FileMaker Pro Session 1 - Manual vs. Electronic
Several examples of manual (or mechanical) paper databases are:
A simple Day Planner is probably the most common example which people use daily. There are many brands out there such as Day Timer. Inside we keep track of daily events and personal information on monthly calendars.- A yellow ruled note pad can keep track of all the information in a seminar.
A manila file folder filed in a file cabinet is the most popular form of a database not found on a computer. It keeps track of any pertinent and valuable information (such as medical records, military records, school reports).- Rolodex card file
- Index card files
- Information sheets in binders
- A plastic wall calendar and dry erasers
Let’s consider the definition of a database and then,
how it works with a CPU.
A database is a group of related pieces of information organized and placed into a storage unit (for example, sheets of paper inside a manila file folder). We can find, sort (reorder), move around in, add, delete (throw away), select, extract or edit any information by any single piece (or multiple pieces) of information.
Electronically on a computer, a database has three parts:
- The nucleus of the database is the field. It is a single piece of information (last name, balance due, total due, order date). A field means nothing unless it relates to something else. "Smith" is not a field. The field would be last name. (There are endless Smiths in the USA.) You can add another field such as first name. John is not unique either. However when you add two or more pieces of information together (phone number, social security number, email address), it narrows it down. There is only one person in the world with any one social security number except maybe for criminals.
- When you put all these fields into a storage such as a computer instead of a manila folder, you can create a file.
- Now in the file, the next piece (or next higher level) of information besides a field would be a record. A viable record comprises many different types of fields.
- Several (multiple) associated records (such as a Moose Club or school roster for the 5th grade) = data file.
- The glue is the relational key which relates many records in one table to the one record in another table.
- Now in Filemaker 7 we've broken thru the one table, one file barrior
A Filemaker 7 digression
A database evolutionary leap
Multiple windows per file
- Open multiple windows for the same database on-screen at once.
- Open as many new windows as you want to see with as much data as your monitor can handle.
- Run a report in one window, while you look up information in another.
- Each window can show results from a different query.
Larger file sizes
- Multiple Tables per file
- Databases can store up to 8 terabytes of information—4,000 times the old limit!
- Fields can store up to 4 gigabytes.
- Text fields can now store up to 2 gigabytes.
- More tables, fields, and records per file
You can have a maximum of 1 million tables per file and 64 quadrillion records per table (over the lifetime of the file). The maximum number of fields per table is 256 million (over the lifetime of the file).
That's more than enough for most needs. For More Info...
Back to the database discussion
The problem you have with the mechanical or manual folder is that you are only able to store these pieces of information one way. If we wanted to sort one thousand manila folders by social security number it would be quite tedious. Then we would have to put them in filing cabinets and could only sort them by Social Security Number or by the label (which would be the Last Name). We could not file them both ways unless we went to a copy machine and made multiple sets of these documents (which would be facetious) and also mess with data integrity, keeping all the information in agreement. Might as well go ahead and put one set by Last Name and the other set by Social Security Number and on and on.
You can see that would be time-consuming and it would not be time or cost effective for your staff. So what we want to do is to put these electronically into our computer. When we open and create a data file, we can have (in effect) many on-the-fly filing cabinets around our room (by analogy). Then we can find information by any single field of information.
For example, we could have 500 fields in our electronic database. We could have a field Last Name and hypothetically file all those last names in our database and retrieve them (bring them up) by a single command. Or we could file them by social security number or Mother’s Maiden Name (which is used for security purposes with lost credit cards.) So you can retrieve information very quickly and have multiple filing cabinets using one file. It is much faster. For example, if you had 500,000 records with an indexed field you could bring up a last name very quickly (in .8 seconds). You could not do that with a mechanical filing cabinet. With a conventional database (like manila folders in a filing cabinet), you must make the decision which way you are going to file that information (e.g., by last name). The problem is "How do you extract information if you do not know which way it was sorted?" It can take hours! An electronic single or multiple find occurs in seconds. Thus, the advantages of an electronic versus paper database include:
- the ability to store a large amount of information accurately and
- the speed to extract or rearrange information.
