Database Project

For my last ISM 3004 projects, I had the chance to learn about Microsoft Excel and multimedia presentations.  In each of those projects I learned a lot and had fun in the learning.  This past week I completed another project that taught me about Microsoft Access 2007.  I’ll admit that my past experience with Access was not extensive, so the Access Database Project was out of my realm of familiarity.  However, after watching the class lectures and completing the project, I have a much better understanding and appreciation for all that Access offers.  In this project, the instructors gave us an Excel document full of data for the members of a gym that we then learned to manipulate and format in various ways using Access.  I learned that Microsoft Access is a relational database with many useful features and formatting capabilities.  I learned how to manipulate data using tables, queries, forms, and reports.  For each manipulation tool, I learned to modify my data, preserve the integrity of my data through data types, and format my data in ways that enhance the ease of analysis.  This project also taught me about the various ways to link data and reduce the duplication of data.  By the end of the project, Microsoft Access was not the big scary program that it had seemed before.

If there was one thing I would have done to increase the functionality of the database project, it would have been to separate the data into more than one table to decrease the duplicity of some of the data.  During the project, we were instructed to keep all the data in one table.  Looking back, I remember a warning message from the importing wizard that showed some data that had been replicated in the table.  It could possibly increase the usefulness of the data if I had separated and grouped some of the data into different categorize.  For instance, the personal information related to the gym members could have been stored in one table while the data relating to the members’ association with the gym itself (join date, left date, and membership type) could have been stored in a separate table.  In Access, we have the ability to break the data down into one topic per table, which can increase efficiency and ease of use.