Storing and Searching Data

Question 1

What is a record?

Answer 1

A type of data structure which means that it’s used to store a collection of data values.

Question 2

What makes records so useful?

Answer 2

Unlike arrays, they can store values with different data types.

Question 3

What is each item in a record called?

Answer 3

• field

Question 4

What can a field name help do?

Answer 4

Describe the data stored in that field of the record.

Question 5

Why can’t you add extra fields to a record once they’ve been created?

Answer 5

Records are fixed in length.

Question 6

What can records help do?

Answer 6

keep related information in one place.

Question 7

What happens when you create a record structure?

Answer 7

You can assign a data type and a name to each field.

Question 8

What is the record called and the fields in the example below?

record recipes 
        int recipe_number 
        string recipe_name 
        bool tested 
        int score 
endrecord

Answer 8

• record called ‘recipes’
• fields called:
  ‘recipe_number’
  ‘recipe_name’
  ‘tested’
  ‘score’

Question 9

What happens once you’ve created the structure of your record?

Answer 9

You can assign it to variables.

Question 10

What does the data in each filed need?

Answer 10

To have the correct data type. e.g. if an int it has to be a number.

Question 11

What can you use the variable name for?

Answer 11

• To access a whole record

- or use both the variable name and a field name to access a particular item of a record.

Question 12

What can happen to individual items in a record?

Answer 12

They can be accessed and changed.

Question 13

If you have multiple variables with the same record structure what can you do?

Answer 13

collect them into an array.

Question 14

What can Structured Query Language (SQL) be used for?

Answer 14

• search tables (usually in a database) for specific data

Question 15

What does it mean when we talk about records and fields of a database table?

Answer 15

rows and columns

Question 16

What is the SELECT and FROM keywords used for?

Answer 16

• SELECT followed by the names of the fields (columns) you want to receive and display.
• then FROM keyword followed by name of the table/tables you want to search.

Question 17

What you do if you want to return all the fields?

Answer 17

wildcard: SELECT *

Question 18

What can you use WHERE for?

Answer 18

To filter the results.

Question 19

What is the WHERE keyword?

Answer 19

A statement used to specify conditions that a record must satisfy before it’s returned.

Question 20

What can the boolean operators be used for with WHERE?

Answer 20

makes more specific searches

Question 21

What can the LIKE statement be used for with WHERE?

Answer 21

• search for a pattern

- % character is used as a wildcard to represent any combination of letters and numbers

Question 22

In SQL what does the ORDER BY command do?

Answer 22

To sort records into ascending (ASC) or descending (DESC) order.