Using a database

An example database I tunes

What data is stored? Song name Artist Time Album Genre And lots more These are called “Fields” of data Lots of fields make up a “record”

The importance of databases in the digital world Can you think of any other examples of how databases may be used? SIMS Police criminal records Shop stock databases Marketing databases (customer profiling) There are lots and lots of uses!

180629195445 What is it? This is a piece of “DATA”…. It could mean anything…. Give it a context e.g. if I told you it was a Barcode number for a product in a shop….. You now have “INFORMATION”

Hence… Data acquires meaning through its context INFORMATION IS DATA WITH MEANING In other words, facts and figures on their own haven’t very much use, add a context to them and they will mean something to you and therefore be useful!

In this lesson students are learning about: relational databases records and queries in databases

At the end of this lesson students will be able to: explain the purpose and target audience for the Clothes4U database differentiate between data and information enter records into the database construct queries to extract information from the database

Clothes4U Scenario Clothes4u provide a personal shopping experience. Clients who haven’t got the time or don’t enjoy shopping for themselves ask you to source and supply items of clothing for them. Clothes can be purchased online. You will be managing this online business on a day-to-day basis and communicating with customers. You will be required to: Find clothes to suit the needs of different customers and add to the database Select clothes for customers and create a ‘Style List’ that will list the clothes that have been chosen.

Task You will need to ‘flesh out’ this scenario. Who are your customers? What sort of clothes do your customers like? Why do your customers need/want a personal shopper? Decide on an audience profile and fill in the Audience Profile Form.doc. Save this profile in their user area. (You should create a new folder called SB1 for this block of work.)

Introducing the Clothes4U database – navigating and adding records Your teacher will now give you a demonstration of how to use the Clothes4u database…. Database structure (linked tables, records, fields). The concept of linked tables as a method of avoiding duplicated data and making the database more efficient. Demonstrate how to use the data entry form to enter new records. Task: Save a copy of the database file in your SB1 folder. Task: practise entering records into the database.

Using the database – searching for information So what if I wanted to find something? For example…. “Mrs Brown wants an evening dress. Her budget is £500, but she hopes to get away with spending less.” You can create a “query” in the database which will “interrogate” the data…. Basically this means you can set up the database to search for some information based on particular “criteria”

One more example… Anja needs a list of the email addresses and phone numbers of companies that stock T-shirts

Over to you… Complete these three queries yourself… Tara Jameson wants to buy a hoody for her brother and wants to get an idea of price. Tom and Imran are going to a Black Tie dinner at work. They need to wear a tuxedo. They have a budget of £150. Anja needs a list of the telephone numbers of companies that stock jeans for women.

And finally… database Ordering records into a list record Stores all records for a set of data Ordering records into a list table A way of entering data into a database field A row in a table sorting searching A database containing more than one table A column in a table data entry form A collection of information relational database Looking for information in a database