Database refers to a file that is used to store information in a format that is easily retrieved and manipulated.

The most common database files are made up of tables, fields and records. These are referred to as a relational database.

Relational Database
Let's look at the components of a relational database file:

A field is a single piece of data.

A Record is a collection of fields.

A Table is a collection of records.

A File is the database in its entirety, ie all tables, records and fields.

A simple example of this type of database would be a bookshop's stock system which used 1 table.
The table will include a record for each book, the record may be split into five fields, title, author, genre, isbn and stock status.

With the data organised in this way it makes it easier to locate any one piece of information, for instance you could search the author fields of all records to find all books by your favourite author and at the same time see which books were in stock.

To query a database you use a DBM (database management system), one example of this would be the built-in DBM of Microsoft's Access database system.

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