Jenny Townes

Week 12 Reading Notes

1. How the material helped

THe descriptions of each query in reading 1 were very clear and concise. The author made the concept easy to understand by using simple examples, such as a small business located in Chapel Hill. I finally know what 'SQL' means, which explains a lot of computer texts I've had to catalog. I appreciated the explanation of the 'Cartesian Product', as I wondered what would happen if you queried two objects with no relationship. It is a little disturbing, though, to know that Access will assume a relationship. I liked how the first reading explained Boolean logic again in a more detailed way, especially the wildcard operators.

2. What I didn't understand

I don't really understand pivot charts from the first reading. I don't remember doing this in Excel and the author seems to rely on prior knowledge for their explanation. I also don't understand why you can't search two parts of an expression in a QBE.
The second and third readings for this week weren't hard to understand, but I don't get all of it yet. There was a lot of specific information in these readings, much of it I don't understand yet. I expect it will take a lot of practice until I understand any of it.

3. Additional questions

• What does Cartesian mean? Is it ever useful to have Access assume a relationship?
• Is there any other way to print a the results of a query other than using the report wizard?
• Is there any way to override Access' ability to assume a Cartesian Product?