Individual Assignment 6

In this assignment, I imported the spreadsheets from Excel into Access. Our class did this to show how each of the spreadsheets relate to each other. In Access, there is a key or primary key in each spreadsheet. The keys make each table unique and separate from one another. In this project, the keys were the customer number, concrete type, order number, employee ID, dependent ID, and truck number. To understand how each spreadsheet relates to one another we created relationships among the tables. The three types of relationships are a one-to-one relationship, a one-to-many relationship, and a many-to-many relationship. In this project all of the relationships were one-to-many.

I like Access much better than Excel because it made it much easier to find relationships among multiple spreadsheets by using a query. In Excel, I would have to go through multiple spreadsheets to find answers to questions such as the specific type of concrete an order had or who the employee that an order was associated with was. In Access, I can create a query that looks through multiple spreadsheets to find the answer for me. However, in Excel to get my answers I would have to go from one spreadsheet to another to find my answers. This process is time-consuming and inefficient.

I also created a form by creating a combobox. This allows someone to easily enter new orders because the combobox is a drop-down list that has information such as the customer name or the concrete type. It makes the task easy for an employee to enter new orders because if a customer calls and he or she does not know their customer number or the concrete type the sales rep can look at the drop down menu and choose the customer name or concrete description to get the information they need to complete the order.   

A relational database can be very useful for my future career because it can make relationships among separate spreadsheets, and help me to find information quickly and efficiently. Since I want to eventually work in hospitals a relational database can be helpful to find information about patients and their records, employees, and companies that we do business with.