Friday, April 17, 2009

catalogues = databases

I am studying for my database course M359 at the OU right now. And have to work on some lag in my study schedule. Insights so far:
1 a catalogue can be seen as a database. as such, a phone book, a prospectus, etc. can be seen as forms of databases
2 the logical views carries information which we would not have from hardware and OS perspectives on datastructures

The use of logical description in databases is a bit new to me. My understanding of logics in software always reduces to very abstract forms of symbolism, which is maybe too redustionistic here. The definition of logic in wikipedia is as follow:

Logic is the study of the principles of valid demonstration and inference. Logic is a branch of philosophy, a part of the classical trivium, as well as a branch of mathematics. The word derives from Greek λογική (logike), fem. of λογικός (logikos), "possessed of reason, intellectual, dialectical, argumentative", from λόγος logos, "word, thought, idea, argument, account, reason, or principle"


I have discovered an interesting book on the principles of database design from APress. The title is "Beginning database design" from Clare Chandler. As every good introduction, the book starts small with known matters and builds up complexity slowly. I found helpful to be reminded that simple Excel sheets are often simple forms of databases where data is collected in rows and columns. But only good database design allows to extract usefull information from many tables of data.

Sunday, April 05, 2009