Information & Communication Technology

Once you have obtained the data, you need to store it.

Database programmes are used to store data.

Important terms

DATABASE

FILES

RECORDS

FIELDS

A database is a collection of data.  To keep the data organised it is sorted into files.  Each file contains sets of records.  Each record consists of fields.  Each field can contain different types of data.

Types of Data

LOGICAL / BOOLEAN This data can only be one of two characters. Y for yes N for no

ALPHANUMERIC / TEXT Data consisting of text and numbers.

NUMERIC Data which is only numbers.

DATE Dates are stored as numbers, but it is important to specify that the data is a date.

The table above shows the most common types of data. Different software programmes have additional data types, but these are just variations on the above.

When working with databases you must specify what type of data will be found in each field. This allows the computer to validate (check) that the correct data has been entered in each field. Data validation is an important aspect of entering data. We will learn more about this later.

The Key Field

When setting up a database, it is important to identify one field as the key field. The data in this field is unique to the record and is used to identify an individual record.

BELOW IS AN EXAMPLE OF A DATABASE FILE
DATABASE The database is a collection of data about books.	FILES This specific file shows math books.	RECORDS Each row is a record about a specific book.	FIELDS Each column consists of fields.

You will note, each field has been given a name; Title, Edition and so on. Each field contains different types of data.

LOGICAL / BOOLEAN On Loan	ALPHANUMERIC / TEXT Title Author Publisher ISBN Number	NUMERIC Edition Copyright	DATE Purchase Date

The field called “ISBN Number” has been made the key field because ISBN numbers are unique to each book and as such will never occur more than once.