Part of the thrill of working for the Office Division is the opportunity to tackle thorny business issues on behalf of our customers while providing them with a road map for the future. That may be why an interesting article caught my attention this week. In it, the author examined some of the investments Microsoft is making in the unified communications space. While I didn't agree with all of the conclusions it contained, the article certainly underscored the interest in communications and collaboration and how to make people more productive.
Communicating and collaborating with others is really at the heart of what we do every day. Whether at work or at home, people have the need to make meaningful connections with one another. Compounding that need are the realities of the world we live in where instant access to information is expected, friends and coworkers are scattered across geographies and many adults are juggling multiple mobile devices.
At Microsoft, we believe technology isn't the problem to these complexities, it's the answer. We're committed to providing capabilities that help people make sense of it all and to do so in a way that is intuitive, barrier free and agnostic to the devices on which we rely. We're incredibly proud of the fact that our long term-term vision for communications and collaboration not only marries the best of the cloud and the desktop, it's a holistic approach that spans "from the living room to the boardroom" placing people at the center of everything we do.
Our communication and collaboration vision comes to life utilizing client and cloud assets, including Lync, Skype, Yammer, Outlook and SharePoint. These tools are enabling enterprise social capabilities, HD video conferencing and document collaboration as part of a highly secured, reliable and extensible platform.
At the risk of looking geeky, I have to admit that I have a soft spot for Lync and it's comforting to know I'm not alone. More than 90% of
WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: INTRODUCTION
www.office.com/setup Blogs: Databases in Access are composed of four objects: tables, queries, forms, and reports. Together, these objects allow you to enter, store, analyze, and compile data however you want.
In this lesson, you will learn about each of the four objects and come to understand how they interact with each other to create a fully functional relational database.
Watch the video below to learn more about objects in Access.
TABLES
By this point, you should already understand that a database is a collection of data organized into many connected lists. In Access, all data is stored in tables, which puts tables at the heart of any database.
You might already know that tables are organized into vertical columns and horizontal rows.
Rows and columns in an Access table - www.office.com/setup
In Access, rows and columns are referred to as records and fields. A field is more than just a column; it's a way of organizing information by the type of data it is. Every piece of information within a field is of the same type. For example, every entry in a field called First Name would be a name, and every entry in field called Street Address would be an address.
Fields and field names - www.office.com/setup
Likewise, a record is more than just a row; it's a unit of information. Every cell in a given row is part of that row's record.
A record - www.office.com/setup
Notice how each record spans several fields. Even though the information in each record is organized into fields, it belongs with the other information in that record. See the number at the left of each row? It's the ID number that identifies each record. The ID number for a record refers to every piece of information contained on that row.
Record ID numbers - www.office.com/setup
Tables are good for storing closely related information. Let's say you own a bakery and have a database that includes a table with your customers' names and information, lik