Microsoft Access 2013 Tutorials
Database 101 / Database Types
Subtitles of the Movie (Microsoft Access 2013 / Database 101 / Database Types)
So now let's wade just a little bit deeper out into the world of databases and let's talk about database types. Now keep in mind most of these terms that I'm giving you early on in the course here, things like OLTP, OLAP, flat files relationals, you can find books you know 4, 500 hundred page books on every one of those topics. So there's a lot more here that I'm not telling you. Some of it you need to know, some of it you don't have to worry about for a while okay? The best thing I can tell you about those books and all those various aspects of databases, they're very effective when you're having trouble going to sleep one night. Just grab one of those books, it'll take care of the problem. Okay. A database can be designed to function more efficiently based on how you're going to use it. And so as we start to think about using Access to create our databases, we really need to kind of stop and think, now wait a minute, exactly how do I intend to use this database? Will there be frequent additions, updates or deletions to the data in my database? Will the data be changed very infrequently? Am I just going to primarily use this for dumping some data into it and then pulling reports off of that database? Or running queries to try to identify trends, to see what happened historically in my company, that sort of thing? Or will my database require both functionalities? And most of the time the answer is going to be, C it will require both functionalities. But life will automatically drag it one way or the other and you will find your database's either being used more frequently for additions updates or deletions. Or for reporting and you've got it built the wrong way alright? Now the most important aspect of any database is design. How this thing was built, how it was architected, how it's put together because your second database design will be better than your first one. Trust me on this. Next your third database design will be better than the second one. So if you feel a little bit I don't know unqualified to be doing this, welcome to the club. If you feel a little confused about exactly how to do it, welcome to the club. Don't let this intimidate you, just jump in there, jump into the deep end of the pool, get wet, gasp for air a little bit, make sure you got a, a lifejacket on. But just jump in, get your head back above water and it'll all start to make sense to you. Experience is one of the best teachers with databases. Okay. So understand that going forward. Your second database is not going to shock the world with it's simple yet elegant design that just changes the way everybody thinks about data. Okay. It's not going to happen so don't expect it to and don't be intimidated when it doesn't. Now I want you to understand this simple aspect of database types. Any database you design really is going to fall into one of two major design types. That is OLTP and that stands for Online Transaction Processing. Now an OLTP database is designed to allow fast efficient additions of data, updates to data and deletions by a bunch of users at one time. An Online Transaction Processing database is what we call normalized. We'll talk about that word later but we're going to split the data into a lot of smaller tables. And this means that if I've got 20 people connecting to 10 tables, maybe I only have people two at a time making changes in each of the 10 tables. Well that's a lot better than having one table and 20 people trying to make changes at once. Okay. So an OLTP is designed with many related tables that store tightly focused data. And this is just a structure that gives us faster, more efficient data manipulation by more concurrent users. The next type the first one's OLTP, the second is OLAP or OLAP. That stands for Online Analytical Processing. There's another term for an OLAP database you may have heard this one, it's called data warehouse. Now with an Online Analytical Processing database we design the database and the tables to allow very, very fast and efficient data retrieval. We're not going to be going in here making a lot of changes, you know updating data, deleting data. No we're going to go in here and query for certain conditions and pull the data out in reports. So you're going to have a fewer tables that store the data quote less efficiently. Or it may even pre-summarize some of that data so that you can just kind of get the information out. So these two databases will store really the same data but they'll store it in some very different structures. And we're not going to go into that right now, it's a little outside the scope of this course but I wanted you to know these terms. Because you're going to notice this and, and when you start to see this or hear about you'll think oh that's what the clown was talking about in that course I took. So there's your two database types, OLTP and OLAP or data warehouses.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Microsoft Access 2013 |
| Author: | Mark Long |
| SKU: | 34405 |
| ISBN: | 978-1-61866-090-9 |
| Release Date: | 2013-02-01 |
| Duration: | 7 hrs / 89 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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