Access 2007

Planning a query

There are three questions you need to answer when you are planning a query:

• What do you want the results to look like? Identify every field or bit of information that you want included in the results.
• Where is the information stored in the database? List which tables (and/or queries) hold the information you want to see.
• What conditions do you want the data to meet? This helps determine how to set the criteria so Access can search the records properly.

Planning: Which customers ordered technology books?

Let's think about this process for our bookstore database scenario. We have a new technology series coming out soon, and we want to send coupons to customers who have ordered technology books from us in the past. A query can help us answer the question: Which customers have ordered technology books from us already? Let's use the three-question process to plan this query.

• What fields do we want to see in the results? We need a list of customer names and addresses in order to mail the coupons to our customers, so we'll need the results to show:
  
  
  Fields in Results
• In which tables is the information stored? For this query, we'll need:
  • Customers table—to get customers' names and addresses
  • Books table—to know which books are technology books
  • Orders table—to know which customers ordered those books
• What is the condition we want the data to meet? We want Access to look for only the books where the book's category is technology.

Criteria of the Query Condition