Chapter 4. Designing the Database

Data. Databases. It just kind of makes sense. If you have data, you need to put it somewhere. And what better place to put it than in a "data" base?

Just to make sure I had all the "bases" covered, I did a quick search on the Internet for a useful definition. What a shock. According to virtually every web site I found, a database is "a collection of data organized for easy retrieval by a computer." With a definition like that, pretty much everything I put on my system is stored in a database. All of my disk files are organized for easy access. My saved emails can be sorted by subject or date received or sender, so they must be in a database, too. Even this document can be searched and sorted in any manner I wish. Is it a database?