PRESENTING INFORMATION
Database Software
Import/export
The data in a database may have taken years to collect and create and is very valuable commodity to the organisation. Database software and other software used to manipulate the data may change over the yeas. Therefore its important that the data is easily imported and exported between different software. For example, names and addresses from a customer database can be imported into word-processing software in order to produce a mail merge.
Query
The whole point in storing data in a database is the fact that it is easy to perform searches to extract data satisfying certain criteria, such as people over the age of 65, women in the production department who have not had health and safety training etc.'
One way of searching for data in a database is to use commands written in a language called Structured Query Language (SQL).
QBE (Query by example) provides a simple way of running queries without having to worry about the way the statements are constructed, as you do when you are using SQL. Instead you use a simple way of selecting the columns you want to display and you can also specify simple search conditions and orders.
Report
A report is a printout of the results from a database. In most cases a report is produced on paper by printing the results but a report can also be produced on the screen. If there is a lot of detail in a report then it may be better to print it out so it can be taken away and studied. Reports give the user control over what & where the information they want is output; printed on paper or to the screen.