So welcome to this module. I'm going to be showing you in this module how to build a database structure. Designing a database is really not a very simple process. You really have to think about the why behind the database, the types of data that the database will store. The places and application and resources that will be accessing the database as well. So just a few things you need to think about when you are putting the database design together. It's very important that you consider the users, the applications, the security, the compliance, the auditing. You really have to consider everything when you are thinking about building a database structure. Sometimes when people are designing a database, they forget about the fact that the structure has to be constructed. When you think about building a database, you have to think closely about the type of data it's going to store. For example, an accounting database will be very, very different than if you're storing data about satellites or geographical information database. Which, of course, is going to be very different than if you're putting together something of a eCommerce site that is going to require people to buy things and hold information about purchases and such. Which is very, very different than a database that is storing information about health data, right? A health data, that means it has to agree to and have a lot of security built in specifically for health type information. So depending on the type of database you're building will dictate the kind of database you build. It will dictate the kind of table structure you will have. It will dictate the kind of schema you will have. It will dictate the kind of access you will have, and so on. So building a database structure and designing a database structure are closely related. But designing a database involves really thinking about the why, building a database involves the how. Once you know the purpose of designing a database and you've figured out how you're going to build the database structure, you then have to think about the tables. Tables is where the raw information is kept, the raw data that is inside of the database is kept. So a database has multiple tables. So there may be a table that holds customer information, another table that holds product information, another table that holds sales information, and so on. So building tables, thinking about which tables to build, how they're related together, what the table relationships are, and all of that has to be well thought out as well when you're in the process of building a database. Once you've designed the database and you've built the database structure and you've built the tables, you have to think about what you're going to do afterwards. Completing the database structure is really getting it ready for use, right? You didn't just build just for the sake of building. You have to think about how you're going to get people to use it. What are going to be the entry points and exit points? How are you going to archive and back up and store and cluster and replicate [LAUGH] the data? So in this module, we'll be talking about how to build the database structure, how to design the database itself, how to build the tables, and then what to do after the database has been designed.
