A2b - Databases - Grading Comments

The grading is complete for all A2b submissions except those who received an extension.  Overall most people did well, though some comments are worth making.

• Links
• Those of you who just followed the tutorial had no problems with links.  Those who struck off on their own (admirable) had more problems.  The subject of the different kinds of links and how to make them is not intuitive for most of people, myself included.  It takes work and mistakes, and does eventually come clear.
• Dropdown Boxes
• I didn't want to make dropdown boxes required because it was one more layer of complexity.  Nonetheless they are almost essential in practice for data entry into forms.  One creates them using a "Combo Box".  There are reasonable explanations in the help files.  Without them one has to keep referring to other views (tables or queries) to determine what is the appropriate ID #.
• Extending Access
• As my comments about links and dropdown boxes indicate, to become a proficient database users takes considerable work.  
• Planning initially is extraordinarily important.
• Learning to import data is very helpful - one person did so.
• There are multiple types of queries, many of which are very helpful.
• To get really proficient you need to learn to use VBA - the programming language (:
• Sensor Information
• As I said in my comments to many of you, one of the purposes of this assignment was to give you a gut sense that picking the right sensor isn't as easy a process as one might think.  Manufacturers very often don't provide the information you know is important.  Tracking that down can be a pain and sometimes impossible.  In a work situation, a call to the representative is often the best solution.
• A related issue is how you set up your sensor information table.  Most of you had only a few fields in it.  In fact there's no problem in having many fields, with only a few fields being appropriate to each sensor type.  You can generate good reports by using a query that displays on the relevant fields.  You can also write queries that concatenate info from different fields or leave it blank if there's nothing in a field.
• Sensor Characteristics by Building System
• No one really tackled the criteria addressing whether there were differences between sensors by building system (structure, HVAC) etc.  The kinds of things that might have been addressed here are comments on:
• Size
• Ease of installation
• Appropriate frequency of measurement
• Other Databases
• There are many databases available - I used Access because you all have it with Office (though in future that won't be true thanks to Microsoft's business relationship with Drexel).
• My own favorite (Mac and PC) is FileMaker.  Unfortunately it's expensive, an expense I've found worthwhile because I do so many things with DB.
• Open Office (I prefer the LibreOffice version) has a free DB modeled on Access, but it's been buggy for years and doesn't operate the same way.  The latest LO version seemed pretty good to me when I tested a week ago, though it has some different interface design approaches.