{"id":71,"date":"2012-12-09T15:58:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-09T21:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chrystalsander.com\/blog\/?p=71"},"modified":"2023-07-26T12:37:22","modified_gmt":"2023-07-26T17:37:22","slug":"sql-introduction-to-databases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrystalsander.com\/blog\/?p=71","title":{"rendered":"SQL: Introduction to Databases"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the sake of the more non-technical people, a database <\/a>is a computer full of spreadsheets.  Anytime you’ve looked at data in a grid-format, then you’ve looked at a spreadsheet at some point.  For example, Microsoft Excel<\/a> is the most popular spreadsheet software among office folks.  Why do people use databases if they can just look at data in a spreadsheet?  There are many of wonderful uses of databases, but the most necessary can be narrowed down to two:  size<\/i><\/b> <\/span>and reporting.<\/span><\/i><\/b>
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<\/span><\/i><\/b>
\nSIZE<\/i><\/span><\/b>
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\nData gets big very quickly.  In Excel 2007, a user can enter 16,384 columns and 1,048,576 rows.  This seems like allot of data!  Your computer very well might crash if you tried to open an Excel spreadsheet containing a million rows, not to mention the amount of hard-drive space this would take!<\/p>\n

A database is a dedicated piece of software created specifically for large amounts of data.  Usually, a database will run on a computer that contains only databases.<\/p>\n

REPORTING<\/i><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Businesses operate on data.  A business might use an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of the cost of office supplies.  Another business might have to keep track a chain of store inventories s across the country and what inventory is in each store.  They also might want to know what product sells more in the Midwest as opposed to the West Coast.  Data is useless without a means <\/i>to make sense of it all.   Databases provide such means in a cost-effective and efficient manner.    With proper setup, a query into a database can search through millions of rows to find the one piece of information that you want and do it in a matter of milliseconds.<\/p>\n

Databases can be as simple or as complex as you can imagine.  From cell phones to ATMs — all are dependent on data systems.  The world runs on data. Now you know what I am referring to when I talk about databases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the sake of the more non-technical people, a database is a computer full of spreadsheets.  Anytime you’ve looked at data in a grid-format, then you’ve looked at a spreadsheet at some point.  For example, Microsoft Excel is the most popular spreadsheet software among office folks.  Why do people use databases if they can just look … Continue reading “SQL: Introduction to Databases”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrystalsander.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrystalsander.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrystalsander.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrystalsander.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrystalsander.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrystalsander.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrystalsander.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions\/191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrystalsander.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrystalsander.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrystalsander.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}