To some people, a database is a mysterious matrix of inputs and outputs. It isn’t that mysterious, really. A couple of graphic explanations will help you better understand what it is so you can use this powerful tool to organize and query your data.
A database can be thought of as a box but not just any box. It is a highly organized, structured box designed to contain multiple smaller boxes. Each small box contains its own contents and is stacked in rows and columns to be viewed and retrieved.
Almost all of my clients can utilize a database in one way or another. If they want to administer their site’s content, they need a database. If they want to collect registration data, a database could do this. Survey responses will also require one.
A simple database can be an excel spreadsheet. Think of the rows of information that are organized by columns. Each column has a particular heading, each row consists of information that corresponds to the column header.
For example, I have a collection of historic properties. Each property has an address, architectural style, and date built.
My database would look like this:
| Address | Architectural Style | Date Built |
| 1234 Bernard | Classical | 1890 |
| 2256 Gregory | Art Nouveau | 1920 |
| 3489 Prairie | Gothic Revival | 1908 |
You will need to make the database interactive if you want to perform a search to narrow down all the properties that were built between 1900 and 1920 or if you want to retrieve all the properties that are Art Nouveau in style.
This is easily accomplished online. We can take your table of information and transform it into a web site. A web site can display each property on a page with images and descriptions. You can search and return the results on a map and manage the content to add and edit entries.
Behind the Scenes
Here is an example of what I do with your data when I build you a database. I will use the Illinois ResourceNet project I am working on as an example.
We began by collecting funding resources in a spreadsheet. The longer the list grows, the more clunky it is to manage. It needs to be transformed into an online database to make it much easier to manage and access by multiple users simultaneously.
The first thing is to create a web based database. The web version matches the order of the columns in our spreadsheet.
Next, we will import the spreadsheet into the web database. As you can see, it already appears in a much more manageable context. Notice how each row is numbered. That number will become the unique identifier for that row of information. This will enable us to easily dip into our box and pull out the relevant smaller boxes on the web site.
This looks much cleaner than the Excel spreadsheet but I am not done. This is my “behind the scenes” tool to get started. It is not user-friendly or intuitive so I create a custom content management system for my clients to manage the data.
Now our database can be accessed on our web site for editing. By logging into you site administration, you can enter new information into the system and manage the data that was stored in the excel spreadsheet.
When I click on Edit next to the row I want to review, I am taken to the editing page as shown below.
Here I can pull the content out of the box change it, and put it back.
On the public web site, I plug the database into the page. It might look like ordinary text on the page and it is! Now, we can manipulate the text and links, print the entries in a particular order, and search them.
