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Evaluation Throughout the database project, I feel that I managed to stick to all of my personal deadlines. Each day/week I would set my self mini targets such as “completing the validation”. Another feature I decide to implement into the project was a sensible file naming format. Each table would begin with tbl, queries qry and reports rpt. I found that this greatly helped me identify each part of the database. However, there were some problems along the way. The first and really only major problem was the importing of the data (from the text file). What I originally did was to create two tables (products and sales) and manually enter the field names of what I needed in each table. From here, I entered sensible validation into each field such as text lengths and input masks. The problem arose when I tried to imported the data in that it would not let me import because it was complaining that there were “missing fields”. The way round this was for me to enter all of the fields (even if I didn’t need them and without any validation) on both tables and then delete the fields that I didn't need after importing of all the data. From here, I had to then delete any duplicate data in the products table, which unfortunately was very tedious. With my queries, they were all very basic with the exception of the January sales one, which used a special criteria to only show data between certain dates. All of the queries I created were successful and ran producing the desired results. The queries that I created were to show the following data: January turnover, Monthly turnover and Monthly sales figures. From the queries I created a report for each one. In the reports, I had to edit each one to show the data in the desired way. Also, after altering the reports they became far easier for end-users to read off. From here, I exported the data from each report into a spreadsheet to produce a graph from. The data exported successfully from the reports so I was able to produce accurate graphs representing the data. I feel that out of the database project, the reports worked best for me. This is because I had very little trouble setting up reports to show the data I wanted. Also, I feel that the reports look very clean and tidy and that almost anyone could read off them. User Feedback:A few of my fellow students kindly took time to give me some user feedback on my database. “Dear Nathan Thank you for sending me your Database. I like the layout as it is very easy to read and does not seem to cause any errors. I especially like your stock code input mask as it is well thought out, I also agree with your choice of validation, as in your text fields and your currency field on the price, not number which would cause some errors. I also have noticed all of your files have the appropriate files names, such as rpt for reports and tbl for tables. On your queries, it is good that you have linked up both of your tables to make ease of use in selecting from both tables. Another great idea is your use of coding to change from showing every month to just a select months between certain dates. This is shown in your rptJanuary as it is only showing a select month, not everything. A few points that could be included could be: A menu system, this would help make your database much more user-friendly. You might also want to change your forms a bit to make them easier to read, as they are consistentently grey and it isn’t particularly nice to look at. Overall Nathan, this is a very well thought out and user-friendly database. Regards Benji” I thank Benji for taking time to give me the feedback. “Dear Nathan The tables have good validation that insures the input information is accurate. This is a very good feature; however it would be useful if there was a form so that the information input menu is more user friendly. The queries are good and are able to gather the required information. The reports are excellent because the information is easy to find and make out. In general, the database is very good with only minor faults. Regards Tom Atkin” I thank Tom for taking time to give me the feedback. Points That I Can Improve On:The main thing that could have been improved on the database is the use of a transactional table. Instead of having a products and sales table, I could have also had a sales table (to act as the transaction table). The main reason for this is to allow repeat customers. Not having a transactional table would mean that every time a customer purchases some goods their details would have to be entered each time whilst in a transactional table their details could simply be looked up so the details wouldn’t have to be entered each time they shop. Another point to the database which would help increase its user friendliness would be to integrate a menu driven system. This would work where by end users could simply click on various boxes in a menu to take them to specific parts of the database (e.g. to a particular report). However, due to time constraints I did not do this with the database. However, if I were to redo the database again then I may have allocated time to install a suitable menu system. Overall Effectiveness:
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