Ash Manor School

Computing Department

Databases

Databases are used to store data. Data can be entered into a database, and it can be retrieved from a database. Information is data which is organised into a more human readable format. There are two types of people concerned with databases. Those that design databases, and those that use databases. You will already have used database theory whenever you have made a table to store your results in science, maths or geography. The purpose of this unit is to level up your skills in order that you can create databases with multiple tables, and become a more proficient user.

Databases can be visualised as a series of related tables of information. Each table stores information about a type of entity. The rows of each table store records - information about a specific entity. The columns of each table store information about one aspect of each entity. There are four basic commands which a database can perform once it is designed.

Aims

This is an introduction to databases, and how they are used

By the end of this unit you will learn:

Activity 1

The planets are interesting features of our solar system which we can use to make a database for. We can use this database later to extract critical information to use later.

Learning aims:

The planets

Our information about the planets comes from the following source http://www.bobthealien.co.uk/table.htm.

  1. Who wrote the source webpage?
  2. How can you tell they are an authority or not?
  3. When was the webpage last updated?

Read this first.

Then this.

The first step in designing a database is to design a set of facts. a fact is a sentence that relates to a set of information.

Example

Note that each of these "binary facts" goes with the same pattern. The entity with the unique property ___ has a property of ___
  1. What is the entity in each of the examples?
  2. What is the unique property in eack of the examples?
  3. What are the properties in each of the three examples?
  4. Write 4 more binary fact sentences from the tables provided.

When we talk about databases - we call these properities "fields". We call the field that is unique to each entity its "key"

The purpose of a key is to speed up searching for things.

In this activity you will prepare a flat file database. This is not too different to what you could achieve in Excel, and yes excell may be a better tool for what yuou achieve in this activity, but we will take this further in the next exercises.

Activity Presentation.

What to submit

At the end of this activity you will need to upload the following evidence of completion. You should put all of this into a single word document.

Make sure you keep your original documentation, you will need this again later.

Activity 2

Guided Database creation.

Learning aims:

Starter

How do Elmo and Katy Perry explain Boolean?

Using the Database we have made so far.

We are going to use the database you have constructed to make a form and a query. In the form we are going to create a calulated value.

What to submit

At the end of this activity you will need to upload the following evidence of completion. You should put all of this into a single word document.

Activity 3

Guided Research

Learning aims:

Starter

Data and information

Data in a database has a type. This gives the computer some idea of how it is to store the data that you give it. Read this for an intro to data types

Task

Read the following web page about data types. Then answer the following questions in a word document. Upload your word document

Download this page as a word document.

Answer the questions, and resubmit into the moodle.

Upload your answers to the moodle.

Activity 4

Going further

Learning aims:

What about the moons?

So far we have used a simple flat database. A flat database is based on only one table. We can make much more use of our database if we use a relational structure. In this exercise we will expand our database by expanding it to encompas a second type of entity.

New entiry types require new tables. We are going to have to design a new table which relates to moons. This is very simmilar to the process we did for creating the table about planets except that we will be including one extra field which links our moon to the correct planet.

When we have done this we can do some cool things, We will make a new type of form, and report that deals with the moons to demonstrate some of these features.

What to hand in.

Please submit the following in a single word document

Activity 5

Database Creation Exercise

Learning aims:

Task

Pick one project brief, and create a database which resolves the problem stated.

  1. Create a movie database which contains the details of the movies you have watched and the actors/actresses who atarred in them
  2. Create a database of the courses available to you at the local colleges, make sure all the relavent details for each course are included.
  3. Create a database for storing homework assignments in. Include all the relavent details.

You will need to hand in the following:

Activity 6

Extension Exercise

Learning aims:

offline check