Database Concepts for the Systems Analyst
Records
- Fields are organized into records.
- Like fields, records are common to both files and databases.
- A record is a collection of fields arranged in a predefined format.
- During systems design, records will be classified as either fixed-length or variable-length records.
- Most database systems impose a fixed-length record structure, meaning that each record instance has the same fields, same number of fields, and same logical size.
- Variable-length record structures allow different records in the same file to have different lengths.
- Database systems typically disallow (or, at least, discourage) variable length records.