A Simple Database Project Using Office Access 2007

A local Nursery/Primary school is in dire need of a small database that will take care of their piling flat files folders around, and as a friend of the school, I took the daunting task, though silently. The purpose is to give the school management a “practical” surprise with the database, using Microsoft Office Access 2007. I am aware of the sleek and powerful features of the Office 2007 programs Microsoft has released some few months ago. So I choose Access, and am sure it will deliver. This project is very important to the school with regards to proper records keeping. The school boasts of 200 students that attends lectures/lessons at different hours of the day, throughout the week, with the exclusion of Thursdays and Fridays. There are eight teachers around, with a Headmaster and a Committee that oversees the administration of the school.

After a careful look at the project, I came up with a proposal on how to go about the entire project. But first and foremost, everything, as usual, revolves around the six major Objects of a good database management system. These are:

1. Tables (where all the data are to be stored);

2. Queries (form tools that will assist in fetching data using different formats);

3. Forms (the forms assist in inputting data into the tables, and querying such tables in times of need);

4. Reports (a better way of getting the data out of the database for decision making – by printing, viewing etc);

5. Macros (macros are the simplest ways of giving the application order, in order to carry out some recurring events or functions);

6. Modules

The nature of the database should include the following:

1. All the six major objects of a database;

2. Customisation of all forms (both input and query forms) for a good user interface;

3. User account management;

4. Data Security, including backups;

5. Data Analysis features (with regards to income and expenditure, accounting-wise).

The structure of the school management (with regards to admission, recruiting teachers, payment of registration fees, salaries and other income/expenditure) have been observed and I have the following with regards to this:

1. A student register (from tables to input/query forms);

2. Income register (including forms for fees and other income);

3. Personnel Register (for teachers and other support staff of the school);

4. Expenditure register (for all the expenses the school made);

5. A simple General Ledger, for financial discipline and analysis.

The project looks simple but it has a lot in terms of time and technical resource needs. After all, Access has been a very sophisticated database tool, unlike a simple word processing program like Office Word. Let me see whether in the next 30 days I can deliver. The progress shall always be reported here, as usual. Keep a date with this project.

Cheerio!