Microsoft Access has been part of the Office suite of programs for many years. The
Office suite dominates the world of desktop office software. I started using Access
from version 2 onwards. My initial thoughts were that it was a wonderful user friendly
development tool for beginners and expert users alike. My belief has not changed.
Microsoft over the years have listened to the concerns of users and have taken
Access forward with each release. There has been some snobbery in the I.T. world
towards Access. This is usually among hardened programmers and developers of
large systems. In my opinion they are missing the point. You really would not use a
corporate style solution for a simple desktop application for around 10 users.
The advantages as I see it are
• Access contains the best reporting tool of any development package.
• It is wonderful at cleaning up data.
• You can create a quick simple database in minutes.
• You can create more complex systems using the built in programming
language
• Access can talk and integrate to other applications in the MS Office suite such
as Outlook, Excel and Word.
There have been stability issues over the years due to the more data stored in the
system. However, it is at this point that you know you have to upscale to a more
robust solution such as Visual Basic and SQL Server. You are not going to create a
flight booking system in Access for example. You could, but it would not be practical
due to the volume of data you would be storing.
How should you create your Access database system?
Before doing this you really need to know your requirements. What exactly is it you
want your system to do? Write down a few ideas and you will find your system will
come together on paper. For example for an invoicing system we may outline as
follows:
• Record customer information
• Record order information
• Mail or email each customer or supplier
• Create reports on customer information
• Create reports on invoice information
• Add product information into the system
• Record customer payment details
Already you can see a few screen ideas there. For instance we can have a screen for
recording customer information. Another for payment information and another for
order information.
Do we need the ability to update and delete data?
Will some screens be read only?
Do we need to record the time and date of the order?
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