Car sales Solution - My task is to imagine my friend is setting up a car locating business and wants to install a computer system.

        I have designed a data capture form, which shows all the details of a certain car. The car information I have entered comes from an ad in the local paper Herald and Post. The car information is taken from a Stanground Autos ad.

        I have decided to create a way of validating data. The data type that needed validating was Mileage and Price. For the Price field the validation rule is; >0 and <10000, this means data input must be more than 0 but less than 10000 pounds. The format is currency; therefore only currency can be entered. The validation text I have put is 'Data input too high please try again! .' This message will pop up every time data is entered that doesn't follow the above rule for Price. For the mileage field the validation rule is; >0 and <90000, this means the data 'miles' should be more than 0 and less than 90000 miles. The format is number, therefore only numbers can be entered. The validation text I have put is 'Data input too high please delete and try again! .'This message will pop up every time data is entered that doesn't follow the above rule for mileage.

        I have created some queries in my database and run them. The first search was for a Ford Focus costing more than £9000 pounds. My query didn't find any results because I do not have a car on the database matching this description. The second search I did was for a Fiat Punto, with 5-drs and with 40000 miles. This search was successful. The query found me a Fiat Punto, modal 60 Sx with 5-dr and 40000 miles costing £3,995. I think this shows this is an effective solution to use. I have put my results into two reports, which helps to show clearly what has been found. For pictures of my search please see query sheets 1&2. I think the database solution has solved the initial problem quite well. The car sales information has been stored successfully without too many problems. It is clear and simple to look through the fields at car information. Certain functions such as, sort ascending mean information, can be put into alphabetical order and can be done for each field. I have found searching for information using queries is fairly simple and accurate, as my results have shown; this is good because it has solved the initial problem. Results are shown in a table, therefore they are clearly presented, to see what has been found. Setting up the database wasn't too hard to do, but might be quite challenging for beginners and takes a bit of practice. Searching using queries was surprisingly simple and quick to use; this would be an asset for businesses with the same type of initial problem.

      I have verified my car sales data to make sure it was accurate.  I checked it myself than asked a friend to see if they could spot any errors. In a proper business thorough verification checks are used on data. Firstly an operator, against the source material checks the data input. This is usually a simple visual check. After that a second operator keys in the same data. The computer has the job of comparing the two files and warns off any mistakes. The source document is then checked again for the correct data.

       I am quite pleased with my finished work but some improvements that could be made to my solution would be: to arrange the car sales data in a more efficient way so better validation rules could be applied.