This document introduces users to the Microsoft Access relational database management system, which allows for the creation, organization and manipulation of large quantities of data. This class will concentrate on creating a blank database, creating and importing tables into the database, establishing primary and foreign key fields, entering records into tables, sorting fields in tables, and filtering for specific records in tables. It will also introduce users to setting up different types of relationships between tables and enforcing rules on those relationships.

Introduction The Access database program allows for the creation, organization and manipulation of large quantities of data. The basic building block of any database is the table, built of distinct and unique rows of information (called records), each of which are broken down into one or more columns (or fields) of predetermined and consistent size and type of data. As a relational database, an Access database can contain many tables, where the records in one table may be related to records in other tables.