Access Data Analysis Cookbook: Slicing and Dicing to Find the Results You Need

by Ken Bluttman, Wayne Freeze

Overview

If you have large quantities of data in a Microsoft Access database, and need to study that data in depth, this book is a data cruncher's dream. Access Data Analysis Cookbook offers practical recipes to solve a variety of common problems that users have with extracting Access data and performing calculations on it. Each recipe includes a discussion on how and why the solution works.

Whether you use Access 2007 or an earlier version, this book will teach you new methods to query data, different ways to move data in and out of Access, how to calculate answers to financial and investment issues, and more. Learn how to apply statistics to summarize business information, how to jump beyond SQL by manipulating data with VBA, how to process dates and times, and even how to reach into the Excel data analysis toolkit. Recipes demonstrate ways to:

• Develop basic and sophisticated queries
• Apply aggregate functions, custom functions, regular expressions, and crosstabs
• Apply queries to perform non-passive activities such as inserting, updating, and deleting data
• Create and manipulate tables and queries programmatically
• Manage text-based data, including methods to isolate parts of a string and ways to work with numbers that are stored as text
• Use arrays, read and write to the Windows registry, encrypt data, and use transaction processing
• Use the FileSystemObject, use XML with XSLT, communicate with SQL Server, and exchange data with other Office products
• Find answers from time-based data, such as how to add time, count elapsed time, work with leap years, and how to manage time zones in your calculations
• Deal with business and finance problems, including methods for calculating depreciation, loan paybacks, and Return on Investment (ROI)
• Explore statistical techniques, such as frequency, variance, kurtosis, linear regression, combinations and permutations

Access Data Analysis Cookbook is a one-stop-shop for extracting nuggets of valuable information from your database, and anyone with Access experience will benefit from these tips and techniques, including seasoned developers. If you want to use your data, and not just store it, you'll find this guide indispensable.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780596101220
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	05/01/2007
Series:	Cookbooks (O'Reilly) Series
Pages:	366
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.19(h) x 0.89(d)

About the Author

Ken Bluttman is the author of numerous computer books and articles. He recently wrote O'Reilly's "Access Hacks" as well as "Excel Charts for Dummies". Ken's technical chops include Microsoft Office, XML, VBA, VB.NET, SQL Server, and assorted web technologies.

Wayne S. Freeze is the Head of Software Development for Electrical Controls, Inc., where he builds software 3D graphics applications using Visual Basic, SQL Server and DirectX. He has written more than a dozen books over the years and has over seventy-five articles to his credit. Wayne has been using and writing about Access for nearly ten years, and has over 30 years of experience using all types of computers, from small, embedded microprocessor control systems to large-scale IBM mainframes. He also has a master's degree in management information systems as well as degrees in computer science and electrical engineering.

Table of Contents

Dedication; Preface; Who Should Read This Book; What's in This Book; Conventions Used in This Book; Using Code Examples; We'd Like Your Feedback!; Acknowledgments; Chapter 1: Query Construction; 1.1 Finding Unmatched Records; 1.2 Making AND and OR Do What You Expect; 1.3 Working with Criteria Using the IN Operator; 1.4 Excluding Records with the NOT Operator; 1.5 Parameterizing a Query; 1.6 Returning a Top or Bottom Number of Records; 1.7 Returning Distinct Records; 1.8 Returning Random Records; 1.9 Fine-Tuning Data Filtering with Subqueries; 1.10 Combining Data with Union Queries; 1.11 Inserting On-the-Fly Fields in Select Queries; 1.12 Using Aliases to Simplify Your SQL Statements; 1.13 Creating a Left Join; 1.14 Creating a Right Join; 1.15 Creating an Outer Join; Chapter 2: Calculating with Queries; 2.1 Finding the Sum or Average in a Set of Data; 2.2 Finding the Number of Items per Group; 2.3 Using Expressions in Queries; 2.4 Using Custom Functions in Queries; 2.5 Using Regular Expressions in Queries; 2.6 Using a Cartesian Product to Return All Combinations of Data; 2.7 Creating a Crosstab Query to View Complex Information; Chapter 3: Action Queries; 3.1 Running an Update Query; 3.2 Appending Data; 3.3 Deleting Data; 3.4 Creating Tables with Make-Table Queries; Chapter 4: Managing Tables, Fields, Indexes, and Queries; 4.1 Creating Tables Programmatically; 4.2 Altering the Structure of a Table; 4.3 Creating and Using an Index; 4.4 Programmatically Removing a Table; 4.5 Programmatically Creating a Query; Chapter 5: Working with String Data; 5.1 Returning Characters from the Left or Right Side of a String; 5.2 Returning Characters from the Middle of a String When the Start Position and Length Are Known; 5.3 Returning the Start Position of a Substring When the Characters Are Known; 5.4 Stripping Spaces from the Ends of a String; 5.5 Stripping Spaces from the Middle of a String; 5.6 Replacing One String with Another String; 5.7 Concatenating Data; 5.8 Sorting Numbers That Are Stored as Text; 5.9 Categorizing Characters with ASCII Codes; Chapter 6: Using Programming to Manipulate Data; 6.1 Using Excel Functions from Access; 6.2 Working with In-Memory Data; 6.3 Working with Multidimensional Arrays; 6.4 Sorting an Array; 6.5 Flattening Data; 6.6 Expanding Data; 6.7 Encrypting Data; 6.8 Applying Proximate Matching; 6.9 Using Transaction Processing; 6.10 Reading from and Writing to the Windows Registry; 6.11 Creating Charts; 6.12 Scraping Web HTML; 6.13 Creating Custom Report Formatting; 6.14 Rounding Values; 6.15 Running Word Mail Merges; 6.16 Building a Multifaceted Query Selection Screen; Chapter 7: Importing and Exporting Data; 7.1 Creating an Import/Export Specification; 7.2 Automating Imports and Exports; 7.3 Exporting Data with the FileSystemObject; 7.4 Importing Data with the FileSystemObject; 7.5 Importing and Exporting Using XML; 7.6 Generating XML Schemas; 7.7 Using XSLT on Import or Export; 7.8 Working with XML via the MSXML Parser; 7.9 Reading and Writing XML Attributes; 7.10 Creating an RSS Feed; 7.11 Passing Parameters to SQL Server; 7.12 Handling Returned Values from SQL Server Stored Procedures; 7.13 Working with SQL Server Data Types; 7.14 Handling Embedded Quotation Marks; 7.15 Importing Appointments from the Outlook Calendar; 7.16 Importing Emails from Outlook; 7.17 Working with Outlook Contacts; 7.18 Importing Data from Excel; 7.19 Exporting Data to Excel; 7.20 Talking to PowerPoint; 7.21 Selecting Random Data; Chapter 8: Date and Time Calculations; 8.1 Counting Elapsed Time; 8.2 Counting Elapsed Time with Exceptions; 8.3 Working with Time Zones; 8.4 Working Around Leap Years; 8.5 Isolating the Day, Month, or Year; 8.6 Isolating the Hour, Minute, or Second; 8.7 Adding Time; Chapter 9: Business and Finance Problems; 9.1 Calculating Weighted Averages; 9.2 Calculating a Moving Average; 9.3 Calculating Payback Period; 9.4 Calculating Return on Investment; 9.5 Calculating Straight-Line Depreciation; 9.6 Creating a Loan Payment Schedule; 9.7 Using PivotTables and PivotCharts; 9.8 Creating PivotTables; 9.9 Charting Data; 9.10 Finding Trends; 9.11 Finding Head and Shoulders Patterns; 9.12 Working with Bollinger Bands; 9.13 Calculating Distance Between Zip Codes; Chapter 10: Statistics; 10.1 Creating a Histogram; 10.2 Finding and Comparing the Mean, Mode, and Median; 10.3 Calculating the Variance in a Set of Data; 10.4 Finding the Covariance of Two Data Sets; 10.5 Finding the Correlation of Two Sets of Data; 10.6 Returning All Permutations in a Set of Data; 10.7 Returning All Combinations in a Set of Data; 10.8 Calculating the Frequency of a Value in a Set of Data; 10.9 Generating Growth Rates; 10.10 Determining the Probability Mass Function for a Set of Data; 10.11 Computing the Kurtosis to Understand the Peakedness or Flatness of a Probability Mass Distribution; 10.12 Determining the Skew of a Set of Data; 10.13 Returning a Range of Data by Percentile; 10.14 Determining the Rank of a Data Item; 10.15 Determining the Slope and the Intercept of a Linear Regression; 10.16 Measuring Volatility; Colophon;