____________________________Creating and Using Web Interactive Databases

• Databases
  • What is a database?
    • At its most basic, a database is a collection of organized information.
    • A collection of recipes on index cards in a box is an example.
    • The telephone book is an example.
    • A print out of a class roll is also an example.
  • Computer databases
    • A computer database is a program that organizes information into files, records, and fields.
    • Computer databases also allow you to perform actions easily on your information. Those actions include sorting, searching, duplicating, among others.
  • Parts of a database
    • Files
      • A database may be contained in one file (flat database), or it may contain many files that can share and exchange information (relational database).
    • Records
      • Records contain fields which contain information relating to that record. For example, an address book entry would be a record that might contain the fields of: first name, last name, middle initial, street, town, state, country, postal code, telephone number, e-mail address, and Web home page.
    • Fields
      • As described immediately above, fields are the various types of information that constitute a record. Much of the power of a database comes from the ability to sort or search records by field. For instance, in the box of recipes above, the cards can only be organized by one field. In a computer database, however, any or all of the fields can be the organizing entity. Imagine trying to look through 500 recipe cards to find recipes that use butter and sugar but not salt. A computer database could find those recipes very quickly.
    • Values
      • Fields contain the information in some format. FileMaker Pro allows fields to have the following values: text, number, date, time, multimedia, or calculation.
  • FileMaker Pro Versions
    • FileMaker Pro 5--$240 (street), $149 (academic)
      • Limits Web access to ten IP addresses every 12 hours
    • FileMaker Pro 5 Unlimited--$899 (street), $799 (academic)
      • Allows unlimited access to Web databases
    • FileMaker Pro 5 Server--$949 (street)
      • Allows remote administration, 250 simultaneous guests, automated back ups, and more. However, requires additional client FileMaker Pro software on each cpu.
    • FileMaker Pro 4.1--under $49 (street) if you can find it.
      • Allow unlimited access to Web databases but lacks the new features of FileMaker Pro 5 (including no support for Cascading Style Sheets). Also, FileMaker files created in Version 5 are NOT backward compatible with Version 4. Version 4 files may be converted to Version 5 files.
    • Both Versions 4 and 5 will be demonstrated today.

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