You're going to laugh at me, but that's okay. I've used Microsoft Access a few times, even built a form to create a table of data, but never really done much with the functionality that exists in this program. I guess like a lot of people, I've always used Excel as my database and manipulated data that way.
Today, I actually used Access like I am supposed to. I imported a table of tons of data and ran queries to find specific data. For example, we've got a table that lists the 4500 fires we've mapped so far (or that we've supposedly mapped for MTBS), but there are a number of problems with these data. I ran queries to find all fire that have been mapped but haven't been through our reporting process (the part that summarizes the burn severity acres by ownership, slope, vegetation type, etc.). This is all possible in Excel, but so much easier in Access.
Glad I learned something I should have learned a long time ago. I wish I had taken a database management and design class in college, too. This is one area that I feel I lack.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
We've got a similar problem here. A ton of data to organize, but no one wants to (or has the time to) learn the cataloging software that would make it so much faster to find data. We've just got a million folders with different names.
Another example is scripting languages. I need in the worst way to learn how to script in Python, but don't have the time or motivation to learn the software.
I feel your pain with Java/Javascript.
Post a Comment