From the course: Learning FileMaker 16

Unlock the full course today

Join today to access over 22,400 courses taught by industry experts or purchase this course individually.

Comparing flat vs. relational databases

Comparing flat vs. relational databases - FileMaker Pro Tutorial

From the course: Learning FileMaker 16

Start my 1-month free trial

Comparing flat vs. relational databases

- [Instructor] So what makes storing data in an application like FileMaker different than just storing your data in a spreadsheet? Well, there are so many different ways that you can store data on your computer, for example in a spreadsheet or even a word processing document, but these are examples of what we call in database circles a flat file. A database, on the other hand, is a collection of data that are organized into these things that we call tables. These tables provide a systematic way of managing and updating data. A relational database is one that contains multiple tables that all relate to each other through special key fields and we'll be talking about those at length later on in this course. Now that flat file design that we talked about before puts all the database information into a single table or list, instead of compartmentalizing it into its own tables. Now although it's nice to have all your data in one place just like you do with databases, there are some…

Contents