrate the normalized structure for the data used in the report.

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The Microsoft Office 2010 Engineering Blog has announced a May 12, 2010 worldwide launch date for “the 2010 set of products, including Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010, and Project 2010” for business users. Office 2010 will be available for consumers on-line and in retail outlets in June 2010.  If you want to have an sneak preview look at what is coming you can download the beta at www.office.com/beta.

I have been poking around the Access 2010 beta for the last while and I think it is going to be a nice version to work with. In case you are wondering, the Ribbon stays. In fact, I believe that the Fluent User Interface as the Ribbon is officially, will now be found throughout the Office suite. The Office Button has been replaced with a File tab on the ribbon. This tab leads to the backstage of each application.

Quote of the Day

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.

- Thomas H. Huxley

The single-most exciting new development as far as Access is concerned is that it is now possible to develop Access Web Databases and publish them to SharePoint. Ryan McMinn present this new development in this video.

If you are interested in general Office development, have a look at John Durant’s presentation.

Pej Javaheri and Steve Tullis present Excel and Excel Services 2010 developments in this video.

All in all , Office 2010 looks pretty exciting with lots of new ‘stuff’ to learn but with big paybacks for taking the time you will spend on learning.

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In the grand scheme of things, this is not a particularly serious problem but inconsistently formed names lend an unprofessional look to an application. When I tried to correct the names I discovered an inconvenient quirk. After replacing the first letter of each field name with its lowercase equivalent, saving and closing the table and then re-opening it again in design view, I found that the first letter of each field name had changed back to uppercase.

No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get the lower-case letter to ‘stick.’ That’s when I turned to my favourite forum for help. Thanks to UtterAccess VIP member (and Access MVP) datAdrenaline, I quickly had a reasonably workable solution.

Quote of the Day

I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people who are convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference after another.

- Ellen Goodman

All I had to do is change the first letter of each field name I wanted to modify, save and close the table, re-open the table and replace whatever I had entered as the first letter of the temporary field name back to the lowercase letter with which I wanted to start the name. Step by step this is the method I applied:

• open the table in design view
• pre-fix each field name with a single letter
• delete and replace the original uppercased letter
• save and close the table
• reopen the table in design view
• remove the leading character for each field to correct name
• save and close the table

This problem occurred specifically in Access 2010 beta so it may be a non-issue when the new version is released but if you run into similar situations perhaps a similar approach will help you out of a bind “when all else fails.”

New articles in Access Wiki

Links

CamelCase

Access: What is it?

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Quote of the Day

Real, constructive mental power lies in the creative thought that shapes your destiny, and your hour-by-hour mental conduct produces power for change in your life. Develop a train of thought on which to ride. The nobility of your life as well as your happiness depends upon the direction in which that train of thought is going.

-Laurence J. Peter

By the end of the day, the Access Wiki  will have been ‘open for business’ for two weeks. The body of Access knowledge that the site  promises to be is slowly building. As of this moment, there are 26 articles published in the wiki with articles including such topics as Normalization, Sharing (Access Databases through splitting), and Error Handling. Access Wiki content is expected to grow as UtterAccess members continue to write and publish articles. The wiki features a table of contents and an index if you want to look over a list of topics.

Meanwhile, on the forums side of UtterAccess, there is a whole new ‘look and feel.’ The new appearance is similar to what you will see one the Wiki side.

If you haven’t yet visited UtterAccess.com Forums or the Access Wiki, why not check them out now and see if you don’t agree that UtterAccess is the only source for all of your  Microsoft help needs. The wiki and forums are freely available to anyone on the World Wide Web but only registered members can download code samples from the forums or write and edit wiki articles. Membership is free and confidential. Signing up will give you access to thousands of downloads and the opportunity to contribute your own articles to the Access Wiki

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Quote of the Day

The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.

-Pierre de Coubertin

The best forum in the Access community, UtterAccess, is about to get even better.  Tomorrow, The Access Wiki will take its place alongside UtterAccess Discussion forums. This is the most significant enhancement to UtterAccess since its inception some eight years ago. In the coming months and years, the wiki is expected be become a treasure house of in-depth information for Access database developers as members contribute and update original articles discussing all aspects of developing and enhancing Access applications.

Sometime overnight tonight, UtterAccess.com will go off-line and will be unavailable for a brief period. Then, with little more fanfare than the flipping of a switch, the wiki will be ‘live to air’ and the forums will be back on-line. If you have ever visited the UtterAccess site, you will immediately notice the forum’s new look and feel, even a brand new logo, thanks to UtterAccess member and moderator Mark Davis. The wiki will share the new ‘look and feel’ of the forum. UtterAccess members will be able to log in to the wiki using the same user id and password as they use for the discussion forums.

What is a wiki? A wiki (pronounced /ˈwɪki/ WIK-ee) is a website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used to create collaborative websites, to power community websites, for personal note taking, in corporate intranets, and in knowledge management systems. (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

The UtterAccess Access Wiki and Discussion Forums will naturally complement each other. Discussion Forums provides a question and answer peer support environment where members can raise and respond to specific problem oriented questions. The wiki will provide in depth discussions of Access related topics to which a user may point when responding to questions. Access Wiki readers will turn to the Discussion Forums from time to time when they need help in understanding topics discussed in the wiki. Together Access Wiki and Discussion Forums will be a win-win partnership in Access education, re-affirming that UtterAccess.com is the only source for all of your Microsoft Access help needs…and more!

I’d like to thank UtterAccess.com Owner/Administrator Gordon Hubbell for keeping UtterAccess in the forefront of the Access community over the years and for his tireless efforts along with help from Microsoft’s Clint Covington and Kerry Westphal over the past couple of months to bring the Access Wiki to fruition.

As soon as the relevant links are available, I will be publishing a follow up article.

Congratulations Gord and UtterAccess!!

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What does ‘split database’ mean?

An  Access file (.mdb 2003 and earlier, .accdb – 2007 & 2010) can contain both user interface and the data of the database. Think of the user interface as being everything you need to display data to the user in useful and meaningful ways, everything, in fact, except the actual tables and relationships between them.

A split database architecture separates the user interface from the data. In Access, the user interface ‘lives’ in a file known as the frontend. This file contains all of the application’s forms, reports, and queries. The backend, on the other hand, is a second file that contains the tables and relationships of the database.

Why should a database be split?

Separating the user interface and data storage functions into two separate files makes the database easier to manage and greatly simplifies the enhancement and deployment of frontend modifications.

In a multiuser environment, a split database is mandatory so that all users can share and work with the same data. That is because their individual copies of the frontend all link to the same backend. To put it in somewhat techy terms, one data source serves all users of the database. If each user had his or her own copy of the data, managing changes to the data and keeping all copies of the data ‘in sync’ adds a whole new layer of complexity to managing the data.

However, even if there is only one user, a split database still makes a lot of sense. That is because you can continue to develop and enhance (and replace) the frontend as needed without jeopardized your valuable data. In my own applications, for example, I have a frontend that I use on a day to day basis. I have a second, development, version of the front end where I try out new ideas for form and report design. The development frontend is linked, not to my live data, but to a test dataset that I copy from my live data from time to time. When I am satisfied that the development frontend is working correctly and has been properly tested, I put it ‘into production’ by linking it to my real frontend. (Incidentally, UtterAccess moderator Cybercow has posted a nice utility for switching a frontend’s between test and live data in the UtterAccess Code Archive

How do you split a database?

Generally, splitting a newly developed Access database is quite straightforward. Access includes a Split Database wizard that will move the original database’s tables and relationships to a new file. There is also the Linked Table Manager to allow you to manually link a frontend to the backend when necessary.

This article is intended to be a brief overview of what it means to have a split database. The Access help files contain more complete descriptions of the concept and how to go about splitting your database. You might also what to do an advances search for ‘split database’ at UtterAccess where you will find many questions on the topic posted by many new members over the years.

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Quote of the Day

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

-Henry David Thoreau

Clint Covington posted  Access 2010 deprecated features and components in the Access Product Team Blog yesterday that certain features have been deprecated in Access 2010:

• Calendar Control
• Snapshot Format
• Data Access Pages
• Paradox, Lotus, and Red2 ISAM’s
• Replication conflict viewer

If you have applications developed in older Access versions that you want to port to Access 2010, read Clint’s article to see what effect these changes will have on your application and some suggested workarounds.You should also keep these deprecations in mind for any new applications you may develop in pre-2010 Access versions.

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