Database Project Blog

While I have been exposed to Access a number of times in the past, I’ve never really applied Access to work…not really sure why, except that Access was always perceived as difficult and Excel is my beast of burden and has sufficiently served my needs.  One thing that I learned in this project is that Access is very easy to use, and I’m glad to have completed this assignment as a refresher for how easy it is to set up.  The function similarities to Excel makes a transition to Access much easier given my proficiency in Excel.  There is one application in particular that Access will serve well at work, and it will be a project implementation for this work year.

That said, there are several improvement recommendations for the project data base.  Primarily, data validation in some fields would help control the input for consistency.  For example, I applied data validation to the State field, to limit the input to two characters representing the state abbreviation, but it could go a step further and be limited to a drop down list of valid states.   In addition, gender and membership type are fields that would also provide great opportunities for input validation to minimize data variations.  Applying such limitations on input variations provides for better output in criteria filters and other information slicing and dicing techniques by capitalizing on consistency.

Overall, this has been a very valuable project for renewing in my mind the potential usefulness of Access and how it can be applied to certain data management needs within our organization.   More importantly, older versions of Access had the stigma of difficulty in use, but this project has overcome that stigma in my mind.  It is a very easy application.

Tutorial 2

Topic:  Deeper discussion of Excel concepts, specifically, filters and pivot tables.

Lesson Objectives: 

·         Understand and be able to create filters in Excel

·         Understand and be able to use filters in pivot tables

·         Understand how to modify a pivot table and maneuver within the data set of a pivot table

As demonstrated during the lesson on Excel, this application is an extremely powerful and useful tool for many different purposes.  As we learned, because Excel uses a spreadsheet concept combined with math logic as the basis for its functionality, the result is an environment where data mining and manipulation is made easy.   Excel provides the ability for easy math or very complex formulae, as well as slicing and dicing the data in different ways to investigate, analyze, maneuver, present and/or otherwise achieve an output that serves an intended goal. 

Because the potential uses of Excel are so vast, users can be intimidated and shy away from “taking the dive”.  However, be assured that once a user comes to realize the power and ease of use of Excel, it becomes a tool of choice.   It is one of those time investments that is worth it in the long run, because once you get the basics down, everything else falls into place with familiarity, and the time savings later can be a life-saver when the crunch is on.

Two very easy yet very powerful features in Excel are filters and pivot tables.  In our lesson on Excel, we created some pivot tables.  In this tutorial, we will explore how to apply filters and get into deeper levels of the pivot table features that were introduced during our lesson.

First, I've created this video demonstration to take a look at filters :

As was demonstrated, filters can be very useful in quickly and easily scaling down data by certain criteria elements.  This makes the data population easier to work with by eliminating unnecessary or unwanted data points from the work set.

Additional help on filters can be found at Microsoft.com

Next, I created this video to demonstrate diving into the pivot tables:

Again, as a supplement to the course lesson, the ease of use of pivot tables should be considered a value add in ways to quickly slice and dice data from a detailed spreadsheet, manipulate it to the desired results and formatted in presentation ready form.

Additional help on pivot tables can be found at Microsoft.com

Additional help on filters within pivot tables can be found at Microsoft.com

EXCEL 2007 help is available at Microsoft.com