Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Why Use a Database?

Wikipedia defines database as “a structured collection of records or data stored in a computer.” The “structural description of the type of facts held in that database . . . is known as a schema.” “A schema describes the objects that are represented in the database and the relationships between them.” A relational database represents all the information in the database in the form of multiple related tables.

At UAF we have a program called Databrowser, which appears to fit the Wikipedia description of a relational database. There are many browsers available for general use at the university but the specific browser I need, which is a grant inception to date browser limited to certain departmental org numbers is not.

I want to use the data in reports to which I do have access to create a report in a format to which I currently don’t have access.

1 comment:

Bernard Von Poobely said...

There's a whole section devoted to reports later on in the course as well as a section on making your reports look especially nice.