Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu A Painless Introduction to MS Access Databasing Yannick Pouliot, PhD Bioresearch Informationist lanebioresearch@stanford.edu Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center 4/20/07 Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 2 Preliminaries  Launch MS Access  Open Simple1.mdb  File/Open  Using the Help  don’t neglect it!  Exercise: ask the Office Assistant for “select syntax” Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 3 Contents  Familiarization with MS Acces  Understanding a simple database  Basics of SQL querying  Creating a simple database  Loading database via MS Excel  Tools for running SQL queries  Installation (Windows)  Selected databases  Resources & cheat sheet Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 4 Resources – MS Access Available as eBook Available as eBook Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 5 Resources – Excel/MS Query In Lane catalog Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 6 Resources – MS Access Free Online Training Resources  Using an Access database to store and information (2 min) http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA011709681033.aspx  Creating a database from Excel (5 min): http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA012013211033.aspx  Creating tables in Access (50 min): http://office.microsoft.com/training/training.aspx?AssetID=RC0611832 61033  Writing queries (50 min): http://office.microsoft.com/training/training.aspx? AssetID=RC010776611033 Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 7 Why Bother with MS Access? Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 8 Why MS Access?  More: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access/HA010429181033.aspx Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 9 Definitions, Definitions… Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 10 Definitions  Database: Collection of tables   Table  Collection of records that share a common fundamental characteristic  E.g., patients and locations can each be stored in their own table  Schema  A view that inter-relates tables to each other  Record  Basic unit of information in a relational table  E.g., 1 record per person  A record is composed of fields  Query  Set of instructions to a database “engine” to retrieve, sort and format returning data.  E.g., “find me all patients in my database”  Database engine  Software application that stores the data and enables querying [...]...Table and Field Definitions How It Looks In Access Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 11 Main Relational Database Engines  Oracle  MS Access  MS SQL Server  Filemaker  MS SQL Server  MySQL   Postgress Sybase Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 12 Understanding Relational Databases Lane Medical Library & Knowledge... BioWarehouse System Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 17 Querying MS Access or any relational database… Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 18 How Relational Databases Are Queried  Querying = extracting information out of the database   … and into something, e.g., Excel This is done using the Structured Query Language... create a shortcut to it and rename it e.g MSQuery   Search hidden files and folders move the shortcut to a desired location Also needed: creating a data source name Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 31 To Conclude…  If using Excel is a headache, use MS Access  Access can work very well on its own    reasonably easy to learn/use Lots of free resources to. ..  A driver is a piece of software that lets your operating system talk to a database   Each database engine (Oracle, MySQL, etc) requires its own driver    Installed drivers visible in ODBC manager  “data connectivity” tool Generally must be installed by user Drivers are needed by Data Source Name tool and querying programs Require (simple) installation Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management... Uploading Data in MS Access Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 25 Importing Data Into Acces From Access Important  Column headers in Excel file must match those of columns in Access target table   Must ensure that data in Excel columns is of correct type (text, number, date)   Blanks (not empty cells!) are nasty Exercise: Loading data via Excel   No spaces,... quickly learn how to use it MS Access + Excel = dynamite Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 32 Yannick Pouliot, PhD lanebioresearch@stanford.edu Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 33 The NittyGritty Details Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 34 How to Query Using MS Query Steps 1 Make... field_name FROM table [WHERE condition] [ ] = elective Example: Select LastName,FirstName From Patients Where Alive = ‘Y’; Important: Everything is MS Access is case sensitive  LastName ≠ lastName Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 21 Realistic Querying With the MS Access Query Builder Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu... Database Schema: Your Roadmap For Querying  The schema describes all tables and all fields   Describes relationships between tables Crucial in enabling retrievall of desired data  Simple example:  Very important   Must understand schema for accurate querying Wrong understanding = wrong results Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 16 Example: The Schema... records for a given patient Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 14 The Relational Principle in Action  Related records can be found using a shared key  Shared key = identifier that is:    unique to each table Can be referenced by another table Example: Patients.ID = Visits.PatientID Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu... Cool Things You Can Do In Access  Store entire files in records  Excel, Word, sounds, pictures anything Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 28 Extras Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 29 Creating Forms Using MS InfoPath   Really the easiest way to create interfaces to Access 10 min of work   Probably 30 for you  . Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu A Painless Introduction to MS Access Databasing Yannick Pouliot, PhD Bioresearch Informationist lanebioresearch@stanford.edu Lane. cheat sheet Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 4 Resources – MS Access Available as eBook Available as eBook Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management. “find me all patients in my database”  Database engine  Software application that stores the data and enables querying Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center http://lane.stanford.edu 11 Table