databases

Hi,

I'm sure someone will give you a much better definition of a database than me, but since you just asked for an overall understanding my basic knowledge will do as a start. There are two main database types that I know of, relational databases and object oriented databases. You could do a search for either of those on google.

The database is used to create persistent information, ie information that is stored in some way and can then be accessed on request. The relational database stores data in tables, such as a table of peoples addresses etc. The power comes from being able to create relations between tables. This is done using primary keys in each table. A primary key is something that uniquely identifies an entry in a table (such as your bank account number, no other account has the same number even if it's a seperate account in your name). The primary key can appear in other tables, and so relations between the tables can be made. This is obviously very much simplified, but I hope you can see the basic point. The data in the database will be accessed using something like SQL, which is an imperitive program language used to query the database. It's not too complicated to begin to understand.

As to how to create and use databases, I can't help you with that. You would use an off-the-shelf database like MSAccess (if it was a small project), or one of the bigger commercial databases, but I don't yet know how to actually go about doing it.

I'd welcome anyone to correct me, or explain the basics concepts in a more concise way. I recently learnt the basics of databases in my degree course and will be doing a more in-depth course on them after christmas, so this thread will be useful to me too.

Hope this helps in some way Justin :)

though, in contradiction to khp's recommendations, if you are totally clueless as to what a database is, you should have a play with microsoft access first; define some tables, run some queries.. see what you get and how it works. ignore forms, reports and macros... jsut get used to actual DATA and queries.. you'll get bogged down trying to learn about a database if you approach them programmatically

Ok, but you can also find lots of primer resources on the web that would help you understand what it is theoretically, before you jump in with both feat. Probably reading a little bit first woudl really help you accelerate your learning, and when playing around with whatever DB, would enable you to cement what you've read into practical, applicable knowledge.

hmm...i was under the impression that a database was a 3 dimensional table, is there any such thing?

thanks in advance,
justin