Database Project - Microsoft Access

Working with Microsoft Access on this particular project was both challenging and rewarding.  Although I have used Access once in the past, I have not used the program for at least three years.  Thus, my skills working with the program on this project were less than desirable.  Nevertheless, Access provided me with a powerful arsenal of resources to create a very informative database.  In fact, the ability to retrieve information from an enormous spreadsheet containing potentially thousands of rows of data by creating queries still amazes me.

By the completion of this project, I learned how to create a table in Access from data contained in an Excel spreadsheet.

The Members table created as part of the Table Activity portion of the Database Project.

From this table in Access, I created a simple query that displayed individual gym memberships terminated within the past six months.  In addition, I learned to sort the data retrieved from the query in descending order by each member's date of termination.  Furthermore, I sorted members with the same date of termination in ascending alphabetical order by last name.

A portion of the 6mo Departed Individual Members query created as part of the Query Activity portion of the Database Project.  Note the records are sorted in descending order by LeftDate while the members with the same LeftDate are sorted in ascending order by LastName.

Next, I created an attractive form within Access for users to view a current gym member's information or insert a new member record without having to work with hundreds of rows of data in a table.  Additionally, I locked each gym member's identification number within the form's property sheet values.  By locking each member's specific ID number, users cannot inadvertently alter this critical element within the database, thus ensuring the accuracy of records within the database.

The New Members Form created as part of the Form Activity portion of the Database Project.  With the ID field locked, I am unable to change the contents in the ID text box.

Finally, I created a report from my initial query detailing the information of members who departed within the past six months.  The report displayed the name, full mailing address, and gender of each departed member, grouped by city of residence and sorted in descending order by each member's date of termination.

The Recently Departed Individual Members report created as part of the Report Activity portion of the Database Project.  Note the records are grouped by City and sorted in descending order by LeftDate.

While this project provided some insight into the capabilities of Microsoft Access, I would like to have learned more about creating functions to ensure more accuracy of the database.  For instance, if a user creates a new gym membership for a customer, management could guarantee accuracy of the data by creating a function to insert the word "Male" or "Female" in the Gender field of new records when users type the letters "M" or "F" within the field's text box.  These functions would also improve the user's efficiency when creating new gym memberships, while simultaneously improving the effectiveness of the database.  Additionally, I would like to have learned more about creating input masks within Access.  Using this tool to display the date fields consistently within the database (while creating a new record) would have improved the functionality of the database as well.

Although not required for this project, I actually created an input mask to display all gym members' zip codes properly in the database.  The input mask also ensured the accuracy of my data entered for the creation of the four new members required in the Table and Form activity portions of the project.  By displaying the contents of the ZipCode field in the database with a hyphen to delineate the zip+4 format, I essentially improved the appearance and functionality of each member's record in the database for any user accessing the information.

Works Cited

*All screen shots are original work.