"So what exactly is the point of a database anyway?" you say. "I have pen and paper and I good" or "What could I possibly need besides Microsoft Excel?" Well from many of the databases I've seen in the past aside from a couple conveniences you'd be right. I'm sorry the pen and paper is just laughable though, it would be like doing logarithms using tables instead of a scientific calculator, ridiculous. The minimum these days is to at least type information onto the computer.

Excel really does a lot of cool stuff, but a properly leveraged database is better, it's as close to talking to the actual information like a human being that we can get at the moment and that excites me. With a properly constructed database and query system I can actually ask and receive answers so quickly, that I feel like I'm playing a game rather than accomplishing what it would take several people days or weeks to do by hand and with accompanying errors, or perhaps 20 minutes to do using Excel and very messily at that.

So at the end of the day a database is an arrangment of information that allows us to "ask" our data questions in the easiest possible way.

The science of databases started in the '60s and '70s through the work of Edgar Frank Codd. Relational databases, which are the ones most people refer to when they think of databases, use the concept of primary keys to refer to specific entities. This reduces the redundances and errors that can occur by storing the same information in several places. For example in a database about employees we may use an employees ID card number as a reference to that employee. That way we need only store things such as his address or date of birth in one place reducing confusion.

It should be noted that in truth and in fact any collection of information is a database, your brain is a database, your computer is a database, a book is one, even a library or a map these are all databases. The difference between order and disorder in designing and most importantly enforcing proper data entry rules is what separates good databases from bad ones.

Truly one of the most dissappointing things that I see in Trinidad is that so much information is still on paper rather than at a minimum being on a computer though. I have seen a number of bad database designs but nothing is worse than handwriting information into a notebook.

Some one has to try to understand the handwriting.

To copy, compile or anything else someone still has to either hand write or type that information somewhere else.

If it's handwritten again someone still has to try to understand that new handwriting.

To find anything, instead of typing what I'm looking for into a box marked "Find", I actually have to read everywhere the information could be allowing me to make a mistake or become frustrated and give up.

If a correction needs to be made instead of perhaps using "Find and Replace", someone has to "find and replace" all the appropriate data in the correct place, perhaps with "Liquid paper" or through some other difficult means.