Page 175 - UNI 101 Computer Science Handout.

Faculty of Nursing
Adult care Nursing Department

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Creating Databases from Templates

A few years ago (the distant past, in computer time), creating a database structure involved

first analyzing your needs and then laying out the database design on paper. You would
decide what information you needed to track and how to store it in the database. Creating

the database structure could be a lot of work, and after you created it and entered data,

making changes could be difficult. Templates have changed this process, and committing
yourself to a particular database structure is no longer the big decision it once was.

A template is a pattern that you use to create a specific type of database. Access 2010

comes with templates for several databases typically used in business and education, and

when you are connected to the Internet, many more are available from the Microsoft
Office Online Web site at office.microsoft.com. By using pre-packaged templates, you

can create a database application in far less time than it used to take to sketch the design

on paper, because someone has already done the design work for you.

Using an Access template might not produce exactly the database application you want,
but it can quickly create something that you can customize to fit your needs. However, you

can customize a database only if you know how to manipulate its basic building blocks:

tables, forms, queries, and reports. Due to the complexity of these templates, you probably

shouldn’t try to modify them until you’re comfortable working with database objects in

Design view and Layout view. By the time you finish this book, you will know enough to be

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