What is the purpose of a database, and how does the database accomplish this purpose?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The purpose of a database is to help people keep track of things. It accomplishes this purpose by storing data in tables. Each table has rows and columns, similar to a spreadsheet. A database usually has multiple tables in order to keep track of different but related things. For example, we might have a CUSTOMER table to keep track of customers and a PRODUCT table to keep track of the things we sell. Each row in each table holds data about a particular instance, i.e., one customer or one product. The database also stores the links between the tables, so that we can track which customers bought which products (note: this will require an additional table if one customer can buy more than one product and one product can be sold to more than one customer).