Access Projects - Design

1. Access Projects - Design

2. Presenting your designs. The test of a good design is: If you gave your plans to somebody else, would they be able to set up the solution? If the answer is ‘no’ you need to improve your designs. Planning

3. Start by listing the sub-tasks needed in your solution. List the sub-tasks in the order they need to be completed. Number the sub-tasks clearly and suggest a time for each task. This will become your plan for implementation plan or schedule of build. Planning

4. Sub-tasks • Present your designs as a clear, ordered set of sub-tasks. • Do not present your design as just a series of tables, forms and reports. • Appreciate that there is an order of build and often a query will need to be set up before building a report or a form. • Always state on which table or query forms the reports are based.

5. Sub-tasks • Designs for forms and reports should be legible, neat and easy to follow. • It is usually best and quickest to draw them by hand, using a pencil and a ruler. • If your hand-drawn designs are not neat enough, produce the designs on a computer using graphics software. • Annotate your designs, for example, to describe what happens when you click a button on a form.

6. Do not produce your designs in Microsoft Access. For example 1: A screenshot of the relationships in Access is part of the implementation stage and cannot be regarded as part of the design stage. For example 2: Do not submit a screenshot of a form and say this is a design. Sub-tasks

7. Try to think of ways of making design easy so that key aspects are only presented once. Use common headers and footers for reports rather than repeating yourself. For example, explain that all reports will have a header containing the company logo, date and title. Sub-tasks

8. Use a common layout and style for forms rather than plan out every one. For example, say that all forms will have a common control panel containing navigation and add/delete options. If a number of forms/reports are similar, just design one in detail and cross-reference the others, stating the differences. For example, say that it is based on a different table with these fields. Sub-tasks

9. Avoid: Scruffy, illegible designs using screenshots from the actual system as design. Remember to: include designs for reports and key output declare sources for reports and forms appreciate that design has an order of build include enough detail. Dos and Don’ts