Training Report Introduction to Database (MS Access) Kabul January 2004 United Nations Development Program (UNDP) 1
Introduction: Background: AIMS is more aiming toward capacity building for the government staff rather than providing day to day map support to the Aid community (UN and NGO). This message is getting clearer and projects to our daily activities and deliveries. Need: Presently AIMS is in a process of transformation of objectives and we are rapidly changing our objectives from humanitarian to development phase. It means that we are moving from mapping product services towards capacity building activities for the different ministries of the government. As we are rapidly evolving, it will be important to maintain our professional standard. This could be achieving through upgrading the existing skills of AIMS National staffs. The skills of the national staffs in the region must be upgrade regularly. They hold a key potential of future development of AIMS. In this regards it is important to organize regular training to upgrade their skills form office management to various aspects of GIS technology. GIS mapping has close links with relational Database. We have a competent and separate section on Database in our Kabul office but there is a great need of that in our regional offices. It is true that we receive support from the central offices we need to improve similar capacity in the region as well. This will reduce the pressure to the Kabul office and enable more capacity in the regional office to support the various government ministries. This proposal is drafted to organize a Access database training for the field assistants that will enable them enhance their knowledge on functionality of database and its applications in GIS mapping. Goal: Enhance the capacity of AIMS regional offices in efficient deliveries. Database training will lead the capacity of regional offices towards MIS. Target Group: All field assistants will be assessed according to their level of database knowledge and will select for the training. Which will include all the regional offices as well as central office of AIMS. 2
Participation: The course was participated by the following offices & Department of AIMS: Number of Participant Regional Field GIS IT Department Administration Offices Department Department 6 2 1 2 Organization: The training course was organized by the AIMS team consist of one international and three National Officers; which was closely monitored with AIMS Database Department for the training part and administration office for the logistic support. Course manual was distributed for review (on the Share drive) and later finalized it by the training team. The training manual was distributed to the trainees on the first day of the training for understanding. Objective: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) AIMS internal capacity building initiative to reduce the pressure of the AIMS database department. Enhance the individual Database Capacity, especially for the regional offices Capable to develop, design database, finally perform capacity building on database development to the government departments. Prepare a guideline for the training Develop a standard database training material (use the Database section) to replicate it. Expected output: Database in important for GIS and information management, therefore it is essential to make AIMS regional offices enable to work on database development. As it was considered as basic database training, it tried to cover the database concept (in brief), design and development. It is expected that all the regional field offices will be able to work on basic database development and enhance their capacity towards Government capacity building on database development. 3
Limitation: Such kind of training scope is always a value added to the field or regional assistants that will help them to step forward toward capacity building mandate of the organization. Though it was well designed as well as organized, there are some limitation that need to be addressed for the future capacity building program. Slide Show for teaching rather teaching from Notes Exercises after each session need to be revised & make it more simple Exercises & Examples needs to be more relevant to our work Distribution of Hand Book in advance to the participants to get familiar with MS Access software. Time limitation, the course was designed for 6 days & we conducted it in 5 days Training Schedule: Day Theory Topic Lab Topic Day 1 Concept of Database Relational Database Day 2 Table Table Day 3 Query & Form (Part-1) Query & Form (Part-1) Day 4 Form (Part-2) & Report Form (Part-2) & Report Day 5 Course Evaluation, exam Course Evaluation: Both trainee and the trainer s had chance to evaluate the course. The Comments and the evaluation by the trainees were given in the following matrix. Comments or Remarks on the following issues: More detail Exercise Time Requirement (job related) One training at a time Feed back on exercise 50% 20% 20% 10% Matrix on Course Evaluation Form: Training Course Evaluation Point Very good Good Adequate Poor Very Poor No Comments Expectation Fulfilled 60 40 Benefit current knowledge 80 10 10 Lecture Quality: 60 40 Course Material Quality: 10 80 10 Exercise Quality & Quantity: 50 40 10 Time Allocation: 10 40 30 10 10 4
Matrix on Course Evaluation Trainers Feedback: AIMS Project (UNDP) The Comments and the evaluation by the trainers were given in the following matrix. Training Course topics grasp ( apply implement perform Comments Database Concepts 60% 30% 75% 30% Concept was learned but unable to apply it when designing a db. MS Access Tables 100% 100% 100% 100% Everyone knows how to create tables. MS Access Queries 90% 85% 75% 75% SQL Queries were very well learnt but some have difficulty implementing MS Access Forms 90% 70% 60% 60% Some Problems with linking Sub-forms MS Access Reports 80% 60% 60% 55% Unable to implement GROUP BY and calculations Overall Rating 84% 69% 74% 64% The students would be able to do much better after a second round of training Conclusion: This was AIMS internal capacity building initiative for the field assistant, but later different department of the office were interested and completed the course. The course was well planned and well designed though time was a major factor for such training courses. Therefore, it is important to keep it in mind (time factor) that need to review and if possible requires more time for such kind of training. Finally, it is important to mention that AIMS database department dedicated their time and resources to bring the training course in a success and make it possible. 5
Exam on Database training (Questionnaire) Course Evaluation Test PART I Design a database and name it Payroll Database. The specifications of the project are listed below: 1. Project should be able to track the following information on a project: Information Example of Information Employee First Name Shoaib Employee Last Name Zazai Birthday 21-Mar-1969 Designation Finance Officer Department Finance Employment Start Date 20-Jan-2003 Employment End Date 31-Dec-2003 Salary US$ 1250 Tax Deduction US$ 22.45 Annual Tax Deduction Sum of 12 months of tax deduction Contract Type Possible values (SSA, SC, FT, ALD Local, ALD Int) Whether employee is Local Possible values (Local, International) or International Address Home Home Address of employee District Home Address s District (example Kabul) Province Kabul Address Permanent Permanent address of employee District Permanent Address s city (example Mehtarlam) Province Laghman Telephone Extension 2566 Note for the Employee General Info about employee s background 2. Each employee can have only one designation at a time. 3. Each employee can work only in one department. 4. Each employee s addresses are to be maintained. If an employee shifts from one house to another, his previous address data is to be maintained and not overwritten. Each new address is to be added against his record. 5. Each employee can have multiple addresses. One can be his home address, another his mailing address, another his village address, etc. Each address has to be specifically differentiated (like as shown in the table below) Address Address Type Name Type ID 1 Mailing Address 2 Current Address 3 Permanent Address 4 Old Address 5 Other 6. Addresses are to be at the district level and not the village level. Note: This part of the exercise should be done on a blank piece of paper. 6
PART II AIMS Project (UNDP) Using the above design, create the tables in a new blank database and name it PAYROLL DB. PART III Populate your tables with dummy data. Carry out the following queries on your database: 1. Select all those employees who are in the Finance department. 2. Select all those employees whose Mailing Address Province is Kabul. 3. Select All those employees whose Salary is greater than US$1000 and Contract Type is FT. 4. Select All employees whose Employment Start Date is BETWEEN 01-Aug- 2003 AND 01-Sep-2003. 5. Select All those employees who are younger than 21. 6. Select the Sum of Tax Deduction for all employees for the 1 st 6 months of 2003 i.e. from 01-Jan-2003 to 01-Jul-2003). 7. Select All employees whose Last Name begins with a and ends with a. 8. Use a query to retrieve the following data for our staff list report (Last Name, First Name, Designation, Department, Employment Start Date, Employment End and Salary). 9. You have realized that the department of Marketing and Sales have been joined together as one by the name of Marketing. How would you update the department of employees from Sales to Marketing? Write the SQL Statement. 10. Use a delete query to delete the Sales department from its relevant table. PART IV Using the above design, create all the forms required for this database. Also create a Switchboard form to enable a user to navigate between forms. (Using switchboard manager). PART V Using Province1, Distirct1 and Village1 tables generate a report for Kabul, Hirat, and Bamyan Provinces. Show number of villages in each district (use Design View or Report Wizard). 7