Question

Think of how a database is used in your profession. What fields would be included in the database? What computed fields might be created from data in this database? What aggregate function would be useful and why?

Answer 1

Since data has several parts, fields form a record and the fields of all records form the columns. Examples of fields in a database are the name, gender, age, citizenship, ethnicity, etc. Fields would include the actual data with specific pieces of information forming a whole dataset or record of a person, company, or an item in the database. The fields or a database field holds a single piece of information from a record. The fields window displays the record-level fields. Another way to explain fields would be, it represents columns or data categories used by all entries or rows. Each of the fields would contain unique data for each row and against an intersecting column.

Computed fields can and might be created from data in this database. These computed fields are fields containing computerized dynamic calculations (functions) using one or more other fields in the record of the database calculated without any human error giving no chance for mistakes where, in case, the values in the other fields change, the value in the calculated field also changes accordingly.

An aggregate function would be useful in a database in the sense, it is basically a deterministic function performing a calculation on a set of values of one or more rows grouped together as one input based on certain criteria or condition with an output of a single value. The reason why an aggregate function is useful for calculations is to come to a decision, to determine something in values or figures and it can be considered as a solution provider based on the computation it does and the value it provides. Some of the useful aggregate functions are SUM(), COUNT(), AVERAGE(), MAX, MIN, etc.