Microsoft Access Tutorial

An Introduction to Microsoft Access ª Himadri Barman 1. Introduction: Microsoft Access, henceforth referred to as Access, is an RDBMS (Relational DataBase Management System) for the PC platform and is part of the Microsoft Office suite. The database applications for Access may range from personal applications, such as maintaining an inventory of your personal book collection, to small business applications, such as maintaining business-specific customer information. Access provides a database engine called the Microsoft Jet Engine and a graphical user interface (GUI) for data definition and manipulation, with the power of SQL (Structured Query Language). It also provides a programming language called Access Basic. Users can quickly develop forms and reports for input/output operations against the database through the use of Wizards, which are interactive helper programs. The definition of the forms and reports is interactively accomplished when the user designs the layout and links the different fields on the form or report to the items in the database. 2. Architecture of Access: The two important components of Access are: i The underlying database engine for managing the data i The user interface, which calls the engine for data services like storage The engine stores all the application data (tables, indexes, forms, reports, macros, and modules) in a single Microsoft database file (.mdb file). The user interface provides Wizards and ...