Learning about databases - where to start?

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I'd like to make a program or something that can store information in a way that can link things to other things, and can be searched.

It's a kind of vague concept, and I don't know how to explain it properly.

If I used my work as a practice example, I'd like something where I can store details about products and information about customers and be able to search for combinations of things (eg, how many of product X did we sell in January, how much have we bought from supplier Y). At my work, all that sort of info is stored on paper, so it's difficult to get any statistics without a lot of digging through invoices.

I wouldn't be confident enough to develop a program for actual business use, but I just want to know how to do it. I tend to store information about things, but it's no good hoarding info if you can't actually find what you need when you need it.

I know a little HTML but it's been ages since I've done any other coding. I'm happy to learn new programming languages but I don't know where to start. Any suggestions?

Do you have MS Access? That's the database program I use at work. It's pretty easy to use. There are wizards that can guide you in setting it up. I've learned a lot just using the Help function with certain areas. I'm much more comfortable with Excel so I usually set up an Excel workbook to import data from Access for analyzing data. If you want to get more advanced and do some cool things you can learn VBA code and program the database to do specific things.

If you don't have Access there is a suite of programs called Open Office (I think that's what it's called). It's basically a free version of MS Office and is supposed to operate, function, and be compatible with MS Office. I haven't used it but I know they have a database program based on Access.

Isn't it fortunate that some forward thinking individuals have already done this for you!

lol SQL. Here is about 50 books on the subject for free.

In relational databases the operation that links data in different files is called the Join operation. Pick up any standard textbook on relational databases. Learn the SQL language to operate with relational databases.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_database

ruveyn

Another Access user here (what is it with AS and organizing things?...

I started out with something called Rapidfile - ancient orphanware, was the 'low end' offering for Ashton-Tate's Dbase III... Runs under DOS, does just simple listing. It's actually still out there, and free..

From what I'm seeing on the job sites, they're looking more towards SQL than Access, but there are still calls for it. If you want some free Access training, Goodwill (of all places) has a computer training site that will get you started in Access 2003 or 2007 (depending on your budget).

www.getlearnfree.com

there's other stuff there...it's on a really basic level. Won't get you hired anywhere (well, maybe.. but if you want to enhance yourself, it's a good place to start.

MS Access is a good choice for this project idea of yours. I don't do databases, except when necessary, but built several for clients years back , and maintain a few of my own for various purposes.

Don't forget about your local library. Mine has dozens of books on SQL and Access, as well as books on Open Office. Tutorials abound online, as well as podcasts and vcasts free from the iTunes store or other sources of podcasts.

Thanks guys. I've had a bit of a play with Access and that should be good for now. If it's a long term interest (not just the latest sparkly thing to catch my attention) then I'll look into SQL.

every apple computer built in the last almost 20 years has had a built in data base program- usually as a word processing option.

I would assume that PC do as well- if not there must be windows programs that you can buy to install.

Im a party disk jockey. And have used the built in programs of the last three generations of apple home computers to created fabolous data bases for the music in my some thousand CD collection.

I can call up music by song title, artist, category of music, what CD the song is on, etc.

My current hobby horse is an XML database called eXist

It's a sweet little thing. The information you want to store goes in as an XML document - that's right, a plain text document. To get stuff out of it you write an XQuery. That's right, another plain text document, and you treat it the same way as the information.

That's it. You type the path to the XQuery in the browser, or write a link to it in your menu, and the job's done.

All W3C standard, all open source. Pearls beyond price. If you mix it with a little Javascript library called JQuery it will stand on its head and dance.

SQL is pretty easy to learn. The only hard part about it is there is a different version of it for every database management system, though they all have the same basic syntax. You should get MySQL. It's easy to use and you can download it for free here. The only hard part is installing, which I can't tell you how to do because I don't know what kind of operating system you're running. I did it by transferring all the binaries to /usr/local/bin, but I have a Mac and I don't know a lot about using Windows.