Planning Database

mwieting85

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Let me start off by saying I am new to MS Access but I know what I want to accomplish by using a MS access Database.
The company i work for has many Printers, Switches, Servers and other network hardware. We also have a handful of locations. So a of right now I have a table for printers, servers, routers and switches. In each table I have information such as Brand, Model, IP, Mac, and Serial #.
Potentially I want to be able to select a drop down for printers and have a view of all my printers. Then lets say i add another drop down for location. Once i select that location my results will only show printers at that location. Once i Select an individual printer i want a detail view of that specific printer.

I am not sure how to start doing this. Any help or tips would be appreciated.
 
Hello mwieting85,

What you are describing are Cascading Comboboxes. This forum has numerous threads related to that topic. Simply do a search and you will find everything you need to know and then some on this topic.

The best version I have found is from a different website called FMS (www.fmsinc.com). However, it is also done entirely in VBA and requires a specific table structure that you may not be able to do.

Dive right in and get your hands dirty, if you run into a problem, we will be right here. Best of luck!
 
Hello - your question could be interpreted in a number of different ways. I take your question as how should I structure the data.

If I were you I would start with a three tables. A table of devices, a table of locations and a junction table which will hold devices that are at particular locations. By querying any one of the three tables and sometimes in combination you should be able to create the reports in your initial post.

You may wish to read up on Junction Tables. Junction tables are a very important idea that you need to get your head around if you want to create top class applications.
 
What a great starter database! -- it could be as simple or as complex as you would like, and is almost guaranteed to be a continuing work-in-progress! Indeed your question can be interpreted a few ways; my first thought was programmatically listing connected/network printers like this, that's a simple starter;copy & paste into a blank module, and F5 to run.

There is an absolute tonne of free instruction on the internet; forums probably the main one (this one's the best, packed with helpful people plus many things have already been asked a few times :rolleyes: - be sure to check out the tutorials and such) , there's other great forums too,and MSDN like this , Office.com, YouTube for beginners (like this , this , this ) ... the problem being that when you're starting out, there might be too much information (and many varying opinions on "the right way" to do things.) There are great books and courses available too, depending on how you learn best.

It sounds to me like you have a good start with your tables, and so next go some Googling for things like,

  • Microsoft Access link forms to tables
  • Microsoft Access forms queries beginner tutorial
  • Microsoft Access sample inventory database download
  • Microsoft Access simple hardware management database multiple locations
  • Microsoft Access planning new database structure beginner
(Notice I specify Microsoft Access in every search, there's a lot of close-but-not-quite other platforms, like VB vs VBA, Access SQL vs SQL Server, Excel vs Access...)

You'll find many different ways to accomplish similar tasks but don't worry because most things aren't a big deal to try one way, and scrap it if you find another way you want to try. You could have many variations/versions of forms and queries looking at the same tables. Just backup often!
 
I'm reading this as you have separate tables, one for printers, one for switches etc etc. This would not normally be good normalization (see the link in my sig), unless each table is holding wildly different things.

Normally you would have a Table for devices and identify the device type within that table. As I said this is a general rule of thumb.
 
So I have all my hardware types in the same table. I then have a separate table locations. I am able to create a query that finds (for example) all printers at a given location, or all servers at a given location. I am also wanting a query to find and show all device at a given location. So if I pick a specific location from a drop down it will show all devices at that location. the next drop down would allow me to pick certain types of devices at that location. When I tried creating a query for all devices at a location, it seemed to show all devices in general.
 

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