have become common in our every day lives. As a student, each time you use Blackboard or SIUE Connect you are using a database.
When you shop online at sites like Amazon, eBay or Barnes and Noble you are using a database to find and purchase a product.
Anytime you search for information on a website like Wikipedia or Ask.com you are using a database.
So what makes a database relational? Within relational databases, data is grouped into subjects/entities. Let’s examine the SIUE Connect database for example.
Examples of subjects/entities into which data inside of this database can be grouped are:
Student data: demographic data about you as a student such as your name, address, contact phone numbers, emergency phone numbers, etc.
Employee data: demographic data about SIUE employees such as their name, address, contact phone numbers, emergency phone numbers, etc.
College data: basic data about colleges at SIUE such as the School of Business, School of Education, College of Arts and Sciences, etc.
Course data: data about courses being offered in a given semester such as CRN Number, Course Name, Available Seats, Day/Time, etc.
Registration data: courses for which each student is registered
Financial aid data: amount of aid offered to and accepted by each student
Data in these groups can be related to each other. For example, when you log into SIUE Connect and register for a class, you create data that links you to a course.
That link relates your data to the course data. Then, the data can be aggregated into information in the form of your course schedule for the semester.
Microsoft Access
is one example of relational database software. Data can be captured in tables within the software and then aggregated for viewing in different formats.
It can be purchased as part of the Microsoft Office Suite and contains features which can be used to interact with other programs in the suite such as Microsoft Word and Excel.
