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Creating a Database
The
charity GEA has a database of donors who have responded to an appeal for
funds, either by giving a one-off sum or by committing themselves to a
monthly, quarterly or annual subscription.
Everyone
in the database has agreed that the charity may contact them by email in the
future. From time to time, the charity may want to contact people in the
database:
·
to
tell them about GEA’s projects;
·
to
invite them to special events such as talks, exhibitions or fundraising
events;
·
to
ask them if they would be prepared to increase their subscription.
Have a look at the data
collected so far. It has been stored as a text file and it is not very useful
in its present form. You must find out what each item of data is by looking
at the list provided by the charity. You will see
that codes have been used for some data items.
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Design and build a
suitable database structure to store the data. Make sure that each field is
a suitable data type and length. There will be thousands more records added
to the database in the future so you must create simple validation rules to
protect the integrity of the data.
Once you are satisfied
with your database structure, import the data set.
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Design
and create a data entry form for adding new records. It must be clear and
easy for other people to use, especially when codes are used or when there
are a limited number of valid options.
Use
your data entry form to add two more records to the database. One of these
should be for your own home. Test your form by asking someone else to use
it to enter data for their own home.
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You need to
design queries to extract useful information and then produce the lists in
a suitable report format. Here are some examples of information that you could
extract:
1. A
list of the donors who can be telephoned during the daytime. The report
could include ID, title and surname, the date and amount of the last
donation and whether they pay monthly, quarterly, annually or just
occasionally. These people could then be telephoned to ask whether they
would be prepared to subscribe on a regular basis or to increase their
subscription.
2. A
list of people who contribute towards a particular species, such as tigers,
so that they can be sent a special newsletter about the work being done to
save the tiger population from extinction. (The data in a real database
would contain the full address of each donor so that they could be mailed.)
3. A list of people who subscribe occasionally, but have not donated
since 30/06/04. This report could include their ID, title and
surname, telephone number and whether they can be phoned in the daytime.
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Once you have designed
and saved the queries, you need to create reports from these queries that
can be viewed either on-screen or in printed hard copy.
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