week 4 readings

Database Wikipedia
I so not know much about computers so I did not know anything before I read the database article. The article was very informative as I did not know there was more than one database management system. Three different types of database management systems are hierarchical model, network model, and relational model. In the hierarchical model date is organized in a tree like structure. (wiki pg 2) In the network model records can participate in any number of relationship (wiki pg 3) In the relational model is a model of tables and row where the date is about a particular entity is represented in rows and columns.


Introduction to Metadata
I had no idea what metadata was before I read this article so it was informative to me. It was a bit confusing though because it seemed like metadata could be a lot of different things and mean a lot of different thing and I did not understand how. It says in the first line that metadata is data about data which I took to understand that metadata is something that gives us more information about that thing. I was surprised to see how many different types of metadata there is. The end caught my attention because I think it is interesting how metadata may be able to be used in an almost finite number of ways to meet the needs of non-traditional users (pg 7).

An Overview of the Dublin Core Model
I did not quit understand this article. It said that the DCMI is an international effort designed to foster consensus across disciplines for discovery-oriented description of diverse resources. (pg1) I did not quite get what that meant. I also did not understand the text they had in the article that was different than the normal text because it seemed like some computer code or computer language.