All I know is that it’s a “database management system”, and I don’t even know what that means! I have tried fooling around with Access and have gotten nowhere. Where do I start and what is the purpose of this?
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To start with, think about it as like a spreadsheet (Excel) of info that is easy to search and pull info out of. It gets more complex, but start there.
So say you want to put together a list of different dogs you know. You come up with a list of attributes that you want to know about them – name, breed, weight, color, age, whether they like other dogs, whether they like cats.
You make a table in the program. This is your simple database.
These attributes are your columns. You can choose the way you want these to be filled in: text input (name), numeric (age, weight), a selection list (breed or color might be this, cats and dogs could be a yes/no list).
Usually you set an ID column as well, which is just a number that only applies to one dog’s record so you don’t mix them up. You could use name as an ID field, but what if you know two dogs with the same name?
So now you populate your database. Enter info for all the dogs you know.
Now, you have a database. Woohoo!
You can create reports – how many dogs do I know that are over 50 lbs and dog friendly? Place those in order of largest to smallest.
You can do a simple query – show me all dogs I know that like cats.
You can create a form so that in the future, it is simple to input new dogs.
Hope that helps!
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