A career in Microsoft Access??? what training??

[lucyh]

Hiya - I would love to work self employed as a database designer, creating and maintaining databases for small companies.

I have never had any training in Access and am pretty much self taught at this point.

Can anyone recommend any training courses that I could take that would enable me to persue this career? I work full time so it would need to be online or parttime night / weekend college.

I live in Northern Ireland at the moment.

Is there anyone on here that even does Database design on a self employed basis? If so any tips?

Thanking you

[Lysander]

I currently work for a charity, but for the past 10-15 years have worked as a freelance Access Consultant.

You need a good grounding in relational database theory. I got mine as part of my degree with the Open University.

You then need some good development books on MS-Access, I can recommend books by Litwin, Gertz and Gilbert.

I also attended two weekend residential seminars, by Litwin and Gertz, but this was some 15 years ago so not sure if they are still running them.

As well as mastering Access, you will need to be able to explain your ideas and solutions to, "the working peasent who has no interest in what you are doing", "Junior management who are convinced you are taking their job away from them", "Board directors who think you can solve all their problems in 24 hours", "Board directors who think you are a waste of resource"

I.E. You need to be able to relate to people at all levels and convince them that your own and only purpose is to help them and their company.

From my experience since 1993, as a freelance contractor, you are on your own, there is no-one to pass the buck too, you have to solve every problem yourself.

Hence, groups like this are invaluable, you need to have access to on-line resources that can help solve the problems you are stuck with. (And this group has solved many problems for me, same as I hope I have solve some problems for others on this group)

Finally, it seems a diminishing market atm. Last time I worked freelance was 1999 and I was taking home £55/hour tax free. Today, I earn £16/hour paye and looking at the freelance options out there, the rate is a lot lower than it was in 1999.

Oh, and don't go for small companies. I tried that when I first started, and they don't have the resources or the money to use you. Go for British Gas, the big banks, huge companies, or, acedimic places, like Royal Collegde of Nursing, LSE, LSHTM, UCL (Ok, these are all london unis, but there must be similar in Northern Ireland)

All of the above is just my cynical opinion from working as a freelance Access consultant since 1993 but hope it helps.

(Oh, and be very wary of standard training courses, they all seem to be geared up to users, not developers. I, myself, am looking for a training course in Access 2010 and can't find anything at developer level)

[lucyh]

Thanks Lysander for your response :o)

I will have to take a look at Open Uni courses. I have been mulling it all weekend and think its worth looking at. I would have alot of studying to do though!!! Someone showed me the basics 10 years ago - "this is a table, this is a form and this is a report and this is a query". Since then any excuse in work to make a database..!!

Most things in access make some sense to me but I may as well be reading chinese when I look at visual basic stuff...havent a clue!! lol

[Lysander]

Lucyh, VBA is essential for an Access developer, but not the hardest thing. It takes some time to master it, but there are many good books and tutorials, including a load of VBA 'Insights' on this forum.

Personally, I believe the biggest challenge is understanding what a relational database is about, normalisation, EAR diagrams etc. So many people (not those on this forum, I mean casual users) assume a database is just a more complex spreadsheet and they have no idea of the theory behind it.

I am not sure if you can pick Relational Database Theory from a book, maybe others here can suggest something, but I do know the OU offer course in it, that can be taken stand-alone, i.e. not part of a degree.

Good luck and let me know how you get on:)

[malcolmk]

I take exception to the peasant comment Lysander,( hopefully it was meant in jest rather than a putdown ), it is in my experience of working life (some 30+ years) the peasant who knows the full story of just exactly what the job function entails. Most management have the attitude of, I want that over there and this somewhere else but don't have a clue as to what resources are needed to accomplish it and more importantly of any detrimental knockon effect. I dare say this holds true for data management projects as much as for simple manual job functions. Without the peasant where would we be ;)

[Lysander]

Oops, sorry Malcolm. Yes it was meant in jest, and as I wrote it I thought, will this cause offense, no, course not, they know what I mean.

I worked for 12 years in WHSmith as a 'peasant', my father worked all his life for the GPO/BT as a 'peasant'.

What I meant to imply was, non-manegerial people, i.e. the working class (of which I am proud to be one of) don't take to kindly to outside contractors coming in and will often obstruct you in your work as a contractor unless you can find a way to relate to them.

(As an IT staff in my last full time job, 1992, we had two contractors in. One was obviously trying to steal my job and I did everything I could get away with to hinder his work. The other guy was open, honest, helpful, helped my job and my work, and at the end of the day, it was this guy, Brendan Whellan, who helped into contracting myself and gave me a lot of tips and advice.

I actually meant 'peasant' as a positive word, in the same way that most working class use 'manager' as a negative word.

Sorry for causing offense.

[lucyh]

Can anyone recommend any free online training that would take me as far as possible in learning about Access then I can be sure that taking on an open Uni course would be the next step. It would be my luck that I wouldn't beable to do the Relational Database Theory course as I don't have enough know how to begin with :o)

I had a look at the Relational Database Theory course offered by Open uni and it looks good, it doesnt state how much it will be though, any ideas?

[Lysander]

The OU course, Relational databases: theory and practice, cost £415 last year. This years fees have not been set.

This is a 3rd year course, and you might need to do a lower level course first, to get familiar with how the OU works.

http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/course/m359.htm