Professional Documents
Culture Documents
WITHSTAEROSPACESYSTEMS
PREPAREDBY:
ZHANGZHIRONG
054535B06
CE
Table of Contents
Page
Abstract
Acknowledgement
ii
List of Figures
iii
1.1 Background
1.2 Purpose
1.3 Scope
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51
References
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Abstract
In this report, the focus would be on the projects I have done using the Microsoft Access
2000 and Excel. The projects mainly deal with Macros, Queries, Forms and Tables. For
the content, it would be about the explanation of how the work was done and the
problems encountered.
Projects involved applications and database systems that were essential to the Quality
Assurance department, Library and company. They would help to improve work process
in terms of quality and job completion rate.
It has been a gratifying Industrial Attachment experience and I have learned a lot during
my 5.5 months of stay. The company has been constantly improving their work
practices and encourages promoting innovative ideas to drive the company towards
world class.
Acknowledgement
ST Aerospace Systems
Eugene Tan
Edmund Yap
Library Manager
Ghana
Library Assistant
Victor Foo
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List of Figures
Fig 2.2.1.1
Admin Login
Fig 2.2.2.1
Fig 2.3.1.1
Fig 2.3.2.1
Fig 2.3.3.1
Fig 2.3.3.2
Option groups
Fig 2.3.3.3
Fig 2.3.4.1
Fig 2.3.5.1
Answer Archive
Fig 2.4.1.1
Employee Particulars
Fig 2.4.1.2
Fig 2.4.2.1
Test Paper
Fig 2.4.2.2
Fig 2.4.2.3
Fig 2.4.3.1
Fig 2.5.1.1
Fig 2.5.2.1
Fig 2.5.3.1
Fig 3.2.1
Menu items
Fig 3.3.1.1
Fig 3.3.1.2
Fig 3.3.2.1
Fig 3.3.2.2
Refreshing Form
Fig 4.2.1.1
Fig 4.2.2.1
Fig 4.2.3.1
Fig 4.3.1.1
Fig 5.2.1.1
Fig 5.2.2.1
Fig 5.2.2.2
Fig 5.2.3.1
Fig 5.3.1
Fig 6.3.1.1
Fig 6.3.1.2
Fig 6.3.1.3
Fig 6.3.2.1
Fig 6.3.2.2
Fig 6.3.2.3
Fig 7.2.1.1
Example of VLookUp
Fig 7.2.1.2
Fig 7.2.2.1
Record a Macro
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Fig 7.2.4.1
Fig 7.2.4.2
Fig 7.2.5.1
Fig 8.2.1.1
Fig 8.2.2.1
Fig 8.2.2.2
Fig 8.2.2.3
1.2 Purpose
Companies need to upgrade their software system on their own sometimes as relying
everything to a third party company would add to expenditure. Furthermore, third party
companies have to understand the internal work processes before they can create a
flawless program. As such, it would be wise for employees to pick up the skill of
programming.
Microsoft Access 2000 allows employees to fulfill this goal as this program makes
programming simple. This in turn would greatly assist them in their tedious work
processes and save lots of man hours.
1.3 Scope
This report will cover some of the projects I have done. The focus would be explaining
how the Macros, Queries, Forms and Tables are done, the problems encountered and
the motivation for certain engineering design structure.
In the Admin Main Menu forms On Open properties, the Admin Number not found
macro was set to check a match with the fields in the Admin Sign in form. If no match
were found, the Admin Main Menu form would be closed.
The diagram box was right clicked on and insert object was selected. Since this box
was linked to a field in the table whose format was OLE object, it could also accept
video clips. For inserting images, Bitmap Image was chosen. With the diagram box still
in edit mode, paste from option was selected from the edit menu and an image in jpg
format was selected from a folder.
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Screen refresh was done every minute since there were no text fields in the form where
user would type for more than a minute. The End Test button would take the examinee
to the Confirm End Test form. This enabled examinees to be sure that they were ready
to end the test. The option group on the left input data into the ownanswer field of the
Employees Answer table.
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GoTo Next Record macro was assigned to the Next button. This would allow the
message to appear when the last question was reached. The GoTo Previous Record
macro was assigned to the Previous button to prevent an error message from
occurring when the question number 0 was not found. [Text117] referred to the Time
Remaining.
The CalculateAward macro was set in the On Exit property of the option group which
belonged to a sub form with record source linked to a table and not a query. Since the
main forms record source was linked to a query, option groups would not work on the
main form.
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2.5 Security
2.5.1 Direct Question Bank Access
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The Incident Reporting System would allow employees to key in any incident that
requires attention and a team would be created to solve the problem. At the end of the
month when the problem is solved, the associated employees would close the incident
case. Incentives would be given to the associated employees and his team for a good
job done.
The administrator would be able to generate open cased and close cased incident
reports via a click of a button. Open cased reports would show which incident is still
being solved. Close cased reports would show the solutions implemented to solve the
problems.
With this system in place, companies could strive to reduce customer complains,
accidents and auditor findings. It would also raise environmental awareness, safer
working conditions as well as preservation of the companys image.
This chapter discusses the special implementations of the applications and how to
handle them. Its special focus is on the double field technique and the on form
updating/refreshing techniques.
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3.2 Menus
One was to set the property value of the form to enable addition of data when a button
was clicked on. The other was to copy the values from unbound fields to the fields that
linked to the tables that were hidden when a button was clicked on.
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Updating a form on the spot requires some refreshing mechanism. The question was
when to refresh the form. If refreshing of form were done every minute interval, the user
would not have enough time to type a paragraph for more than a minute as the
paragraph would disappear from the text field.
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During the borrowing phase, the Library Loans System would be able to display a list of
manuals being borrowed by the borrower when he keys in his employee number. Next,
he would key in the technical manual number and it would be added to the list.
When the technical manuals were returned to the library, the librarian would key in the
technical manual number into the system. The system would display a list of manuals
returned for that day as verification. If the manuals were not found in the list, there
would be a prompt.
In the past, borrowers would have to write his particulars into a log book of loans every
time he loans a technical manual which would be a hassle when searching for the
record if the need arises. Furthermore, it would be impractical to keep folders of
hardcopy records for archiving as it would be space consuming.
Focus on this chapter would be on the user friendliness design. The application would
allow technicians amateur in using a computer to be able to use the system easily. All
the technicians need to do to borrow technical manuals would be via a click of a mouse
button and using a scanner to scan his employee pass and technical manual barcode.
For returning manuals, a click of a mouse button and scanning of the technical manual
barcode would be required.
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Arranging the tab order was the key to involve user friendliness. When the user scan his
employee pass, he would need to scan the technical manual barcode as the cursor
automatically move to the next field.
The unbound field could be hidden from user view and be used as a buffer to store the
employee number for use later on when the user borrows another technical manual.
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For example, the Library Loans System and the AC Holder Test required some of the
employees details. If there were any update in the main database (Roster Database
System), all other databases would need to automatically share the same update.
Manually changing all other databases data would be a hassle and would not be
practical. However, this would also mean a risk in confidential data being leaked out due
to the existence of separate departments with no proper authorization.
One solution would be to get the employees consent for their data to be used across
databases owned by other departments so they would not need to always provide their
particulars every time.
The administrator would be able to key in all particulars of an employee and generate all
kinds of reports, with data categorized or grouped, for all employees as well as for
individual employees.
This chapter would focus on the different types of report generation styles and
techniques, each for a different purpose.
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5.2.2 Group by
The On Click property of the button was set with a macro to make the combo box
appear when the button was clicked and disappear when the button was clicked again.
This function might prove useful to prevent the screen from filling up with too many
things at one go.
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The bottom macro in Fig 5.2.2.2 would open the report with the condition that the results
shown in the report would be the records with the selected department from the combo
box.
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5.2.3 Search by
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Lots of relevant data were to be gathered to justify the price. Statistics were generated
in the form of pivot tables to decide the charging price. As such, bouncing related fields
across tables, conjuring up formulas in fields and automatic generation of the pivot
tables were required for results to process efficiently.
The technician would need to key in the data into certain fields and buttons would need
to be created so when they are being clicked on, it would activate certain macros.
Macros in excel were different from the macros used in Microsoft Access 2000. In Excel,
macros would require record of your actions whereas in Access, the appropriate
functions would need to be chosen with the mouse.
Although this system can be done by Microsoft Access 2000, the employees were
already used to using Microsoft Excel. It would take quite a period of time and some
difficulty to train all employees in Microsoft Access 2000 as some employees are either
too busy with their current work load or simply unreceptive to differences from their
current practices.
This chapter concentrates on the VLookUp techniques for bouncing purposes, the
recording and activation of macros and certain formulas to manipulate data in fields.
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7.2 Functions
7.2.1 VLookUp
VLookUp in Microsoft Excel was used to match data between two or more fields.
The two tables were bounced against each other for matched data. The third column
consisted of VLookUp fields where the VLookUp formula resided. A yes indicated a
match was found whereas a N/A indicated a no match found.
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Column index was 2, which indicated the corresponding value of the field in column 2 of
the table array would be copied to the G2 field when there was a match. Explanation of
range lookup was as described on Fig 7.2.1.2.
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Removing spaces
The method to remove all spaces in any fields was to highlight the selected fields and
press ctrl-h (find and replace function). Fill in the Find field with a spacebar and do not
fill anything in the Replace field.
For example, before executing the method, the data in the field was a b c. After
executing the method, the data in the field was abc. This would be a better method
than going through field by field to remove the space in between letters.
Removing Dashes
The formula for removing any numbers after the dash was:
=IF(LEN(A:A)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A:A,-,))>0,LEFT(A:A,FIND(*,SUBSTITUTE(A:A,-,*,LEN(A:A)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A:A,,))))-1),A:A)
LEN( ) returned the length of the data in the field. SUBSTITUTE(A: A, -,) substituted
- with from column A to column A. LEFT(X, Y) returned Y number of letters from
the word X starting from the left.
For example, a field in column A contained the data 456-789. A field in column B
contained the formula and the result of 456 was displayed.
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Microsoft Access 2000 was the program to use to serve this purpose perfectly. Besides
using Microsoft Access 2000 to execute this job, this exercise could be done by
Microsoft Excels VLookUp function too.
Although Microsoft Excels VLookUp allowed inventory bouncing, achieving the output
result required some extra setup with the VLookUp and filtering function every time. The
result produced was not the same as the Microsoft Access 2000 inventory bouncing
method where a list of unmatched data was generated by the Unmatched Query
function.
Sometimes, looking for similarities between two or more lists of data would be required.
As such, executing the matched query would be appropriate in this case. In Microsoft
Access 2000, executing the unmatched query would be required for the second time.
For Example, between the systems inventory and the missing technical manuals list.
This chapter explains how to execute inventory bouncing using Microsoft Access 2000.
The focus would be on the theory, finding unmatched and matched query.
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When Scanned Library Inventory was bounced against Systems Library Inventory
using the Find Unmatched Query in Microsoft Access 2000, the result list produced
was the area marked Scanned Library Inventory not registered in System. To attain the
result of the area marked Not Missing Library Inventory, Systems Library Inventory
was bounced against Missing Library Inventory using the Find Unmatched Query in
Microsoft Access 2000.
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AC Holder Test allowed technicians to sit for their test electronically. The system would
automatically generate the papers, mark the papers and generate the results report.
Furthermore, the AC Holder Database System kept track of the trainees training
progress and their qualifications.
Library Loans System kept track of the loaning out of technical manuals as technicians
borrow and return them to the library. The Inventory Bouncing System made sure that
missing technical manuals would be located and returned to its rightful location.
Incident Reporting System allowed employees to highlight any incidents that require
attention discovered in the surrounding environment and build a team to solve them.
Lastly, the Swift Database System helped to determine the quoting price for a customer.
Database Systems that had an employee table was linked to the Roster Database
Systems employee table which contained all employee data. We had also looked into
the important uses of macros and queries that drive the application processes. The
security features that the Microsoft Access 2000 had were also implemented to prevent
accidental modification to the database system.
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9.2 Conclusion
We have seen the usefulness of Microsoft Access 2000. There is no doubt future
programs like this would be more efficient.
It is possible to create applications like an Online Test with Microsoft Access 2000.
Examinees take the test from different computers and their answers as well as scores
are archived into the database file in another part of the network.
Macros and queries play a big part of the process which drives the application. As such,
an application like an Online Test can be built solely on the use of Macros with no need
to write lots of long codes.
However, if the need arises to convert the Macros to codes, Microsoft Access 2000 can
fulfill this function. Moreover, the software is built by the Visual Basic programming
language. This would allow the application to be integrated with other programs
whenever required.
Applications such as the Online Test allow many man hours to be saved. In the past,
examiners would have to manually prepare the paper questions, mark paper by paper
and tabulate reports. With the present technology, generating random questions for
each individual, automatic marking and report generation with a click of a button is
nothing more of a mere hassle.
The future does not stop here. Newer and more powerful programs would allow
commoners to program their own applications with greater ease than before.
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References
Books
Microsoft Access 2000 T.T. Flynn
Access Macros & Switchboards - Wayne Wilmeth
Microsoft Excel 2000 Philip A. Koneman
Websites
Microsoft Access Database Programming - http://www.blueclaw-db.com/
Access Macros & Database Utilities - http://oit.wvu.edu/training/classmat/db/
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