Business Application Packages: Week 10 1 Business Application Packages (10) l Last Time: Databases part 2 »The Relational Model »Practical: –Forms and

Business Application Packages: Week 10 1

Business Application Packages (10)

Last Time: Databases part 2» The Relational Model» Practical:

– Forms and Reports– Using Microsoft Access as a relational database

Week 9 Self Study: Mail-Merge

This week:» More uses of Databases» Mail Merge» Practical – putting Word and your database together


Business Value of Computing

Business is driven by people The computer rarely creates anything new

» It can allow you to re-use work already done» Help you manage and store work for reference and reuse» Present information clearly» Simplify decision-taking by providing data and calculation

Repetitive tasks can be automated» Handling Orders» Creating bills» Spotting trends

And information made more timely» e.g. Web site showing stock position from database


Integrating Packages For one-off tasks, like writing a letter, a single package

is sufficient For decision-support, you often need to combine:

» data,» computation, and» display

The data may be in a spread-sheet or database Spreadsheets are good for calculation and generating

graphics Word-processors are good for laying out reports Presentation graphics are better in front of an audience


Mail Merge A common process that you can automate

» For example, sending a form-letter to all your customers» Integrates word-processing with data retrieval

Works by creating a “Master document” » Contains all the words and layout common to all letters» and “place holder” fields to plug in variable data

Microsoft Word will take data from various sources» Other Word documents can be rather tricky as source» Usual source is a table (database or spreadsheet)» We’ll use a database to extend our experience of Access


Master Document Word provides extensive help for building this Best if you already have the source of variable data Use Tools/Mail Merge to select the data source

» Often this will be a Query combining multiple tables,like the “people attending seminars” one last week

» That way you can pick fields from it» Word validates these as you go

Write the document, using “Insert Field” where you need to plug in external data » It’s best to use the Word toolbar to save pulling down the

menu and typing in MergeField names» Word XP makes it easy to preview the merged result


Mail-Merge/Database Practical

Using linked tables in Knight’s example Problem: organizing seminars for conference delegates

» Delegates’ details are held in a table» Seminar details are held in another table» Each delegate can attend one seminar

(but we hope each seminar will attract many delegates!)

DelegatesDelegate-refNameCompanyAddress...Phone #Seminar-ref

SeminarsSeminar-refNameFromToFee

1

M


Seminar Confirmation Example

Start with the conference database you created Generate a letter to each delegate confirming the

seminar chosen » (see BS1009w9.doc for problem description)

You will need to extend the database first» Names will need to be restructured to avoid nasties like

“Dear Marghanita Laski”» And create a query that contains fields from both tables,

joined by the Seminar_ref value Then create a suitable master document

» Test it out for layout and validity,» then merge into a file to check that all letters get created


Relational Database Terms Red names are the formal ones, Blue are what we’ll use The whole thing is a Relation or Table

53730 Jones Bill W 1 03 100355 044 73 2000028719 Blanagan J E 1 05 101039 172 43 1800053550 Lake Mary 0 07 090952 044 02 1100079632 Rubble Barney 1 11 011152 090 11 5000051883 Smith Tina 0 03 091150 044 73 2100036453 Thomas John 1 08 110961 044 02 12000

DomainColumn/Field

TupleRow

Prime Key


Redundancy in Databases One of the goals of a database is to reduce redundancy

» If you store a piece of information in two places,– it wastes space– and creates the risk that the copies will get out of step

Most business records do involve redundancy:Emp# Name Salary Project Completion120 Jones 20000 x 021125122 Marx 17500 y 030119222 Able 21000 y 030119310 Enson 30000 z 020922355 Spoto 29000 x 021125

Need to get rid of this by going to Third Normal Form


Reducing Redundancy One approach is to look for functional dependency

between fields:» Emp# and Name» Project and Completion date

Can then split these between separate tables» As we did with Delegates and Seminars

ProjectProject#Completion Project Name

EmployeesEmp#NameSalaryProject#

1

M


Using the Database We often want a view of chunks of the original large

table, complete with redundancy. But…» Usually only selected rows» and often only a selection of columns

So we only need to ask the DBMS to reconstruct a small part of the conceptual “joined” table» Still saves space» Guarantees integrity of data

With Access, we used Queries to do this work» SQL is the underlying language for selection/sorting» You can inspect the SQL generated by Access by using

the View menu


Extracting Access Data Access is a cheap but powerful database tool

» Lets you do most of the things expensive relational database packages can do

» Has a standard interface (ODBC) to communicate with other programs

» If you need to upgrade to (say) Oracle or SQL Server, ODBC helps with the migration

» Designed mainly for a single user – upgrade when you need a multi-user database

The Report facility in Access has been improved in recent versions, but you may still want to use Mail Merge


Handling Customer Orders As we saw, most businesses need tables for:

» Customer records (name, address, contact, customer-ref)» Orders (customer-ref, order-ref, date)» Order items (order-ref, product-ref, quantity)» Products (product ref, description, price)

Another example might be to confirm orders by letter» Each letter must be correctly addressed» Must list all items included in the order» Information is scattered amongst the tables» Make query from order items and orders to show

all orders placed today; – each item to contain customer-ref and product description


Practice Examination Goal of exam is to measure parts of the course not

covered in the assignment – mainly» Using Access, including building queries » Mail-merge with Word and Access

A practice paper is on the Business web-site at http://cmg.wkac.ac.uk/courses/bs1009/bs1009me.doc (copy attached to the hand-out)

Starts easy, gets progressively harder» Simple modification of data in the database (be accurate)» Mail-merge from an existing table» Mail-merge from new query built on a single table» .. And from query working from two tables


Mail-Merge from Spreadsheet

All you really need for Mail Merge is tabular data» Can come from a Database Table» Or an “on the fly” table like an Access Query» A spreadsheet» Even data from another Word document

(easy with tables, hard otherwise) An example is sending out exam results

» There is a suitable data source in:http://cmg.wkac.ac.uk/courses/bs1009/mailmer2.xls

» Create a Word document as basis for the letter, then open the spreadsheet as Tools/Mail Merge data source

» We are interested in rows 3 to 23, columns A to M


Mail-Merge from Word Document

The same exercise can be done purely within Word» Make sure your data is in a table

(can handle non-table data, but it’s hard to get right) Create a Data Source document

» An easy way is to Copy the data from your Excel sheet» When you paste into Word, it will create a table

Now create a Master document to use the data» Probably best to start from the example built before

(saving under a new name)» Go through the Mail Merge routine as usual

Documents

Business Application Packages: Week 10 1 Business Application Packages (10) l Last Time: Databases part 2 »The Relational Model »Practical: –Forms and