Microsoft Office® Access 2007 Inside Out

The Many Faces of Access

Access is not only a powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use database management system, but it is also a complete database application development facility. You can use Access to create and run, under the Windows operating system, an application tailored to your data management needs. Access lets you limit, select, and total your data by using queries. You can create forms for viewing and changing your data. You can also use Access to create simple or complex reports. Forms and reports inherit the properties of the underlying table or query, so in most cases you need to define such properties as formats and validation rules only once. Figure 3-36 gives you an overview of all the ways you can use Access to implement an application. ...