Introduction to Database Concepts

We need to learn how data can be stored and managed using computers.
Let us take the example of a school that keeps records of students, their attendance, and guardian details.

In a school, the class teacher marks the daily attendance of students in an attendance register. The teacher writes ‘P’ for present and ‘A’ for absent against each student’s roll number every working day.
If a class has 50 students and there are 26 working days in a month, the teacher has to make 50 × 26 entries manually every month. As the amount of data increases, this manual work becomes tiring and time-consuming.

Some problems of manual record keeping are:

1. Student details such as roll number and name have to be written again in a new attendance register when students move to the next class.
2. Student names must be written on every month’s attendance sheet, which may lead to mistakes like wrong spelling, missing names, or skipped entries.
3. Data can be lost if the attendance register is misplaced or damaged.
4. Errors may occur while manually calculating the total attendance.

Similarly, the school office staff also maintain student records manually. These include roll number, name, date of birth, and guardian details such as guardian name, contact number, and address. This information is required to contact guardians regarding attendance and examination results.

Searching for information, or updating and deleting records from a large number of paper files, is very difficult and slow.
To avoid these problems, it is better to store student details and attendance records in separate data files using a computer system. This helps teachers and office staff to:

1. Easily copy student details from old records to new ones when students are promoted.
2. Quickly find student or guardian information.
3. Add new student details whenever a student joins the school.
4. Update student or guardian information whenever needed.
5. Delete records when a student leaves the school.