Databases A database is a collection of data that is stored in a computer system. Databases allow their users to enter, access, and analyze their data quickly and easy.

Definition A database is any organized collection of data or a list of some kind. Some examples of databases you may encounter in your daily life are: a telephone book T.V. Guide airline reservation system motor vehicle registration records papers in your filing cabinet files on your computer hard drive. 

The easiest way to understand a database is to think of it as a collection of lists. Think about our “database” of student notecards. What lists are contained in that database?

Databases are lists, this is true of all databases, from the simplest to the most complex. For instance, if you are creating an list of your friends and their favorite cake flavors, you could create a database. If you wanted to get even more complex you might add your friend’s address and birthdays. Your database would have a list of names, cake flavors, addresses, and birthdays.

But isn’t that what Excel is for? Excel (which is a database) stores data too, but it has a different purpose. Excel is helpful when storing and using numbers. A Database like Access is helpful when storing non-numerical data, like names and descriptions. Databases allow you to sort and analyze this numerical data quickly.

What is really cool about Databases is that they can are relational What is really cool about Databases is that they can are relational. They understand how lists and objects relate to one another. For example, if I had a list of all STAR teachers and all Students Names, I could then create a list of what students are in what star class. The computer would realize that the “Montei” in the student list is the same as the “Montei” in Mr. Walker’s homeroom.

Let’s Look at Some Examples This “Top 10 Books” is a list in a Database. Hunger Games is #1

The computer knows that the Hunger Games in the top 10 list relates to this list.

Which is also related to this list of books by Suzanne Collins

This is what I see when you check out a book This is what I see when you check out a book. The computer knows that this record of Katherine Montei

This is the same Katherine Montei

Relational databases can recognize what a human can: that if the same words appear in multiple lists, they refer to the same thing. The fact that relational databases can handle information this way allows you to enter, search, and analyze data in more than one table at a time. All of these things would be very difficult to do in Excel, but in Access, even complicated tasks can be simplified and made fairly user-friendly.

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