a painless introduction to ms access databasing

Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center

A Painless Introduction
to MS Access Databasing
Yannick Pouliot, PhD
Bioresearch Informationist

Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center
4/20/07
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Preliminaries

Launch MS Access

Open Simple1.mdb

File/Open

Using the Help  don’t neglect it!

Exercise: ask the Office Assistant for “select syntax”
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Contents


Familiarization with MS Acces

Understanding a simple database

Basics of SQL querying

Creating a simple database

Loading database via MS Excel

Tools for running SQL queries

Installation (Windows)

Selected databases

Resources & cheat sheet
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Resources – MS Access
Available as eBook
Available as eBook
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Resources – Excel/MS Query
In Lane catalog

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Resources – MS Access
Free Online Training Resources

Using an Access database to store and information (2 min)
/>
Creating a database from Excel (5 min):
/>
Creating tables in Access (50 min):
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
Writing queries (50 min):
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Why Bother
with MS
Access?
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Why MS Access?

More: />Lane Medical Library &

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Definitions,
Definitions…
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Definitions

Database: Collection of tables 

Table

Collection of records that share a common fundamental characteristic

E.g., patients and locations can each be stored in their own table

Schema

A view that inter-relates tables to each other

Record

Basic unit of information in a relational table

E.g., 1 record per person

A record is composed of fields


Query

Set of instructions to a database “engine” to retrieve, sort and format
returning data.

E.g., “find me all patients in my database”

Database engine

Software application that stores the data and enables querying
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Table and Field Definitions
How It Looks In Access…
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Main Relational Database Engines

Oracle

MS Access

MS SQL Server

Filemaker


MS SQL Server

MySQL

Postgress

Sybase
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Understanding
Relational
Databases
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Understanding the Relational Principle: A
Simple Database

Every patient gets ONE record in the Patients table

Every visit gets ONE record in the Visits table

Rows in different tables can be related one to another using a shared
key (identifier  number unique to table)

There can be multiple visits records for a given patient


There can be multiple tissue records for a given patient
“join”
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The Relational Principle in Action

Related records can be found using a shared key

Shared key = identifier that is:

unique to each table

Can be referenced by another table

Example: Patients.ID = Visits.PatientID
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The Database Schema: Your
Roadmap For Querying

The schema describes all tables and all fields

Describes relationships between tables

Crucial in enabling retrievall of desired data


Simple example:

Very important

Must understand schema for accurate querying

Wrong understanding = wrong results
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Example: The Schema for SRI’s
BioWarehouse System
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Querying MS Access
or any relational database…
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How Relational Databases Are
Queried

Querying = extracting information out of the database

… and into something, e.g., Excel


This is done using the Structured Query Language (SQL)
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Introducing The SQL Select Statement

Good news: This is
the only SQL
statement you need to
understand for
querying

Exercise: run
SuperSimpleQuery1 in
Simple1 database
SELECT LastName, FirstName
FROM Patients
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Basic Syntax of Select Statement
SELECT field_name
FROM table
[WHERE condition]
Example:
Select LastName,FirstName
From Patients

Where Alive = ‘Y’;
Important: Everything is MS Access is case sensitive
 LastName ≠ lastName
[ ] = elective
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Realistic
Querying With
the MS Access
Query Builder
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A More Complete Description of Select
Statement
SELECT [DISTINCT|COUNT] field_list
FROM table_list
[WHERE conditions]
[GROUP BY field_list]
[ORDER BY field_list [ASC | DESC] ]
more: />pid=CH010410171033
Includes examples and descriptions of each SELECT operator (e.g.,
“group by”)
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Meaningful Queries in Acces
Exercises - Database: Simple2.mdb
1. Returning ordered records
2. Counting records

LifetimeNumberFAQs1

Exercise: how many FAQs per day?

LifetimeNumberFAQs2

Demo: creating Pivot Tables
3. Generating averages

Querying from a query!
4. Change order of columns
5. Change sorting of rows
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Uploading
Data in MS
Access