Aspects of Databases

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Aspects of Databases

The concept of what is a database is not exactly taxing in theory, but

sometimes it is difficult to visualise what one is. The easiest

example that you will be aware of is that little book full of all your

friends telephone numbers and addresses. For each of the entries you

will record the name, address and telephone number of each person in

the book. What you have done is to create a "record" of that person's

details, so when you fill in one entry you create 1 record. Of course

a little book like this will hopefully not contain just one person's

details (although I have to admit that my own social circle is not

much larger than 1, my last telephone bill was a little under £3). You

will probably enter at least 20 or so people, so you have 20 or

records and this makes up a "file".

So a file consists of lots of records, and each of the records are

made up of name, telephone and address, these 3 things are known as

"fields". Not exactly exciting stuff but the definitions are

important.

In your time you have probably received numerous forms to fill in and

may have had a form that is made up of lots of little boxes that you

have to fill in with capital letters and only in black ink. A bit like

the one below:

Databases

I know that sometimes there are never enough boxes to get in all your

details. For example someone with the surname "Alexanderson-Smith" may

not have enough room. In Folkestone we have a road called "Bouverie

Road West" - it's often difficult to get that one on a form as well.

This issue is the first thing that you have to deal with when setting

up a database. Let's consider the field "surname", how many characters

should we allow, "Alexanderson-Smith" has 18 characters in it, is that

going to be long enough? What about if Miss Alexanderson-Smith were to

get married to a Mr Featherstonehaugh and she wanted to keep her own

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