Understanding relational databases
In its simplest form, a relational database management system, such as MySQL, is a glorified spreadsheet program, such as Microsoft Excel. We use it to store data in rows and columns. Every row is a "thing" and every column is a specific piece of information about the "thing" in the relevant row. I put "thing" in inverted commas because we're not limited to storing objects. In fact, the most common example of a thing, both in the real world and in explaining databases, is data about people. A basic database storing information about customers of an e-commerce website could look something similar to the following:
ID |
First name |
Surname |
E-mail address |
Telephone |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 |
Frodo |
Baggins |
|
+1 111 ... |
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