Electronic Lab Notebook

Purpose:

The purpose for us was to use this first assignment with Access and the FDA Drug Database to see how raw data sets can be distributed and formatted. Source: Week 8 Assignment Page

The other purpose of this assignment was to get practice with database queries using Microsoft Access and its graphical interface. Source: Week 8 Assignment Page

Methods

Preliminary Tasks

Turned on Windows 10 File Extensions

Went to the search menu and typed File Explorer Options" in the search field.
Selected the result
Clicked on the view tab in the File Explorer Options
Unchecked the "Hide extensions for known file types" button.
Clicked OK
Despite warnings that the Seaver 120 computers were set to restore defaults once they have been restarted, the file extensions did not go away. Neither did any of my files. It is possible the computers were not restarted.

Downloading

Note: I did not follow the download options for Firefox and Chrome. When I read this part of the Week 8 assignment I misinterpreted it as an explanation on how to download firefox or Chrome in case the seaver computer we were working on did not include it and then thought it didn't apply to the computer I was working on because I had Chrome. I see now that it was about downloading the FDA Database and not about the actual browser.

To download the database I went to the FDA's official website in the section for the Data Files called Drugs@FDA Data Files
The file was compressed as a .zip file with the raw data sets inside.
I used Windows 10 to open the file and then selected the pink "Extract" button and saved the files in a new folder on the desktop.

Microsoft Access Tasks

My methods and processes are detailed in the below sections. First though, I had to open Microsoft Access by searching for it on the search bar that comes up in the bottom left of the computer. Then I clicked on the icon to open it. Once open, I selected File>New and then clicked on the icon labeled "Blank Database". I then pressed "Create".