Generally, the word database is a computer term for a collection of information concerning a certain topic or business application. Databases help you organize this related information in a logical fashion for easy
access and retrieval.

Databases aren’t only for computers. There are also manual databases; we simply refer to these as manual filing systems or manual database systems. These filing systems usually consist of people’s names, papers, folders, and filing cabinets—paper is the key to a manual database system. In a real  anual database system, you probably have in/out baskets and some type of formal filing method. You access information manually by opening a file cabinet, taking out a file folder, and finding the correct piece of paper. You use paper forms for input, perhaps by using a typewriter. You find information by manually sorting the papers or by copying information from many papers to another piece of paper (or even into an Excel spreadsheet). You may use a spreadsheet or calculator to analyze the data or display it in new and interesting ways.

An Access database is nothing more than an automated version of the filing and retrieval functions of a paper filing system. Access databases store information in a carefully defined structure. Access tables store data in a variety of forms, from simple lines of text (such as name and address) to complex data such as pictures, sounds, or video images. Storing data in a precise, known format enables a database management system (DBMS) like Access to turn data into useful information.

Tables serve as the primary data repository in an Access database. Queries, forms, and reports provide access to the data, enabling a user to add or extract data, and presenting the data in useful ways. Most developers add macros or Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) code to forms and reports to make their applications easier to use.

A relational database management system (RDBMS), such as Access, stores data in related tables. For instance, a table containing employee data (names and addresses) may be related to a table containing payroll data (pay date, pay amount, and check number). Queries allow the user to ask complex  uestions (such as “What is the sum of all paychecks issued to Jane Doe in 2007?”) from these related tables, with the answers displayed as onscreen forms and printed reports.

In Access, a database is the overall container for the data and associated objects. It is more than the collection of tables, however—a database includes many types of objects, including queries, forms, reports,
macros, and code modules.

Access works a single database at a time. As you open Access, a single database is presented for you to use. You may open several copies of Access at the same time and simultaneously work with more than one database. Many Access databases contain hundreds, or even thousands, of tables, forms, queries, reports, macros, and modules. With a few exceptions, all of the objects in an Access 2007 database reside within a single file with an extension of accdb, .accde, or .adp.

The .adp file format is a special database format used by Access to act as a front end to work with SQL Server data.

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