Discuss each of the following terms:

  • Data

A person, a place, an event, an action or any one of a number of things. A single fact is an element of data, or a data element.

  • Field

A single piece of information.

  • Record

One complete set of fields.

  • File

A collection of records.

What is data redundancy?

A situation that occurs in a database when a field needs to be updated in more than one table.

Discuss the disadvantages of file-based systems.

Data Redundancy, Data isolation, Integrity problems, Security problems, and Concurrency access.

Explain the difference between data and information.

Data is raw, unorganized facts that need to be processed.

When data is processed, organized, structured or presented in a given context so as to make it useful, it is called information.

Use Figure 1.2 to answer the following questions:

A table of data organized into usable information.

In the table, how many records does the file contain?

7

How many fields are there per record?

5

What problem would you encounter if you wanted to produce a listing by city?

I wouldn’t be able to because the cities are combined with the rest of the address.

How would you solve this problem by altering the file?

I would separate the address information so the cities are in their own cell.