Stephen Ramsay’s debrief on databases was an interesting tour for me. The description was very intuitive (because database storing are intentionally supposed to help its users store and understand data!) but also very hard to wrap heads around. (I especially had a hard time trying to apply the code mentioned in the reading. I first tried to download phpmyadmin, was confused by how to verify the safety of it (I read the instructions through once but was still confused.) I looked up tutorials on how to install phpmyadmin on MacOs, got confused by more tutorials. I decided to give up after trying repeatedly.
The reading did indeed introduce databases as a method of handling mass amounts of data. Spreadsheets are common in our everyday life. They are very useful, extremely easy to present and understand. Meanwhile, it is really easy to manipulate the relationship between different rows and columns in a spreadsheet, making it ideal when handling smaller amounts of data. However, it could be problematic when handling large amounts of data. The integrity of the database can be compromised easily with minor mistakes or attacks since there are not many measures of security.
Relational databases can house a lot more data than spreadsheets. From the reading, I also learned that there is a more logical relationship between different data as they are intersections between categories (like fields for example.) Databases are also designed to generate spreadsheets easily. So we can easily store the majority of data in relational databases and generate flat databases for nuanced manipulation. Security is also a problem that relational databases need to address. The massive amount of data being stored in databases makes it a requirement for people to develop security models that manage the permission of users. And it requires (gasp) another database to help maintain the security model.
On a more exciting note, I am slowly setting my website up! I am experimenting with different free themes and plugins. I do not fully understand the exact background of everything (like parallax effect) but I will be going over the webpage with dev tools to gain a better understanding of different methods to modify it!
