Guest Speaker– Joel Larson: Databases

In class I had the privilege to be lectured by our guest speaker, Joel Larson, on the topic of databases. 

Here is what I learned from him:

·      There are three levels of orderliness of data

1.     Unstructured ex: text

2.     Semi-structured ex: documents

3.     Structured ex: databases

·      The definition of a database is a way to store data in a structured way

·      Databases have many applications such as studying and researching at university, finding library resources, collecting information about credit card purchases, organizing inventory data in stores, etc.

·      One important case that he mentioned during the lecture was about grocery stores. Originally, the suppliers and manufactures controlled the information going both ways and were the deciders of how much of their product a store needed. The stores themselves were unknowing of what quantities of items they sold, which made it difficult to understand customers’ demands. Finally stores were able to keep track with the invention of the national cash register, a register that had a laser to scan barcodes on products. The result was a transfer of power from the manufacturer to the retailer.

Overall, I think I received some important basic understanding about databases. However it seems as though the topic of databases is a complex one in which I would have to intensely study in order to grasp the specific concepts, so I did not have the expectation that I would leave class as an expert on databases.

The creation of databases is truly revolutionary to our lives as they help us find the important information that we are looking for in a sea of data­– whether it being an article, a person, product, or a numerical value.