Queries are an essential part of any database application. Queries are the tools that enable you and your users to extract data from multiple tables, combine it in useful ways, and present it to the user as a datasheet, on a form, or as a printed report.
You may have heard the old cliché, “Queries convert data to information.” To a certain extent, this statement is true (that’s why it’s a cliché). The data contained within tables is not particularly useful because, for the most part, the data in tables appears in no particular order. Also, in a properly normalized database, important information is spread out among a number of different tables. Queries are what draw these various data sources together and present the combined information in such a way that users can actually work with the data.
In this chapter, you learn what a query is and how to create them. Using the Sales (tblSales), Contacts (tblContacts), Sales Line Items (tblSalesLineItems), and Products (tblProducts) tables, you create several types of queries for the Access Auto Auctions database.
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This chapter will use the database named Chapter36.accdb. That example database is available for download from http://www.wiley.com/TOCOME. When you open the file, you can click Options in the Security Warning bar, click Enable This Content in the Microsoft Office Security Options dialog box, and then click OK.