Excellent Series of Articles on Database Design and Implementation (1 Viewer)

JMongi

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I've done a lot of reading and a lot of youtube watching to try and round out my knowledge when it comes to MS Access and database design and implementation. You can find a lot of information on the basics (table structure, nomenclature, normalization, etc.) and on software tools like MS Access itself that often incorporates the principles of database design. It is trickier to find good information on the truly beginning portion of database design involving ERD (Entity Relationship Diagrams), Business Rules and other design criteria. It's also sometimes a challenge to find an article that explores the breadth of a topic (i.e. the various possibilities) as opposed to detailed information on a specific possibility.

I've found this set of tutorials/articles to be very helpful in filling in the inevitable gaps in the ad hoc learning process I've had. I thought it might be useful to others as well. I think having a basic understanding of DBs and computers makes it far easier to digest (it says as much in the beginning). I'm not personally doing the included exercises/tutorials myself, but if you have the time and are so inclined it appears to be based on an actual teaching curriculum.

 

Isaac

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Thanks for sharing!
 

JMongi

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Another well written article I stumbled upon regarding variables and how to pass data to various entities. I'm excited to use some of these techniques in my own app.

THIS LINK IS LEFT FOR ARCHIVAL PURPOSES - PLEASE SEE THE NEXT COMMENT!


One key feature of this article is repeated reference to which of these techniques can be used for query construction and which ones cannot.
 
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Isaac

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I don't have a very high view of experts-exchange.com, nor of that particular article (a lot of contradictions and some things are flat out incorrect - such as the author says regarding global variables "I strongly disagree with this view and regularly use them in my database applications" and a paragraph later says "For this reason alone, I NEVER use this method" - regarding Global varname as type - (which IS the only way to use a global variable!)

To be super technical, the reset of global variables doesn't come as soon as an unhandled error is encountered; it comes when the user presses a button that resets the vba project in response to that error, but I'll let that slide ha ha. The article is a little outdated with nomenclature global vs. public, although I'll admit that I still use "global" myself in my apps.
 

JMongi

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Thanks! That's too bad as the article itself is constructed well. It's a shame the information within that structure is not correct. It's unusual to find a well constructed article with clear errors.
 

JMongi

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The contradictions are a classic indicator that someone was sourcing from other peoples comments. It's a shame as I liked moving through each of the options, clearly outlining the syntax and the usages. I dearly wish MS online help was as clear.
 
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Isaac

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Maybe I have been too harsh. It is a decent summary of the different ways to use 'global' [I'm using the term generically, not technically] references to things, generally speaking.

I am starting to learn Power Apps and was pleased to find out that there are global variables. And nothing resets them!
 

JMongi

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That's why I left the link, but, with an appropriate caveat. I was too harsh in using the word "plagarize" (I edited it out of the original post). An article like that is often a good way to summarize articles from various sources. Unfortunately, the internet age has killed appropriate attribution.

In all fairness I used his article to successfully use tempvars in a query.
 

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