[Year 12 IT Apps] ITA U3O2 key knowledge 9

[Kent Beveridge]

Yep, incremental is an odd one Mark.
Is it perhaps trying to say a 'limited length within a given range?" text length?  perhaps similar to memo fields (ie fixed length realistically to a maximum figure  eg 150 characters for a short comment field ).  Just a thought.
character..
text...
strings...

what about concatenated strings?

ahhhh, so many data types!!
If they were ALL covered, our heads would explode!.

Kent.
________________________________
From: itapps-bounces at edulists.com.au [itapps-bounces at edulists.com.au] on behalf of Mark KELLY [kel at mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au]
Sent: Monday, 12 April 2010 2:07 PM
To: Year 12 IT Applications Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: [Year 12 IT Apps] ITA U3O2 key knowledge 9

Hi all.  Welcome back to work.

1.  Need a bit of help reading a database KK dotpoint - "data formats, including limited length, unlimited length, incremental (text); integer, auto string number, long (number); date, 24-hour clock (date/time); dollar (currency); true and false (representation of Boolean logic)"

I have not come across 'incremental' text fields before.  Googling suggests it might perhaps be referring to the auto-entry of incrementing serial numbers into a field?

And later it refers to 'auto string number' - is this an auto-entered numeric serial number?  In which case, what does 'auto string number' mean?

N.B. the term 'incremental' did not appear in the draft study design.  Also, the mysterious 'auto string number' did not appear: instead there was the clearer 'auto incremented number'... is that what the accredited SD meant to say?

Any suggestions, anyone?

--------------

2. While I'm on this KK, I'm wondering about the usage of the term 'data format'.  I've believed data format refers to the way data is presented (e.g. a date could be shown as text or in a calendar control; numbers can be formatted with different number of decimal places, thousands separators, right justified etc).

But KK9 refers to things like integer and long as being data formats rather than data types, which I'd call them since they define the storage needs of the data rather the way it is formatted in output.  Much the same applies to limited & unlimited length text fields: they do not differ in appearance, they are fundamentally different types of storage entities.

And date and time are listed as formats of date/time.  Again, I would argue that they are distinctly different field types rather than display variants.  In Filemaker, my primary RDBMS tool, there are different field types for date, time and timestamp (a combination of date and time in one container). Of course dates and times can be formatted in various ways in output, but they are not stored the same...

I am happy with the other data formats mentioned in KK9 such as currency being a special format for numbers, but in the previous dotpoint currency is also mandated as a data type.  This may be because Access confuses things by having both a currency format and a currency datatype) - I'm looking at looking at http://www.everythingaccess.com/tutorials.asp?ID=Using-the-Currency-field-data-type---without-the-hassle. Filemaker does not have a currency data type... do other RDBMS?  I hope this is not another case of Access parochialism.

I think we need to be rather careful distinguishing between field types (U3O2KK8) and field formats (U3O2KK9).


--
Mark Kelly
Manager - Information Systems
McKinnon Secondary College
McKinnon Rd McKinnon 3204, Victoria, Australia
Direct line / Voicemail: 8520 9085
School Phone +613 8520 9000
School Fax +613 9578 9253
kel at mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au<mailto:kel at mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au>

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