Element Description

Database A group of data tables that contain related information.

Table A group of data records, each containing the same type of information. In the phone
book example, the book itself is a table.
Record A single entry in a table, consisting of a number of data fields. In a phone book, a
record is one of the single-line entries.
Field A specific piece of data contained in a record. In a phone book, at least four fields can
be identified: last name, first name, address, and phone number.
Index A special type of table that contains the values of a key field or fields and contains
pointers to the location of the actual record. These values and pointers are stored in a
specific order and can be used to present data in that order. For the phone book
example, one index might be used to sort the information by last and first name;
another index might be used to sort the information by street address; and a third might
be used to sort the information by phone number.
Element Description
Query A command, based on a specific set of conditions or criteria, designed to retrieve a
certain group of records from one or more tables or to perform an operation on a table.
For example, you would write a query that could show all the students in a class whose
last name begins with S and who have a grade point average of more than 3.0.
Recordset A group of records, created by a query, from one or more tables in a database. The
records in a recordset are typically a subset of all the records in a table. When the
recordset is created, the number of records and the order in which they're presented
can be controlled by the query that creates the recordset.

Term Definition
A single entry in a table (a row of data).  For example, if you had
Record an Employees database, a record would include information on a
particular employee.
A single piece of information in a record.  Each record is made up of
Field
multiple fields (e.g. Name, Age, Birthday...)
A unique field in a table.  For example, an Employee ID field can be
Key
unique since no two employees can have the same ID.
A databasing application from Microsoft.  This lesson assumes that
Access
you have some experience with Access.

 Database
"A set of data related to a particular topic or purpose. A database contains tables and can also
contain queries and table relationships, as well as table and column validation criteria."
 Table
"A table is a collection of data, arranged in rows and columns. For example, you might have a table
for author information called authors. Each column would contain a certain type of information, such
as the author's last name. Each row would contain all the information about a specific author: first
name, last name, address, and so on."
 Recordset
"A logical set of records. where Microsoft defines a record as "A set of related data about a person,
place, event, or some other item. Table data is stored in records (rows) in the database. Each
record is composed of a set of related fields (columns) - each field defining one attribute of
information for the record. Taken together, a record defines one specific unit of retrievable
information in a database."