Cloud Database Development — The Basics - Beginning iOS Cloud and Database Development - page 4

A field contains an item of data—a character, or group of characters that are related. For example,
a grouping of related text characters such as “Erin” makes up a first name in the name field in
Figure 1-1 .
Figure 1-1. Example of a field (First Name) and four characters (Erin)
For each person in our example, we must identify the name, address, city, state, zip code, and
telephone number. A field is established for each type of information in the list. The First Name field
contains all the letters of the first name. The zip code field holds all the digits of a person's zip code,
and so on. In summary, a field may contain an attribute (e.g., employee salary) or the name of an
entity (e.g., person, place, or event).
Records and Tables
A record is composed of a group of related fields. It contains a collection of attributes related to an
entity, such as a person or product. When all gathered, it contains the most important information for
you to be accessing.
As shown in Figure 1-2 , you have the name, address, zip code, and telephone number of a single
individual that would constitute a record. This group of five records becomes a table of the database.
Figure 1-2. An example of 5 records making up a table