Chapter 7: Designing and Using PivotTables and PivotCharts

Overview

This chapter explores the capabilities of PivotTables and PivotCharts in Microsoft Access 2003. PivotTables and PivotCharts initially gained popularity in Microsoft Excel, where they're used by financial and operational analysts to probe data that shapes strategic and tactical decision making. Access 2003 inherits its PivotTable and PivotChart functionality from the PivotTable list control and Chart control available through the Office 2003 Web Components. Chapter 14 revisits Office 2003 Web Components and drills down further into their capabilities. Access 95 was the first Access version to offer PivotTables. Since then, the capabilities and analytical speed of this feature have grown steadily. PivotCharts appeared for the first time in Access in the 2002 version.

Access 2003 offers Access developers the most advanced PivotTable and PivotChart capabilities, tightly integrated with the full range of Access features. The fact that tables, queries, forms, reports , views, and stored procedures in Access 2003 projects utilize PivotTable and PivotChart views is a testament to how integral PivotTables and PivotCharts have become. With Access 2003, developers can take advantage of the Microsoft Office 2003 Web Components (owc11.dll) object model to simplify constructing PivotTable and PivotChart objects programmatically.

Both PivotTables and PivotCharts enable you to display data in an interactive manner. End users are likely to find PivotTables and PivotCharts appealing because of their easy-to-use, interactive interface. And programmers can readily compute the data depicted in PivotTables and PivotCharts based on their clients ' record sources. The usefulness of programmatically constructed PivotTables and PivotCharts might render obsolete some traditional data analysis tools, such as crosstab queries and charts based on older technology, such as the Microsoft Graph 2000 Chart ActiveX control. As the popularity of PivotTables and PivotCharts continues to grow among end users, the demand for programmers who can readily create and edit these display devices will increase as well. Read this chapter if you want to be one of those programmers.