What is a Database, really? Data Storage for Librarians « The Other Librarian - 0 views
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IMT122 IMT122 Reading List Week 06 Topic 06 Supplementary Reading Databases Libraries
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A Text File Good old text is still not a bad way to store data.
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If you want to retrieve that information, you can use a script to tell the computer to organize the information in a particular way. This is called parsing
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Structured Text As you climb the data food chain, complex systems get developed to organize information.
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Mark-up: Marked information is data that has marks or signals to let a computer distinguish one type of data from the other.
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An array: An array is a type of variable that includes a list used by computer programs for later manipulation.
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An object: Explaining objects in full requires that someone read up on object-oriented programming.
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Tree-based Structures Tree-based structures, or cluster models are a subset of “structured text” data storage models.
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The Relational Model The relational model is better than a tree-model when your dataset is large and complicated. The way it works is, instead of thinking in terms of “parents, siblings and children,” you think in term of relationships.
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the “Primary Key.” This means that every data object (such as a library) has a way of identifying itself in a unique way
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a “Foreign Key.” The Foreign key is a way to associate one dataset (eg. libraries) with another dataset (eg. library branches, hospitals or businesses).
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In more complicated relationships (called the Many-to-Many relationship), you might have to create a third table to associate two entities.
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TEXT/XML Based Text files can be organized in such a way as to accommodate some of the benefits of the relational model.
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SQL/Binary-based Databases The more common relational database type is a piece of software running on a server, rather than a set of text files. They are generally accessed using a standard language called SQL (Structure Query Language), or more specifically SQL as supported by a popular scripting language like PHP, Python or Java.
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Almost any major web application will have a combination of all these types of data storage methods!