For this blog post, we were challenged to explore Stephen Ramsay’s description of databases. In his text, Ramsay describes two distinct types of databases: flat and relational.

Flat databases are those represented in a single table by rows of data, such as a spreadsheet or CSV file, and thus can be stored in a basic text file. Relational databases on the other hand are a set of tables, allowing the data to be reorganized in different ways, and are usually created using SQL (Structured Query Language).

Flat databases are easy to use and don’t take up much space, so they work really well for smaller, less complex databases. However, changing (adding/removing) data and duplicates within the data set from flat databases are difficult to handle and they aren’t that secure.

Relational databases are much better for larger datasets with more variables, as they make it easy to delete/modify the data. However they take up more space, and are not as simple to implement as flat databases.

However before one gets too far into collecting and analyzing data, they need to make sure that their database is secure and that they have the rights to make the data public. Further, one must ensure that they have the rights to collect the data that they are collecting, as social media platforms such as Facebook and Google have been highlighted in recent years for illegally sharing and/or collecting from their users.

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Here is a screenshot of my website so far! I chose a very basic theme for now, but will edit it as I gain a clearer understanding of what exactly my website will be used for.