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Sorting and Queries

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Functional Skills check

Student task accompanies this slide Printable activity

This lesson will cover:

Basic sorting in a database.

Creating a basic query.

Creating and using advanced queries.

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Sorting and queries

Learning to sort and use queries in databases is incredibly useful as it can allow you to pinpoint the exact data you require.

Can you think of examples of where this is used?

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Right-clicking on one of the field headings and then choosing Sort Ascending will put the data in ascending alpha-numerical order.

Basic sorting

Databases are extremely useful as they allow you to create tables of related data which can then be searched and sorted as needed.

Alternatively, you can highlight a field andclick on either of these icons on the toolbar.

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Queries

Databases are used for searching and sorting vast quantities of data and producing results that match criteria. To search or sort a database in this way requires the creation of a query.

Select Queries from the Objects menu. Youcan then choose to use the Wizard or Createquery in Design view.

When you are creating queries in design view, you will be able to select sorting options for multiple fields.

To create a query:

You can also save queries and produce a reportwith the data you have obtained.

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Creating queries

The top line of the query specifies the fields to be displayed.

The second line specifies which table will providethe data.

The third line selects if the data is to be sorted inascending ordescending order.

Remember to tick the show boxes or your data will not be displayed.

This query has been set up to sort by age, but within each agegroup the results are to be sorted alphabetically by surname.

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Advanced queries

Database queries really come into their own when you wantto put together advanced searches.

Imagine you had a database of valued customers. What ifyou wanted to find all the customers under thirty, living inLondon who spent over a £1,000 in the previous year.

This would take you a long time to find on paper reports, butwith a database query it can be done very simply.

Table name Customersunder 30

Livingin London

Spent over£1,000

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Advanced queries

Entering data into the criteria box allows you to be very selective about what data is returned.

To help with this you can use logical and relational operators.

Logical operators (AND, OR and NOT) help to create logic statements for queries.

Relational operators (=,<,>,=,<=,>=) help to constructrange statements.

A forename search for “Pete” OR “Peter” will return results for anyone called Pete or Peter.

Example

An age search for >=14 AND <= 18 will return all the records with ages between 14 and 18.

Example

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Logical and relational operators

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Match them

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Using a query

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Revision