Understanding Database Basics - Part 1

Real-time data analysis and business intelligence is an essential in the modern business world to keep track of the vast amounts of information a business collects and to make the best use of it. Modern data analysis systems are highly complex, having the ability to cut and slice huge amounts of complex information and present it to the end user in a way that is both easy to understand and useful.

In fact, collecting this information, analyzing it and making business decisions based on this data is the key to success for many businesses. However, many end users do not understand the basics of even the simplest database, or how the information is organized or stored. So in this two-part article we look at the basics of databases and database management.

Basically, a database is a collection of organized information that is stored on a computer. This information can be about anything - people, flights, cars, you name it. A library catalogue is a typical example of a working database, and we will continue to use this as an example in these articles.

A simple relational database will contain three essential components - tables, records and fields. So, using the library example you may have a table that contains the information on every book in the library. This table, lets call it books, will look like any table with rows and columns.

Each row on this table is known as a record and it represents a unique item in the database, in this case a book. However, there will be a lot of information to be stored about each book so this will be contained in the columns or fields. Therefore, each row will have at least one field, or column. In this case, for each book the fields will include information like a book ID number, book title, author, publisher, publication date, whether it is checked out and so on.

However, there are more things to keeping a library catalog than storing information about books. You will also need a table containing the details of library members. In this case, each record will represent a member and the fields will contain details like membership number, name, address, and so on.

There will probably be more tables as well. There may be a book categories table (fiction, non-fiction, autobiographies, reference, etc), a book status table (checked in, checked out, reserved, missing, etc), and many more tables.

This is all essential information for a library. In the second part of this article we will look at how tables are linked to form a relational database, and how the end user can make sense of the huge amount of data stored in the database.

 

Written by: David C Skul - CEO

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