Microsoft Access 2010 Tutorials
Working with Tables / Using the Data Documenter
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Subtitles of the Movie (Microsoft Access 2010 / Working with Tables / Using the Data Documenter)
One of the main tenets you're always going to hear about database design work, is that you maintain good documentation on your database. You need to know your table names, the column names in the tables, the data types in the tables, you just need to know all kinds of stuff, the relationships you have between the tables, and so forth. Why? Because just about the time that you get this database kind of running smoothly, it's flying straight and level, there's no vibration, nothing smoking, there are knocking noises, probably, about two weeks after you get to that point, there's a big meeting, and we're having this massive change in the company, and it's going to effect your database. We need to be storing more data, not storing data, somebody passed a law, we need to separate this data in the tables, and all that sort of thing. Well, it becomes a whole lot easier to make changes in your database, once you know exactly what the implications of the change, and the design are. For example, knowing what columns are stored in the students table is really going to help you start to identify where you need to put things, where you need to change things and so forth. Now this is kind of a tough place to know exactly where to put this in the course, but I want to put the Documenter right here, since we've been working with tables so much in this group of videos. But if you click on the Database Tools Tab, and we haven't really been here yet in the course, you're going to notice that right here is something called the Database Documenter. This thing is cool OK? That's the best thing I can say about it alright? The Database Documenter will take care of all that for you. Notice that on this students table, I am going to click on Options, notice I just checked the students table, and click on Options, and notice it will include on a documentation that it's going to generate for me, Properties, it will get relationships, permissions, and then for each field, I can put nothing, or I can get names, data types and sizes. Names, data type sizes and Properties, and then I can also include indexes or not include indexes. And if I do include them, give me the names and fields. Now I'm going to run a short one here, and notice this is just on one table, the students table, and then I'm limiting it to these particular criteria. And then when I click OK, I'll close that table first, not a problem, kaboom, there it is. I'll click on this to zoom in, and you can see, that for table students, notice it gives me the location of my database, it gives me the date of when I've done it. Notice that here are the Properties, on the table itself, and then if I scroll down on the pull down, so it doesn't jump, there are my columns. Notice the SID is a long integer, it's four bytes. IID long integer, four bytes. You can read that alright? You don't need me to read it for you. Remember, when we changed our State to two characters, and our zip to five characters, there it is. Let's come on down here, table indexes. Notice, remember if we go back to the video that we did about adding an index, we did an index on multiple fields, and here it is, last name first name, number of fields, two. So I can see the indexes that are on this table, and this will document all kinds of things. Now notice that I'm in Print View here, and this is really cool. I can save this very easily to a PDF file, by clicking on this. I can come back and I can email that to someone, or I can do more things, like I can export it to rich text for a Word document. I can make it an HTML document, stick it on the company web server, whatever I want to do, this thing is just too cool. There's a lot of other stuff you can play with here. I'm going to close that out, and let's go back to Database Documenter, and I'm going to show you something. I can get all the queries in my database, the forms, the reports, the Macros. I can get the entire current database with Properties and relationships, but I want to show you one thing, just to kind of warn you about it. If I choose students, and go to Options, and tell it to give me names, types and Properties, I just want to warn you and show you what happens here. This thing has now printed quite a few pages for me OK? And what I want to do, is just kind of scroll through right here to the last page, and you'll notice, it is six pages now of information, and let me shrink it back down, and move through the pages right down here. Notice on the previous page, is showing me the status, let me zoom in, of everyone of these columns OK? Of all the Properties that show up down at the bottom of the Design Sheet View, for each one of those OK? So there's, you can get a lot of information, you can get too much information, but just remember this Database Documenter, we'll come back and talk about these other two cool Tools right here, a little bit later on in the course. This one, anytime you make a change to your database, you need to jump in here, print this stuff out. Punch it, stick it in a binder somewhere, and when you need to make changes to your database, you've got it right here. Trust me, you will shock and impress a lot of people on this planet, if you have your database documented, because it just doesn't happen that often in this world that people actually have up to date documentation. It will save you a weekend of your life when you have to make changes, trust me on this.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Microsoft Access 2010 |
| Author: | Mark Long |
| SKU: | 34224 |
| ISBN: | 1-936334-91-7 |
| Release Date: | 2011-05-12 |
| Duration: | 9 hrs / 121 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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