Turn off the computer
This way you can get rid of the distraction of the program.
Purpose Statement
· “I want to keep track of employee personal and
payroll information, training and benefits.”
· “I want to keep track of client information, our
products, and the products that the clients buy.”
· “I want to keep track of the data we gather on
________ and how we service those items.”
· “I want to keep track of the items in my house,
which room it’s in and the warranty information.”
Collect current data
· Forms your employees, clients and vendors are
filling out.
· Databases/tables you are storing information
o
Employees/Clients
o
Billing
o
Invoices
o
Training/Benefits
Brainstorm field names.
· Field names are the name of the columns of the
tables.
· Some used but not needed
· Some needed but not used
Group Information into Tables
· Employee information
· Client information
· Benefit information
· Invoice information
· Details of the invoices
· Product information
Normalize!
3.2 Rules of Normalization
· Atomize
· No Redundancy
o
Dependencies
o
No Blanks
o
Relationships
Rules of Normalization Explained
Rule #1 Atomize
· Smallest meaningful value.
o
First name
o
Last name
o
Today’s date
o
Birth date
Rule #2 No Redundancy
· Repeated Values?
o
Dates
o
Names
· DB run faster
Rule #3 Dependencies
· Primary Key!
o
UNIQUE
o
required
· Helps Access keep record separated
No Blanks
· Blanks waste space
· Needed for
o
Middle Initial
o
Suffix
o
Address line #2
Relationships
· How do the Tables fit together?
· Primary and foreign keys
Properties
· Define properties for fields such as:
o
Data type
o
Field size
o
Input masks
o
Default values
o
Captions
