What is Microsoft Access?

A database is a collection of objects that allow you to store data, organize it and retrieve it in any way you want ...

What this means is that, with Microsoft Access you create structures called tables that allow you to organize the data so that it's easy to find later, you create forms that let you input the data into the tables and then you create reports that print selected information from the tables.

For example, if you run a store, you would create a Customers table, a Products table and an Invoices table. Then, when you open an account for a new customer you would have a Customer form to input a customer's data into the Customers table and an Order form to input the purchase information. Later, you could print any number of Sales reports, grouping and arranging the information from the Invoices, Customers and Products tables to analyze daily or weekly or monthly sales in all kinds of combinations.

To help you along, Access contains a whole series of Wizards to guide you through the process.

Tutorial description

This Microsoft Access tutorial follows a step-by-step approach to the creation and development of a commercial database application.

We'll start with database modeling. That means that you have to design the database before you actually start to write it. There are several basic techniques that must be learned to ensure that the database structure will be solid. Design is an absolutely essential part of creating a database.

If you're already past the rookie stage and you want to delve deeper into the database modeling aspect, even before you start with Access, you might want to take a look at our Database design and SQL language tutorial. In a normal sequence of courses, SQL would be the next database subject you would learn after Access. Whereas Access is meant for the smaller user, SQL lets you into the domain of the power-user.

Once we're done with the design we'll develop the objects one by one and learn how to use them.

As we go along we'll use a simple application to illustrate the power of Microsoft Access in business. The application is a Video Rental Store and it's well suited to showing how a small businees could put into practice all these notions of management with databases.

What's next?

After this Microsoft Access tutorial, you may want to go on to bigger and better databases such as Oracle, SQL Server or MySQL. The training you get from this tutorial will qualify you for the more advanced stuff.

You may also want to look at connecting your Microsoft Access database to a Visual Basic application.

We have a very popular tutorial on Visual Basic 6 which has a module on database connectivity.
You'll find it at: Visual Basic 6 and ADO Database programming tutorial.
We hope that by seeing all the different applications in context, you will begin to appreciate the usefulness of these tools.

By the end of this Microsoft Access tutorial, you will have made a good start towards becoming a full-fledged business applications programmer.