What is a database?

Databases are designed to offer an organized mechanism for storing, managing and retrieving information.

They do so through the use of tables.

In order for a database to be truly functional, it must not only store large amounts of records well, but be accessed easily. In addition, new information and changes should also be fairly easy to input.

Lets take the example of a phone book. The phone book contains several items of information – name, address and phone number – about each phone subscriber in a particular area. Each subscriber's information takes the same form.

In database parlance, the phone book is a table which contains a record for each subscriber. Each subscriber record contains three fields: name, address, and phone number. The records are sorted alphabetically by the name field, which is called the key field.