Getting to Know MS Access 2003, Part 2 - Designing Your First Database
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When you decide to build a database, you don’t just sit down and throw it together. You plan and analyze it. You do this by interviewing prospective users to find out what the database is supposed to do, how it’s supposed to look, and anything else that is relevant. This is not a straight path of development, but an iterative one.
Let’s take a look at the sample database that comes with Access: Northwind. It’s a good idea to explore this sample database on your own because it is a good example of a well-made database.
Here’s what the Northwind database looks like when opened:
The table view (shown above) presents us with a good illustration of data distribution. Northwind has eight distinct tables. Divisions such as Employees, Customers, and Suppliers help keep distinct data separate.
Check out the table relationships using the Tools | Relationships menu option. You saw what this looked like earlier in the section on relationships. You can see that the Orders table, for example, is related to the Customers, Shippers, Employees, and Order Details tables. In three of the four cases the Orders table is on the many side of the relationship, designating it as a child table. However, with regards to the Orders Details table is a parent table, since it is on the 1 side of the relationship.
You can discover more information about the various relationships than just whether or not they are one-to-many. Right-click one of the relationship lines and choose the Edit Relationships option from the shortcut menu to see and manipulate properties of the relationship, such as whether or not to enforce referential integrity.
Next: Creating Your First Database >>
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