Access For Dummies

Chapter 4

Sounds Like a Plan

IN THIS CHAPTER

Planning your database tables

Building tables

Creating fields

Setting data types

As a professional Access database developer, I’ve seen a lot of things over the years. And one of the most common is poor table design. Planning a database is like building a house; if you don’t get the foundation right, you’ll start to see cracks or worse! Same thing with an Access database. Access tables are like the foundation of your house. Design them right and all will go well. Design them wrong, and you’ll start to see those cracks as you get further into the project.

Back in Chapter 1, we discussed planning out your database. In this chapter, we’ll dig deeper into how to turn that plan into the best possible table design.

Planning Your Database Tables

As you know, tables are made up of fields — the bits of information you want to store in your database. Hopefully, you put your list of fields together back in Chapter 1 and you broke them into logical ...