Microsoft Access Programmer In Anaheim, California

Using Microsoft Access Queries And Forms

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The following material originally appeared in Alison Balter's book Mastering Microsoft Office Access 2007 Development and is ereprinted here with the author's permission. There may be references to Figures that are not reprintable and are not used on this page.

Queries: Stored Questions or Actions You Apply to Your Data

Queries in Access are powerful and multifaceted. Select queries enable you to view, summarize, and perform calculations on the data in your tables. Action queries let you add to, update, and delete table data. To run a query, select Queries from the Navigation drop-down and then double-click the query you want to run, or right-click to select the query you want to run and then click Open. When you run a select query, a datasheet appears, containing all the fields specified in the query and all the records meeting the query's criteria.

When you run an action query, Access runs the specified action, such as making a new table or appending data to an existing table. In general, you can update the data in a query result because the result of a query is actually a dynamic set of records, called a dynaset, based on your tables' data.

When you store a query, only its definition, layout or formatting properties, and datasheet are actually stored in the database. Access offers an intuitive, user-friendly tool for you to design your queries. Figure 1.9 shows the Query Design window. To open this window, select Queries from the Navigation pane drop-down, choose the query you want to modify, and right-click and select Design. The query pictured in the figure selects data from Purchase Orders, Purchase Orders Status, and Purchase Price Totals tables and queries. (Note that you can base queries on tables and on other queries.) It displays the Creation Date, Supplier ID, Shipping Fee, Taxes, and several other fields from the Purchase Orders table, the Status from the Purchase Order Status table, and the Sub Total expression from the Purchase Price Totals query. Because queries are the foundation for most forms and reports, I cover them throughout this book as they apply to other objects in the database.

Forms: A Means of Displaying, Modifying, and Adding Data

Although you can enter and modify data in a table's Datasheet view, you can't control the user's actions very well; likewise, you can't do much to facilitate the data entry process. This is where forms come in. Access forms can take on many traits, and they're very flexible and powerful. To view any form, select Forms from the Navigation Pane. Then double-click the form you want to view, or right-click the form you want to view and click Open. Figure 1.10 illustrates a form in Form view. This form is actually four forms in one: one main form and three subforms. The main form displays information from the Orders table, and the subforms display information from the Order Details table and the Orders table. As the user moves from order to order, the form displays the orders details associated with that order. When the user clicks to select the Shipping Information and Payment Information tabs, she can see additional information about that order.

As with tables and queries, you can also view forms in Design view. To view the design of a form, right-click the Form from within the Navigation Pane and select Design. Figure 1.11 shows the Order Details form in Design view. Notice the three subforms within the main form.

Author Attribution

The preceding material originally appeared in Alison Balter's book Mastering Microsoft Office Access 2007 Development and is reprinted here with the author's permission.

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