what are databases? Gest speaker Joel Larson

On Monday our Professor had invited a guest speaker to talk about databases. Usually he would of done the lecture himself, but this time its best to have an expert in the field to show the class "What is a database?".

Before continuing on, here is some background information on Joel Larson.
Larson is actually a Professor in the collage I'm in right now. If I remember correctly he's the professor for the second year students in technology base majors. And what he's teaches are the fundamentals of how databases work. Which help us a lot because some of us have many questions in hand.

So the first thing Professor Larson had talk about is knowing the basic of database and know why its invented in the first place. He explain to everyone that databases are a way to organize data so that anyone could jump in and find a relationship between two things. As shown below, this is what a databases would look like. Similar to a excel spreadsheet.

During the presentation I remember this one note. " Theirs a database for a databases to do it's task". What the professor had explain was that databases interconnect to on another to create this system. That is how people could find connection to stuff when using this system. From people's names connecting to their home directions, to their work place, and so on and so forth.

Moving on, what I like the most about the Professor's lecture was the examples of how this system have change the way we live. The first instance of databases have help people were the ones who work in groceries stores and retail. Before this came along, all groceries stores only have tags on the product and no bar codes. They have no way on telling on how much products they sold in a day or how much they lost from theft. Usually this left the stores in the dark because back then the manufactures would tell the store to buy this amount of products and the store couldn't say no. With the database, things had started to change. With the introduction of bar codes the store can link the number to the product and send the data to a computer. With this, stores are able to track what the consumer are buying and what not. Patters were form and stores could predict which items they should order more of and getting less items for orders. In a way this give the store more power because they know what the consumers are buying and the stores know how much they should order.

Other than that, database has been a part of our daily lives. From organizing your files on your computer to the google searches sending you links similar to your search topic. This is what I got from our gest speaker and it was great learning from Professor Larson.