*Flat databases*A flat database contains one or more tables, each containing one or more fields. Each table is completely independent of all the other tables in the database. For example, I have an address database with seven tables in it. One has my family's contacts, another has my business contacts, and another has my wife's family contacts. While some contacts are contained in more than one table, different tables may not have the same information about the same person.
dBase is a flat database program. LibreOffice and several database programs can also create flat databases.
*Relational databases*Relational databases contain one or more tables with one or more relationships; each relaltionship is defined by a pair of fields. One field of each pair belongs to one table and the second field belongs to the same or a different table. Where relationships exist between fields in the same or different tables, a flat database could still be used, but it provides no mechanism for defining the relationship. Instead the same data must be entered in both fields, making data entry errors more likely. A well designed relational database requires the data to be entered only once, reducing possible errors.
dbase is a relational database per the above definition. I link 2 tables with 1 field so I can refer to data in the second database so data does not have to bbe entered multiple times. In our alarm monitoring station, when a police dept. changes its phone number, we change 1 field in 1 database. Hundreds of subscriber records refer to that field to populate the data screen. It seems that LO ptb either have a problem with dbase/xbase, or they are (were) uninformed of the facts.
John Sowden(been programming in dBase II (under cp/m), Foxbase, Foxpro (under DOS) since 1981)
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