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(Continued from page 1)
                                                                                        Newsletter

            It’s possible to link data from one column of a
            set of rows in a table to the “key” column of a
            row in another table, creating a relationship be-                                   Team
            tween the “master” row in one table and a set         E
            of “detail” rows in another. For example: think               leven times a year it takes a TEAM to produce
            of the bill for a meal at a restaurant (a row in              the LCACE Newsletter. Mike McEnery
            the Chits table) with the individual itemized en-     (Newsletter Editor) publishers the club newsletter to
            trees, sides and beverages as details (one or         keeping our members informed of the latest news on
            more rows in the Chit_Items table).                   computers and technology. Phil  Bock submits his Presi-
                                                                  dents RAM, and Lester Larkin  submits the Club History.

                                                                  After hours of formatting these articles and searching
            To support data retrieval and other operations        for additional articles to fill the pages. Mike emails  the
            (e.g. Add, Update, Delete), relational data-          completed Newsletter to J.J. Johnson (Assistant Editor)
            bases use a special language: Structured Que-         and then he converts it from Microsoft Publisher for-
            ry Language (SQL for short, often pronounced          mat to an PDF and FlipPage format. J.J. (webmaster)
            “sequel”). Many database programs also have           then uploads the newsletter to the LCACE website and
            a visual front end that makes it easy to design       sends out a message on Google Groups to inform the
            SQL queries that will retrieve specific subsets       members that the newsletter is available online for
            of the data.                                          members to view.

                                                                  Occasionally Mikes gets some feedback from members

            Spreadsheets                                          but he is always open for more of your comments. This
                                                                  goes along with Mike asking you to submit articles to

                                                                  help cut his time searching for articles from other com-
            The simplest database programs are traditional        puter clubs.
            spreadsheet tools like MS Excel or the free Li-
            breOffice Calc. These have a natural rows and         APCUG (Association of Personal Computer User
            columns structure. It’s easy to sort the rows         Groups) gathers articles from many of their member
            based on values in various columns. You can           groups,  and publishers them quarterly for other
            set filters on various columns to display only a      groups to publish in their newsletters. This is conven-
            subset of the data. There’s also a search that        ient  for Mike, but as a club he would like  more articles
            can look for specific values in a column or any-      from our members. This would highlight what  our club
            where in the sheet. You can also include com-         is doing to contribute to the world of computers and
            putational columns and rows that aren’t part of       technology.
            the actual data, but “sum up”, count, average         Join the TEAM
            or perhaps show minimum and maximum val-
            ues.                                                  So, if you have taken the time to completely read this
                                                                  article, consider taking the time to share you experi-

                                                                  ences of a new or old piece of software or equipment
            Spreadsheets are great for things like contact        by writing an article and share it with your fellow mem-
            lists, asset tracking, inventories and catalogs.      bers. Remember our moto.
            However, they don’t easily support relation-


                                                (Continued on page 6)


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