An Introduction to the Query Environment

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Before diving into an examination of queries, you should be familiar with the query environment, in which you’ll encounter the query Design view, the design grid, and the SQL view. This section focuses on these aspects of the query environment.

The Query Design View

Figure 9-1 shows the query Design view, in which you’ll identify the tables and queries that you want to include in your query. Notice that the title bar includes the query name and the query type.

Figure 9-1. You’ll create queries in the query Design view.

The upper part of the window displays a field list for each table or query you add to the query. The lower part of the window, known as the design grid, will define the query’s fields and accept expressions as criteria for limiting the results of the query.

The SQL View

The query Design view is probably where most of us create and view queries. Access doesn’t directly interact with queries, however. Instead, Access must translate the query Design view’s version of a query into Jet Structured Query Language (Jet SQL), one of the many versions of SQL.

SQL is a large and varied language, with many versions, but you don’t need to know everything about SQL to take advantage of it. Access translates your query into Jet SQL for you. Figure 9-2 shows the SQL view of the query shown in Figure 9-1.

Figure 9-2. The SQL view displays each query’s equivalent Jet SQL statement.

Throughout this chapter, you’ll see how the elements in the Design view relate to the current query’s Jet SQL statement. Knowing SQL can prove advantageous because you can use it to build more powerful queries than those you construct in the design grid.