What Is A Database?

When used in reference to computers a database is simply a collection of organized and stored information (data). Databases provide an excellent way to store, search, retrieve, and manipulate large amounts of related information.

There are specific programs for working with data. Database systems like Open Office Base, Microsoft Access, and others can have a high learning curve but they provide great power for working with large amounts of information. Spreadsheets like Open Office Calc, or Excel, are a way of working with, and visually representing, the contents of a database. Spreadsheets are most often thought as working with numeric or financial data, though this is not always the case.

This article, and all the articles on this site, are stored in a database and retrieved, as required, when you click on the various links on these pages. The web page process that is used to access the database on this site uses a programming lanuage called Standard Querry Lanquage (SQL) and, in particular, a version of that called MySQL. This is a powerful process for storing, retrieving, and manipulating data stored at a website.

A database is the entire collection of information stored on a particular site. That information is often broken into sub-groups of similar, or directly related, information called tables. On a site like this one member information might be stored in one table, articles in another, and blog entries in yet another. Within tables the information is divided further into that information relating to a single thing or idea within the table grouping. This further sub-division is called a record. In a membership table each member might have their own record. Records contain a collection of individual pieces of information that relate to that one thing or idea. Each piece of information is stored in a field. In a membership table, within each member's record, there might be a field for the member's name, (maybe even one for each of their first and last names separately), their phone number, their street address, the city they live in, their country, zip code, their sign-up date, their last login date, etc. Any single piece of information that may be needed will usually be stored in its own field.