For many, the word "database" conjures up images of large whirring machines with fancy flashing lights. Huge computer rooms rapidly processing hundreds of calculations. Live ISDN connections dangerously stretched across the office floor.
Not very realistic, that. Here, I'm looking at a publication that attempts to rid of these fallacies - a down-to-earth Microsoft Access tutorial.
It doesn't take too much journalistic license to call Access the most powerful member of the Office Pro suite. But before we delve feet-first into the mysterious world of tables and queries, let's first look at exactly what we're dealing with.
In realistic terms, a database is simply an area to store your information. For instance, you may want to put all your customers in one big list - similar to an Excel spreadsheet.
Then, you can run "queries" against that information - for example, you may need to know how many dollars worth of orders were taken last month. Or how many customers live in New York. Or whatever.
And if I'm already talking in riddles, don't worry. Here, I'm reviewing a much more user-friendly tutorial dedicated to Microsoft Access, the database tool that ships with Microsoft Office Professional. And it's darn cool...
