MS Access (RDBMS of Microsoft Office Suite)

 Microsoft Access is the most powerful and popular RDBMS (Relational Database Management System), which comes as an integral part of MS Office suit.

MS Access has a graphical user interface (GUI). It is used to organise and manipulate a large volume of data efficiently. It organises data in the form of Tables and provides the facility to create relationship between them using common fields.  A relational database enables to prevent duplicity of data. Another important feature of MS Access is that you can add, update, delete and niew data by using Forms, find and retrieve data in a desired way by using Queries and print data in a specific layout by using Reports.

FEATURES OF MICROSOFT ACCESS

• MS Access provides the facility to break large information into small parts, so that it is easy to access the information.
• Data redundancy is reduced which in turn minimises data inconsistency. Data redundancy occurs when data is duplicated unnecessarily.
• It increases the efficiency, speed and flexibility in searching and accessing information.
• MS Access facilitates sharing of data, different users can use the same database to extract data according to their needs.

WHAT IS RELATIONSHIP?

In MS Access you can store data in multiple tables, which are related to each other in such a way that if there is a need, the data can be joined from these tables and information can be retrieved.

A relationship works by matching the common field with same name in both the tables. In most cases, these matching fields are the 'Primary key' from one table which uniqely identifies each record in second table.

For example, to create a relationship make two tables 'Table1' and 'Table2'. In 'Table1' hold the information about Teacher's id, name, address and school name. In 'Table2' hold the information about Teacher's id, subjects and contact number. In both the tables the common field is only Teacher's id. By making a link on the common field, you can retrieve the desired set of records from both the tables.

Table1

Table2

Relationship

The advantage of using relational database is that you do not have to enter repetitive information again and again and this saves time.

Some Terms related to RDBMS:

Primary Key: A primary key is a sorted data available in a field which enabled us to check every record in a table is unique data and doesn't contain any duplicate data. A table can have only one primary key.

Foreign Key: A foreign key is defined as an attribute or combination of attributes in a table whose value matches a primary key in another table. 

Candidate Key: A candidate key can uniquely identify a database record. We can have single or multiple candidate keys in a single table, out of which one is selected as the primary key.

Distributed Database: A database that consists of two or more data files located at different sites on computer network is called Distributed Database.

Microsoft's SQL Server: Microsoft's SQL Server is an example of RDBMS that serves database requests from multiple users.

Structured Query Language(SQL): It is a standard interactive and programming language for retrieving and updating information from a database.

Data Integrity: Maintaining and assuring the accuracy and consistancy of data is called Data Integrity.

Data Redundancy: Data Redundancy occurs in a database when data is duplicated unnecessarily.

ACTIVITY:

1. A table from the computer course database is given below. Answer the following questions based on this table:

a. What is the total number of records in the table?

b. What is the total number of fields in the table?

c. What is the title of the record with category 'Networks'?

d. Which category has the maximum number of records?

e. Identify the primary key of the table.

a. 6
b. 3
c. Network Security Tutorial
d. Software
e. Tutorial_id

2. Loyola School maintains a database for the administrative purpose. The table given below is the part of that database. Answer the following questions based on it:

a. Identify the primary key of the table.

b. Can Course_id become the primary key of the table? Why/Why not?

c. If Course_id did not contain any duplicate value and we clubbed it with Student_id to act as the primary key of the table, what type of key will it denote?

a. Student_id
b. No, because it has duplicate values.
c. Candidate Key

 

• DBMS (Database Management System)
• MS Access (RDBMS of Microsoft Office Suit)