First Database - Please go easy

seftonbarn

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I paid for MS Access 2007 as part of a software bundle so I thought I'd give it a try. I've read through the various help pages and have a very vague understanding of the basic principles. I thought the best way to learn would be to give it a try.

Here goes - I thought I'd try and produce a database for my wife’s Childminding Database. I started off with a table of the Childs details (date of birth etc) and parents and other kin’s contact details. I produced a couple of forms to make data input more user (wife) friendly and I think without further help from the experts I have reached my limits. What I would like to do is have an attendance register, completed weekly for each child, and be able to produce weekly bills, based on the attendance and the hourly rate (which changes).

I am quite happy to muck in and try and get things to look and work well but my lack of understanding of the principles of relationships is not helping. If someone could give me some top level tips I would be most grateful.
 
Search on-line for "Database Normalization". That should provide you with a lot of information about the subject. The first rule is "get the structure of your database correct before you ever worry about creating any of the other objects such as forms, reports, etc.
 
it is tricky though - there is a sort of "staggered" learning curve - each stage of which is quite difficult to get over without guidance. Its not so much a training course thats needed - just a bit of technical assistance, and "nudges" in the right direction, at the right times, and by knowledgeable people. It helps a lot if you already have some understanding of any procedural programming language.

these are some of the sort of "progress" stages, I would think are relevant


intial understanding of basic tables/forms.concepts


understanding of the importance of normalisation


managing more advanced fetaures of form and query design


understandnig and managing VBA


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as an example, when I was first learning Access, MS had a CD collection database, that showed a track listing, and track count for each CD. And I thought "thats interesting - lets see how they derived the track count, from the tracks list". And when you checked, they had fudged it. Instead of counting the tracks, they just entered a track count value, and stored it separately. And it's things like this - that are important and basic, and ought to be obvious - but often they they just aren't obvious, and they aren't trivial either.
 

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