James Pollard - The Digital Economy

Database

It is clear that transactional websites rely heavily on databases – most sites a series of databases in fact. The database that's been provided for review is for an online company that sells music CDs. The company uses the database to keep a record of its previous sales, which artist and CD it was they sold and also the customer’s personal details as well as how they paid. The key difference between online companies and ‘brick and mortar’ shops are that there are virtually no paper records. All pieces of information are kept digitally in databases. It is therefore essential to get these databases working as efficiently as possible in order to save money, time and confusion for the customers – as it is business after all! For this to be done, a number of rules and criteria are enforced on the data into the database as well as the database structure. The most obvious of all; to rid of incorrect data, is probably the most difficult of all to enforce, as there is no way of telling what is and isn’t correct when it comes to people’s names, phone numbers and addresses etc. The best way correct data can be enforced is simply by inserting it with care.