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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...

Databasics IV: Streamlining data entry

In the previous tutorial I discussed some guidelines for creating data entry screens that are easy to use. In this tutorial, we’ll put those guidelines into action by refining the membership database we introduced in part two of this series. I’ll step...

Databasics III: Data entry design

It’s staggering how many shareware and commercial database applications have appalling data entry screens. Many developers seem to think that well-oiled inner workings are all that’s needed to sell an application, when any user knows that, when you get...

Databasics II: Creating your first database

This tutorial guides you through building a simple, single-file database. In a single-file database, also known as a flat-file database, you put all your information into a single table. This is the simplest form of database to create, but it has some serious...

Databasics I: Records & queries & keys, oh my!

What’s a database? If you think of word processors as… well… processors of words, and spreadsheets as number processors, then you can think of databases as processors of unstructured information, aka “data”. Feed a database data in any sort of guise...