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Which database series should I read?

In the beginning there was a single series of database tutorials on this site. Now there are two. Which one should you read? If you’re looking for a nice, slow approach to learning databases, choose Databasics. It will help you learn the lingo, start with simple...

Databases from scratch III: The Design Process

This third article in the series delves into the database heartland by exploring relational database design. One of the best ways to understand the importance of good database design is to start with an all-in-one, flat-file table design and then toss in some sample...

Databases from scratch I: Introduction

When I was eighteen, I had a holiday job in an obscure back office of the New South Wales Stamp Duties Office. It doesn’t take an overactive imagination to realise that a temporary position in this bureaucratic outpost was not the most exhilarating of...

Five free online office tools

Go-oo So you know about OpenOffice.org, but have you heard of Go-oo? Go-oo is another office suite, designed to be faster and offer greater compatibility with Microsoft Office formats. Go-oo not only supports Microsoft Office Excel and Word formats, it also provides...

How to format multiple elements in Word

When you need to apply the same formatting to multiple parts of a Microsoft Word document, there’s no need to go through the same motions repeatedly. Word provides a smogasbord of techniques for formatting a bunch of elements in a document quickly and...