now that we know what a database is and
how it's used in everyday life it's time
to think about creating our own let's
pretend that we work for a bookstore the
ready three bookstore
we have customers and we sell books in
the store and online the store needs a
way to keep track of customers books and
orders we also like to be able to send
books to customers who order online and
perhaps send out some coupons track our
sales and determine what books are
popular so we can establish a
bestsellers list at the store so we can
do all of this by creating a database
the first thing to think about when
creating a database is the purpose for
the database which in this case is to
keep track of customers orders and books
the next step is to do a little
brainstorming think about what you need
to create a database now I'm a visual
person so I like to take out a sheet of
paper and write all of this stuff down
now what do I want to know about my
customers their orders and the books in
my inventory let's start with customers
since I plan to Mail coupons and books
out I want to know my customers name
their address is important too later on
this information may help me determine
which states order most of my books and
in turn I'll want to thank them by
mailing out coupons oh and just in case
I need to contact them it would be nice
to have an email address now what about
our books what information do we need to
know about those well we know that each
book has a title and author in the price
books also fit into different categories
such as fiction romance and computers
knowing the category will help us
pinpoint which types of books sell the
best and we can keep that type of book
and stock at all times but what's left
ah the orders now this is a stage where
the customer actually buys the book I
want the orders part of my database to
tell me who ordered what and win now I
want to show you how these three things
are related a customer finds a book and
places an order or makes a purchase our
database will tell us who they are what
they bought and when they bought it we
know what we want so now let's figure
out what all of this has to do with the
database you see each of these three
things represents a table in the
database a table is one logical unit of
information broken up in rows and
columns just like a table you may have
seen an excel or word the specific
information in each table will be the
fields you set up later the fields are
the small chunks of info in each table
so we have our tables we said the
customer table will include name address
and email in a database it's easier to
break down a few
these fields so we'll say first name
last name and for the address we'll put
Street city state and zip now the email
will remain the same for my orders table
everything could stay the same for now
so we'll just say customer book and date
my books table includes title author
price and category title will remain the
same but I'll break author into two i'll
have author first name and author last
name and I'm going to leave price and
category the same now don't worry about
the details of the tables and fields
right now we'll go over that in our next
lesson now that we've played everything
out let's start creating our database in
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