ESS 309

ELECTRONIC SPREADSHEET & RECORD MANAGEMENT Prepared by: Cik Siti Khairunnisa Baharudin

Introduction to database
Identifying database Identifying Database Management System (DBMS) Identifying database terminology: table, attribute, keys attribute, compose attribute, domain, record relationship. Designing database Creating base table database

What Is A Database?
Database is a collection of information in a structured way. We can say that it is a collection of a group of facts. Your personal address book is a database of names you like to keep track of, such as personal friends and members of your family. Let us look into our example of information on students . A sample of 5 students is presented in the table below (see, Fig. 20.1). We have given 6 items of information on every student, namely, Roll No, Name, Date of birth, Sex, Postal address and Subjects offered by the student.

 Fig. 20.1 contains required details about each student. There are six pieces of information on each student. They are Roll No, Name, Date of birth, Sex, Address and Subjects. Each piece of information in database is called a Field. We can define field as the smallest unit in a database. Each field represents one and only one characteristic of an event or item. Thus there are six fields in this database.

ROLL NO

NAME Subrat Das

DATE OF BIRTH 21.05.1980

SEX M

ADDRESS

SUBJECTS

9721001

C36, Sector 2, Pol Sc, Eco, Bhubaneswar History, Eng, Orissa Hindi Phy, Chem, At/Po. Burla, Biology, Eng, Sambal Pur Hindi A31, Pilani, Rajasthan 12A, Sheikh Sarai-I, New Delhi Pol Sc, Eco, History, Eng, Hindi Phy, Chem, Biology, Eng, Hindi

9721002

Aditya Bhoi

12.06.1981

9732012

Madhu Jain

03.01.1979

9724004

Ahmad Ali

23.11.1979

9715023

C. Suresh

07.09.1980

Pol Sc, Eco, 96, Malviya History, Eng, Nagar, Bhopal Hind

If you take a close look at all these fields, they are not of the same type. Date of birth is date type whereas Name is character type. In database there can be five categories of fields. They are: Numeric, Character, Logic, Memo, Date

Now we are in a position to define database in a formal manner. We can say that it is a collection of logically related records. In other words a database is a collection of database files, and each database file is a collection of records. The task before us is creation of a database and its management. Data management involves creating, modifying, deleting and adding data in files, and using this data to generate reports or answer queries. The software that allows us to perform these functions easily is called a Data Base Management System (DBMS). Using a DBMS files can be retrieved easily and effectively. There are many DBMS packages available in the market. Some of them are: dBASE III Plus FoxBASE Plus SoftBASE Clipper Paradox There are some WINDOWS based database packages available in the market such as MS ACCESS (part of MS OFFICE)

Database Terminology
Table is a set of data elements (values) that is organized using a model of vertical columns (which are identified by their name) and horizontal rows. A table has a specified number of columns, but can have any number of rows Attribute - Represent information about an entity instance or an object. For example, the birth date or Social Security number of an employee. Keys Attribute Database relationship - A relationship exists between two database tables when one table has a foreign key that references the primary key of another table.