[Year 12 IT Apps] MS Access - Calculated fields

[Stuart Walkerden (STUW)]

Good Morning everyone
I have often told my students with respect to Microsoft "Just because you can doesn't mean you should". I reckon we should continue to use queries for calculated fields for the following reasons:

*         The VCAA website states that students should "create, edit and use queries". We can sort in tables and sort and group in reports, so although in Access we may not need queries, we must teach students to use them.

*         My understanding of normalisation is that we remove fields dependent on other fields (i.e. calculated fields). Question 9 on the 2012 exam and the examiner's report, expects students to remove calculated fields as part of normalisation.
Cheers

Stuart Walkerden

From: itapps-bounces at edulists.com.au [mailto:itapps-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of ATKINSON-BUCK, Damien
Sent: Thursday, 13 February 2014 1:39 PM
To: Year 12 IT Applications Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: [Year 12 IT Apps] MS Access - Calculated fields

Hi folks,
            Just looking into Outcome 2 and looking at the 2010 version of MS Access. I hadn't noticed before, but you can now create a calculated field  in the table definitions. This means that not only does it do the calculation (duh) but stores that value too, so you no longer have to create a query to do that.
Now, I always stress to my cherubs that one of the primary reasons for making a database is to reduce the amount of space the data is going to take up. This new 'feature' does the reverse. Given hard drives are so cheap and our down databases are comparatively quite small, it doesn't really affect SAC scenarios......... but should we be teaching best practices or "The Way of the Access"? How do others feel about this?
Cheers
Damien

Damien Atkinson-Buck
Head of Learning Area: Technology/Arts
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