databases are all around you have you
ever waited at the doctor's office while
the receptionist punched in your
information or asked a store employee to
check their system for a special item
then you've seen a database in action
the truth is they're so useful you see
them all the time
with Microsoft Access you can manage
your own database to suit the needs of
your business or maybe the company you
work for but what exactly is a database
well it's a collection of information or
data that's stored on a computer
allowing you to enter access and analyze
it in a way you never could on paper
let's think about that before computers
what sort of paper records do you think
the doctor's office kept on file
certainly a list of patients and their
contact information also their medical
history and a list of past appointments
that's how databases work from the
simplest to the most complex they're
basically a collection of Lists not on
paper but on your computer where
programs like access make it possible to
organize your data make it searchable
and so much more let's take a look say
you're a hard-working amateur Baker you
might decide to keep a database of all
the cookies you know how to make and the
people you make them for your friends
and family a simple database because it
only contains two lists if you were a
professional Baker your database would
contain more you'd have products and
customers and other things to keep track
of like prices sales units and a list of
orders this access actually keep these
things in a big long list
not quite instead it uses tables like
the ones in Excel to list things in a
little more detail take this example
from the amateur Baker's database
it lists friends and family but also
important information like who has a nut
allergy in the rest of the table so if a
database is essentially a collection of
lists stored in tables and you can build
tables in Excel
why access why do you need a database at
all let's compare while Excel is great
at storing and organizing numbers access
is better at analyzing and connecting
other types of data for example names
and descriptions or your friends and
their favorite cookies the databases
you'll be working with in Access can
actually understand how different lists
and their contents relate to one another
we call this a relational database
for its ability to understand
relationships and it's really what sets
access apart let's think about what that
means while we go back to our amateur
bakers database and build a third list
to keep track of batches of cookies and
who therefore it's easy to see the
relationship here all I did was pull
Duane from this list and shortbread from
here access can see and use that
relationship too but Excel can't all of
these things are completely unrelated as
far as Excel is concerned that means you
wouldn't be able to pull from one list
to another eventually you'd find
yourself typing the same thing over and
over every time you needed to refer to
Duane or your shortbread recipe or dad
and chocolate chip in short access
thinks more like you it recognizes that
the items in these three lists are
connected that makes entering searching
and analyzing data so much easier
whether you have two lists or twenty
less to type less to keep track of even
the most complicated tasks can be made
simple and user-friendly once you
understand how access and databases work
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