Database Project

In the last two weeks we had to work on a project which included the use of Microsoft Access. In that project we were supposed to imagine that we work for a local gym and got the request to set up a database to store individual information about the gym's members. As I had never used the software Microsoft Access before, I learned a lot of new things during that project. It all started with making up 5 entries for our database, including different individual information. Then we imported a list of 1000 members of the gym which then became the basis of all further operations we did. Accordingly we set up a query where we differentiated members having an individual membership and having left the gym during the last 6 months. Furthermore we set up a "new members form" to enter data for potential new members, and we created a report about the database. As said before, I never used Microsoft Access before, thus all these tasks were very helpful for me to learn about databases and Microsoft Access.

To further improve the created database one could e.g. also add new fields to the database to find out the reasons why people want to go to the gym. As the manager of the gym this information could be helpful to further customize your gym in terms of work-out methods, training offers, cardio machines, and so on. One could for example include a field called "reason" where people could enter their intention when they join the gym. You could also put this than in the form of a report to better present the reasons to the manager of the gym. But this all depends on the purpose of the database, and should just be considered as one possible extension of the functionality of the database.

All in all I really liked that project as this was a very good and practical way to learn about a software which could be very helpful in the future.

Week 10: Clear

The topic of week 10 was Microsoft Access. Microsoft Access is a database software which I had never used before and thus it was very helpful for me to learn about that program. There are several actions you can perform with this software to set up and modify relational darabases. The lectures this week started with broad concepts, like creating a table (a set of data in a database) or importing and exporting data to and from Microsoft Access respectively, to more advanced topics like working with a query or a form and creating reports. 

As this is the first time I worked with that software, especially the lecture about what actually is a table and how to perform basic operations with it was very important to me. I learned that all data in a relational database is organized in tables where each field within a table is a discreet piece of information. Furthermore each field has a specific data type and there should at best be only one topic represented in a particular table. You can add descriptions to your table by simply click a row of interest and enter a descriptive information under the description label. Additionally you can let Microsoft Access uniquely identify a record in a table by labelling the particular record as the Primay Key. These basic operations help you to organize your data in a database very clearly and make them much more easy to modify later on. On the basis of that you can then tranfer the data, make a report or a form out of them, or just further modify them in the way you like.

In today's business environment I think Microsoft Access is a very useful tool, as databases are widely used and crucial to store important information, like customer data. Therefore I am thankful to learn about that program so that I am able to apply it in my future career. For further information about that program click here.