Database terminology

DATABASE TERMINOLOGY

A database is a collection of data or information which is held together in an organised or logical way.

An example of a paper-based database is the Yellow Pages directory.

An example of a computerised database is a search engine like Google.

A computerised database can:

• hold a vast amount of data
• be very fast to search for a record
• be easily amended or updated
• store records safely
• easily search for a specific criteria

A paper-based database can:

• only hold what can be stored in a limited physical space
• take a long time to manually search through records
• look untidy because changes have to be done manually
• easily lose or misfile records

A database is suitable to store information because:

• vast amounts of info can be stored
• queries can be run to search for specific records or groups of records
• reports can be produced from the data stored or queries run
• information can be extracted from the database and exported into a word processing package for mail merging.

A database table stores data and information for a particular category.

A record is all of the data or information about one…