New to this

[dobosm1421]

HI, my name is Marika and I work in the natural resource area. I am a fairly novice operator of Access but have been working with the rogram for a good number of years. I am hoping this forum will help with developing my skills and answering questions that I am unable to figure out on my own.

 

[rosswilliams]

Hello Marika,
I also work in natural resource area, fish to be exact.

 

[dobosm1421]

I work with fish as well, mainly anadromous and native salmonids. My disadvantage is that most of the folks around me are not familiar with Access and GIS so I am having to pick up information through forums and self teaching. I haven't done too bad for myself but I would like to be more familiar with expression builders and macros so I can spruce up forms and be able to analyze data in Access.

 

[rosswilliams]

Cool, another fisheries person! My work is with freshwater fish in Maryland. I rarely use the forms feature of Access, rather I spend time querying data looking for errors and pulling out specific places, dates, species and so on. I find Access is not great for analysis, but can do some. In this office we still tend to use Excel mostly and dabble with "R" and "Sigma Plot". Personally, I have no experience with either.

 

[dobosm1421]

That was my starting experience with Access but the more I work with it, I find it is a great data management tool. We had 30 years worth of data in excel workbooks and we created a database to organize and manage the information. The forms are nice for technicians to enter the data. You can make these forms technician error proof for the most part. We can link databases through ID codes and there's just so much more ease when you need a quick summary in a certain format. Most of the people in my office are also excel steadfast but it's slowly starting to change. The state agencies in general are moving to statewide data management which is impossible if done through workbooks.

R and sigma plot are good tools too but tough to understand and use unless you work with them regularly. The future of fisheries is going the route of computer programs, such is most things I suspect.