Hi From Ireland (1 Viewer)

Hi,
I'm a systems administrator who recently inherited a few databases (lucky me). I'm trying to get to terms with access with the help of your site and other similar sites out there. I hope to post a few questions and tickle some grey matter. Maybe tickle is too strong a word as my questions will be basic ones.
Poco

Welcome and hold on for the ride.

Remember Access is not like learning the processes involved in operating a typical program or implementing a protocol. It is an application development platform and consequently far more complex than anything you have previously encountered. The scope of the knowledge to design a really good database is enormous.

Beware that you should not to trust the techniques used in the databases you have inherited because they are frequently less than optimum and can easily lead you into bad practices. This does not apply just to the products of well meaning amatuers encountered in many workplaces. I work with commercial database applications that definitely fall well short of best practices.

Your first task should be to gather a comprehensive understanding of the concepts of normalization and relational table structure. Then compare the structure of your databases with these best practices. Don't start tinkering until you thoroughly understand this landscape.

poco90 said:

Hi,
I'm a systems administrator who recently inherited a few databases (lucky me). I'm trying to get to terms with access with the help of your site and other similar sites out there. I hope to post a few questions and tickle some grey matter. Maybe tickle is too strong a word as my questions will be basic ones.
Poco

Click to expand...

Welcome! Ireland is obviously one of my favorite places (see my signature below). This place is a wealth of information with many true experts in the field. I am sure you can find the help you need.