Project 3: Tables & Queries
Designing Tables

Previously you learned a lot about creating tables yourself or with the Table Wizard, but there is still more to learn!

Table Design

You want to design your tables so that:

• It is easy to enter and update information.
• Data is consistent throughout.
• There is no wasted disk space.
• The database responds quickly to searches.

How does one do that??

General Principles for Table Design:

• One item of data goes into only one field in one table.
• A table's fields must be logically related to each other.
• The order of the fields is not important.
• Choose entries from a list or table whenever possible.
• Use field validation to make sure that the data is in the right form.
• Field size fits the expected size of the data.
• Create indexes for fields that you will be searching on often.

Field Properties

There are many properties of a table's fields that you have not looked at yet. You will not need to use all of them on every field, of course. But there are some very useful features tucked away in the Properties list.

Properties you have seen so far:

• Primary key
• Display text (for hyperlink) = the text to show as a link instead of the complete URL
• Lookup = enables you to choose a value from a list.

In the next lessons you will first design some tables and then take a look at the some other field properties. Then you will learn about the various types of queries.

~~  1 Cor. 10:31 ...whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.  ~~

Last updated: 30 Apr 2012