Access is a database management system that is a part of the Microsoft 365 suite and a database in Access is comprised of four objects: table, query, form, and report. In this article, we will discuss all these objects in brief and will understand what is the contribution of each object type in a relational database.
Tables:
In Access databases, data are stored in the form of tables. A table is a combination of rows and columns but in Access the terms used for rows and columns are records and fields respectively.
For example: Consider a table STUDENT(Roll no, S-name, Subject, Marks)
In the STUDENT table Rollno, S-name, Subject, and Marks are fields. A field organizes data as per it’s data-type i.e. a particular field would contain a similar type of data for every record. In order to add another column Grade to the Student table click on Click to Add and select data-type from the dropdown list and lastly change the field name to Grade. Add values for Grades to the records and now the new table would look like this:
Queries:
Considering the scenario where the user needs to retrieve only a few records from a table, then viewing the entire table would not be a better option. Thus queries are used in such cases. Queries return a small percentage of records from a table. While building a query in Access we define specific conditions for search in order to find the desired data.
For example: In the above Student table in order to select records of students who scored marks greater than 70 a query design will look like:
The output of the above query is:
In this way the Access object query helps in viewing, analyzing, and modifying the data stored in tables.
Forms:
Basically, forms are objects through which a user can modify, add or display the data stored in the Access database. Since multiple users are going to use the forms, therefore, it becomes necessary to pay efficient attention to the design of the form, to maintain the accuracy of the data entered by the users.
For example: For the Student table the form can be designed as follows:
Reports:
Reports provide formatted summaries of data that is appropriate for printing. In Access, we can create a report from any table or query. The components of a database can be presented in an easy-to-read format using reports.
For Example- A report representing student table data grouped as per subjects will be as shown below: