MIS Chapter 6

Query

A way of selecting data from a database using one or more criteria, e.g. "show all the people over 30 with red hair"

Record

All the data about one person or thing, stored as a database row

Expert Systems

Computerized advisory programs that imitate the reasoning processes of experts in solving difficult problems

relationship

Describes how two tables are linked together, e.g. by Primary keys or Foreign keys

Table

A 2-dimensional grid containing one set of data, there can be many of these in a database

Currency

A data type used to store data about money

Number

A data type used to store numerical whole, decimal, positive and negative data

Data warehouse

A large collection of databases stored in at a secure location so that the data can be processed when needed.

Field

A single piece of data or information about a person or thing, it's a column in a table

Database

A structured set of data held in a computer, accessible in various ways, it can be searched, filtered and sorted

Form

An online page that contains spaces to enter data, which is to be stored in the database

Information

Data converted into a meaningful and useful context

Data

Facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis

Primary key

Identifies every record in a table, it is field that is unique to every row.

SQL

Structured Query Language

Field length

The number of characters that can be stored in each text field

Report

The output of a database query in a readable format

Data type

The type of data a field must contain, it can be Text, Number, Currency or many other types

Data mart

a data collection, smaller than the data warehouse, that addresses the needs of a particular department or functional area of the business

Foreign key

a field in one table that is linked to the primary key in another table to create a relationship between two tables.