Introduction to ENFORM

Introducing ENFORM
Overview of ENFORM
058051 Tandem Computers Incorporated 1–3
Queries enable you to retrieve information spontaneously. If you have an immediate
need for information, you can enter an ENFORM statement and retrieve the
information quickly. Contrast this to having to develop a program in COBOL or
FORTRAN where preliminary planning and programming development is required.
Also, if the selected information is not quite what you need, the first time, the query
can be successively and easily modified (in contrast to modifying a program) until the
information is exactly right.
The report is the answer to your questions: ENFORM output. It contains selected
information; sorted and arranged to your query specifications; with page numbers,
titles, headings, and subheading included; and with any specified arithmetic (such as
averages and totals) performed for the report.
Relational Database—
Definition
A relational database enables you to think about and represent files in the database as
a collection of similarly structured tables: two-dimensional lists where the rows and
columns contain specific pieces of information. Each table contains information about
something related to your business: for example, parts or suppliers (Figure 1-2).
Relationships between tables are established by including items from one table in
another table.
Figure 1-2. Relational View of Data
Your View of Parts File as a Table
File Name
partnum
4102
4103
. . . .
Fromsup
suppnum
15
6
partcost
8000.00
14500.00
Parts
Fromsup
Database Files
Individual Records are Rows in Table
Field Names are Columns of Table
partnum
4102
4103
. . . .
partname
DISC10MB
DISC50MB
Parts
inventory
14
9
location
K87
K45
price
8000.00
14500.00
Because tables are a natural way for you to think about information, a relational
database is easy to use; it does not require understanding of how the data is physically
stored or accessed in the computer. Instead, you only need to know what information
you need and how it is related to other information.
Additionally, a relational database allows you to establish simple views of the data—
where all the information related to one part of a business is in one or two tables. And
the simple views can be extended to more complex views—where multiple tables can
be linked together to contain all of the information for the entire business (Figure 1-3).
This allows you to synthesize information from related tables, when you need to,
while still working with the basic concept of one table at a time.