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Michael Jillions ⁽¹⁸³⁾ United Kingdom

Mill House Data Solutions Ltd

I Blame the Media for our Current Financial Crisis.

Posted Tuesday, July 21, 2009 (125 days 6 hours ago.) Viewed 244 times.

Why are we in a credit crunch? I see people all day long who seem to have money stashed in banks, pensions, investments and under the mattress. The problem is they are too scared to spend it. That is where the whole thing is wrong. Back when house prices were escalating, every day the newspapers would report that the bubble will burst soon and there will be a property crash. If influential tabloids keep telling people that, then naturally people will stop buying houses in fear of the dreaded crash, which then causes the dreaded crash! It is all about confidence; people don't want to spend money because of the uncertainty in the country's finances. When people don't spend money, trades don't get income, redundancies are made, unemployment costs rise and taxes go up. The irony is, the fact that people aren't spending is exactly what is reinforcing their reasons not to spend and is what is creating the poverty.

The media is to blame for the constant doom and gloom reporting, even when things are good!

I think banks have been a scapegoat for all of our problems. Banks always have and always will take risks based on current financial conditions, that is what banking is all about. The banks wouldn't be in trouble if people were spending their money and trade was good and employment and taxes were low. Times would be fruitful, less people would default and the banks would not have had to write off so much debt.

Again, what has caused all of this? The media and their doom and gloom.

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Why struggle with MS Excel when MS Access can do a much better job!

Posted Tuesday, July 21, 2009 (125 days 6 hours ago.) Viewed 83 times.

MS Access is just a bigger and better version of Excel, it can do everything Excel can do but a lot more and yet I still see people with hoards of spreadsheets all with formulae cross referencing from another. Why are these people still using Excel for this job!

There are a lot of people out there that are using MS Excel to house their accounts or whatever with complicated formulae and "vlookups" acting as links between the different spreadsheets. Most of them are struggling to keep tabs on everything with the spreadsheets becoming more and more complex and each task more and more difficult.

What these people can't have realised is that MS Access would be a far better option on so many levels! The problem is a lot of people out there just don't know what MS Access is and the truth is they are scared of it! They shouldn't be. If they know enough to have built a complex set of spreadsheets, they should be IT literate enough to be able to build a simple database.

So what exactly is MS Access? Well, it is package that enables the user to build bespoke database applications with large datasets, but, put simply, it is a more powerful version of MS Excel, with all sorts of enhanced benefits over its little brother.

Let's look at the components;

In Excel, you have a "Spreadsheet" made up of "Rows" and "Columns". In Access, you have a "Table" made up of "Fields" and "Records". Both are one and the same, except Access is a lot better. For example, in Access a table can hold well over 1,000,000 records, whereas in Excel, 65,000 is the limit (I know 2007 has increased this but still nowhere near that of Access).

Each spreadsheet in Excel is independent of each other, apart from when the owner has inserted formulae and "vlookups" as mentioned above. But this becomes incredibly unwieldy.

With Access you have what is called "Relationships". This is where you can determine how one table, aka spreadsheet, relates to another. How? I hear you ask.

Well let's look at a simple example. Say you have a table that holds all of your clients with one record or "row" for each client. That record will have a unique ID, let's call it the "Client ID".

Lets then say that you have numerous orders from each client. In Access you would create a new table called "Orders". Each order record would have its own unique "Order ID" but would also hold the Client ID so that you know which Client the Order came from.

So we have a table called "Clients" and a table called "Orders". The Order table is related to the Client table through a "Relationship" called a "One-To-Many". This means that you have one "client" to many "orders".

So now, with each order, you don't have to enter all the clients details, just the ID. You can also then set an option to prevent someone entering an order against a client that doesn't exist. With Excel, without complicated VBA programming, you can't do this and so data integrity goes out of the window. Not so in Access!

Then, you can use queries, which are really pretty simple to get custom set of data made up from these tables.

Let's say that you want to extract all the orders relating to one particular client. You simply open up a new query, add the two tables (the relationship will automatically be in place) choose which fields you want in your results, i.e. "Client Name" from the Client table and all the fields from the Orders table and then type in the Client Name in the criteria and hey presto, you have your custom set of data.

Entering data is far easier in Access. Rather than having lists and lists of records which you have to search through and then scroll along to the right field or column to add or change a piece of information, you can have a nice user friendly screen that lays the information out in a lovely professional way, with a search box where you can enter part of a name and up come the relevant records. This is called a "Form".

Reporting is another major benefit, you can have predefined reports that feed directly from tables or queries which can then be previewed or printed at any time with all the current data neatly laid out. You can have buttons on a form that will automatically run reports or queries or open other forms and before you know it you have built yourself a custom database application.

I know I have probably lost a few people here but I wanted to make a point that there really is little difference between Access and Excel except that if you have anything other than a simple spreadsheet, Access will do the job a lot better! Don't be scared of it, embrace it!

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MS Access vs. SQL / Oracle

Posted Tuesday, June 02, 2009 (174 days ago.) Viewed 90 times.

Throughout my years working with Access, initially using it as a glorified spreadsheet package, I have gradually honed my skills but I am still learning new things everyday. Every new project takes my knowledge to a new level and I want the business world to realise just how versatile this product really is.

Having built systems as complex as Reinsurance pool ledgers I know just how powerful it can be. It is a shame that the IT fraternity have always mocked its capabilities as a reliable database application. This is mainly to do with the fact that users can build their own systems, which generally don't follow standard programming conventions and it becomes, from their point of view, impossible to support. However, designed and programmed properly this needn't be the case.

OK so you can't build conglomerate size systems with Access, I accept that. But there are literally millions of companies in the world that aren't conglomerates.

I have worked for Insurance companies that have invested millions of pounds in their systems which is obviously a completely different ball game, but for the small to medium sized business MS Access is invaluable.

Access can produce an extremely professional, user friendly interface or menu based functionality that easily rivals the bigger fish. Indeed, Access interfaces are often used to front client server systems such as SQL Server due to Access's flexibility and ease of menu design. The only difference is the data is held on the SQL platform instead of internally in the Access platform. Obviously the volume of data here is what counts, but let me tell you, I have a database with over three million records in it and it works fine. It has only taken up 3/4's of the memory space that Access can handle, so as you can see, for most companies this is more than sufficient.

Let's talk about cost. For the price of developing a system in Access, you probably would have spent the same just getting the system spec'd out in Oracle. This is because the companies that develop these client server mainframe systems have huge infrastructures and as a consequence, huge overheads. They will charge a minimum of 100ph for every individual at every meeting they have with you, then there is the project manager, the accountant, the programmers and so on.

You then need powerful hardware to handle such a system, along with expensive licenses for every user. Access needs none of this! Any reasonable server can handle it or, if you are a small outfit, a desktop computer is fine. The only license you will ever need is the license you got when you purchased MS Access itself (most people already have it as it comes with MS Office).

So you are just left with the cost of developing it. Well most Access programmers either own or work for small establishments and simply don't have the same massive overheads.

If you need a bespoke system, please consider the merits of using Access, it may not be for you but then again it just might. Find yourself an established company, with good support mechanisms, and you might just save yourself a fortune!

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Michael Jillions is a Director at Mill House Data Solutions Ltd, specialists in the design of professional grade, bespoke database applications.
http://www.millhousedata.com

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MS Access - An underutilised and underrated business tool?

Posted Tuesday, June 02, 2009 (174 days ago.) Viewed 4 times.

Lots of people own it, some tinker with it, a few are experts in it and most IT departments hate it.

Access has been an integral part of the Office family for many years and has evolved fantastically, along with its siblings; Word, Excel, PowerPoint and the like.

In many office environments, people use it as a glorified spreadsheet package enabling far more simple solutions than Excel's vlookup type scenarios and catering for much larger sets of data, but this is very much where the problem lies.

Ask anyone in your IT department and they will say it's rubbish as a database. It's not rubbish, it is just that IT departments cannot support an application that has not been developed by themselves and more often than not has not been developed by a professional using standard and accepted conventions.

So you end up with a half baked product, developed by someone internally who has "a flair for these things", the IT department won't get involved and the originator has long gone. Little wonder MS Access gets the press that it does!

The truth of the matter is, programmed properly; applications in MS Access can be powerful and extremely cost effective. Okay, if you have more than 20 users and are processing millions of records it won't be powerful enough for your needs but most companies aren't processing those volumes and don't have that many employees, let alone users.

Let's look at the positives;

1. There are absolutely no licenses required (apart from the license you get when you purchase MS Office)

2. Development costs are a fraction of that of client server based applications like SQL or Oracle (This is not just down to the programmers wages. When you commission a system using these platforms you also end up employing business analysts, project leaders, accountants and all sorts of other people making up the "development team").

3. Development time is very quick by comparison.

4. It is extremely flexible and can be altered or added to without fuss.

5. Because it is part of MS Office it interacts seamlessly with it's siblings

6. It can easily be upgraded to a client server platform if the business outgrows it.

On the not so positive side, it is not designed for online use. You can set-up forms that allow access to the application through a webpage but the database engine really isn't powerful enough to cope in this scenario.

So, if you need online functionality, MS Access is probably not for you. But if you have any type of administrative functions that are repetitive and time consuming, a well designed Access application will save you a fortune in time and money.

Employ an established developer to design and build your application and you'll see that Access can automate a multitude of business processes, make sure they offer good "after sales" and support services and I promise you will not look back!

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Michael Jillions is a Director at Mill House Data Solutions Ltd, specialists in the design of professional grade, custom business software.

http://www.millhousedata.com

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