The Database Application Storing the data that business collects

What is a database? It’s a collection of information. Customer details for a business Patient records at the doctors Member details at the leisure centre Product details for a business CD’s, videos & books at the library The list is endless ………………………..

How is data stored? On paper, for example: a telephone directory a card index On a computer the database application

I know that ‘phone number’s here somewhere!!! Databases on paper I know that ‘phone number’s here somewhere!!! These are hard work Vast amounts of paper needed Only one person at a time can use each document Searching for something takes a long time Documents can get lost Gathering information from different documents takes a long time

Databases on a computer Life gets a bit easier (advantages) Large amounts of data is stored in a small space More than one user can see the data at any one time A computer can search the database quickly for specific information The stored data is less likely to be lost

Databases on a computer There’s always a downside (disadvantages) The computer equipment you need will be relatively expensive to buy and install Initial cost of collecting the data and setting up the database will be high To make the system effective staff need to be trained If the system fails you cannot access the information

Structure of a database All databases have the same structure They contain records. Each record holds all the data about one person (or one product, or one thing). E.g. the Argos catalogue contains hundreds of records. One of them contains details about a television. Each record is divided into fields. Each field holds one item of data about the person, product or thing. E.g. the record for the television has fields for ‘Make’, ‘Model’, ‘Price’, ‘Cat No’, ‘Description’.

Structure of a database This is a database of members at a leisure centre Can you identify one record from this database? How many fields can you see in this database? Does each record contain the same fields? One item of data should be unique to each record. This is called the key field. Which field here is the key field?