Research Database FAQ

What is SQL?

SQL is a standard computer language for accessing and manipulating databases. It stands for Structured Query Language (SQL), is pronounced "sequel", and is a language that provides an interface to relational database systems.

IBM developed the language in the 1970s for use in System R. SQL is a de facto standard, as well as an ISO and ANSI standard. Most of the world's databases rely on SQL to enter, browse and perform analysis on the data they contain.

Why is a database better than using word documents and/or spreadsheets?

SQL databases have several advantages over text documents and spreadsheets:

• One is that database can hold a lot more information - a single database could conceivably hold 1,000 times are much information as can be realistically maintained in a spreadsheet.
• A second is that databases are designed to store structured information. For example a table of data could represent a customer or a certain question. The database can be configured so that the customer must have the email field filled in, that it must be at least 5 characters long and must contain an '@'. This helps to ensure the quality of the data being stored.
• Another feature of databases is maintaining and enforcing relationships between different data. For example, every customer has a country field which is linked to a list of countries. Only countries that appear in the countries list can be entered, ensuring that the data is consistent.
• One of the most powerful features of databases is that data can be searched and analysed. Thousands of documents worth of data can be analysed and summarised in seconds, allowing you to get more value from your intellectual property.

Is it possible to import existing documents into an SQL database?

Definitely, yes!

Spreadsheets are the easiest to import, since they are already structured into rows and columns. The spreadsheet will either need to be altered to match the database structure, or an importing program developed to check, reformat and insert the data, row by row. Transmachina are experts at writing such importing software, and achieve this task quickly with a library of software tools to streamline the process. Text documents (such as Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat/PDF format) can also be inserted into SQL databases. Transmachina can work with you to develop a structure which will fit the data. We will create a database and then can use our data entry team to copy the data from your documents into the database.

Where do I get a database?

There is a huge range of database products each with slightly different features and capabilities. For small projects, Microsoft Access provides adequate functionality. For larger organization-wide projects a serious database is required, for example Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, or the open source database MySQL. Fortunately, Transmachina provides a hosted database service, we were configure and host your databases for you. Our server environment is designed for data warehousing will several layers of security and backup. This is the perfect solution for moving into databases because there are very low start-up costs. Databases can be moved to your organization later if the need requires.

Does my data have to be in English?

No. transmachina's database technology is built using Unicode - a system which supports all the world's language, alphabets and punctuation, including Arabic, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified) and Hindi. The database records the language of every paragraph and sentence entered and allows searches limited to particular languages.

The included database search indices are language-friendly and automatically filter and order search results based on the nature of the search language.