Microsoft-Access Tutorial

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The hotel system
In this booklet we illustrate MS-Access by means of a system for supporting a hotel reception. The system is used as the main example in User Interface Design - a Software Engineering Perspective, by Soren Lauesen. If you know the book, skip this section and go straight to Chapter . Screens
The hotel system consists of the screens shown in Fig-ure 1A.
Find guest. The Find guest screen allows the recep-tionist to find a guest or a booking in the database. The receptionist may enter part of the guest name and click the Find guest button. The system then updates the lower part of the screen to show the guests or bookings that match. The receptionist may also find the guest by his phone number, room number, or stay number (also called booking number).
The receptionist can select the guest from the list and click the buttons to see details of the booking or create a new booking for the guest.


Database
The system uses a database with several tables. They are shown as an E/R data model on Figure 1B.
tblGuest has a record for each guest with his address and phone number.
tblStay has a record for each stay (booking or checked in) with a booking number (stay number) and the pay method.
tblRoom has a record for each room in the hotel.
tblRoomState has a record for each date where a room is occupied. It connects to the room occupied and the stay that occupies it. If the room is occupied for repair, it doesn’t connect to a stay.


Create a database in Access
In Microsoft Access a database consists of one single file. The file contains all the tables of the database, the relationships (the crow's feet), queries (computed ta-bles), forms (user windows), and many other things.
As a systems developer you will design tables and user windows. As a user you will enter data into the tables (usually through user windows) and get data out of the tables, for instance through the same windows or through printed reports.