Flat files and relational databases

Ryan Clement

April 2018

go/ryan/

what we're talking about

  • what's a flat file?
  • what's a relational database?
  • so what?
  • other database types?
last first birth death title pub_year publisher pub_loc
Twain Mark 1835 1910 Huckleberry Finn 1986 Penguin USA New York
Twain Mark 1835 1910 Tom Sawyer 1987 Viking New York
Rothfuss Patrick 1973 The Name of the Wind 2007 DAW Books New York
Lorde Audre 1934 1992 Sister Outsider 1984 Crossing Press New York
Mann Thomas 1875 1955 Death in Venice
 1989 Penguin New York
Cather Willa 1873 1947 O Pioneers! 1992 Vintage New York
Cather Willa 1873 1947 My Ántonia 1999 Penguin New York

a spreadsheet

the same spreadsheet

last,first,birth,death,title,pub_year,publisher,pub_loc\nTwain,Mark,1835,1910,Huckleberry Finn,1986,Penguin,New York\nTwain,Mark,1835,1910,Tom Sawyer,1987,Viking,New York\nRothfuss,Patrick,1973,,The Name of the Wind,2007,DAW Books,New York\nLorde,Audre,1934,1992,Sister Outsider,1984,Crossing Press,New York\nMann,Thomas,1875,1955,Death in Venice,1989,Penguin,New York\nCather,Willa,1873,1947,O Pioneers!,1992,Vintage,New York\nCather,Willa,1873,1947,My Ántonia,1999,Penguin,New York

what are the types of things we have?

  1. Authors
  2. Works
  3. Publishers

Authors

  • last name
  • first name
  • date of birth
  • date of death

Works

  • title
  • publication date

Publishers

  • name
  • city

Authors

  • last name
  • first name
  • date of birth
  • date of death

Works

  • title
  • publication date

Publishers

  • name
  • city

entity relationship diagram

Authors

  • last name
  • first name
  • date of birth
  • date of death

Works

  • title
  • publication date

Publishers

  • name
  • city

written by

published by

published

entity relationship diagram

Authors

  • last name
  • first name
  • date of birth
  • date of death

Works

  • title
  • publication date

Publishers

  • name
  • city

written by

published by

published

entity relationship diagram

many

many

one

How do we link these tables?

primary keys

and

foreign keys

author_id last first birth death
1 Twain Mark 1835 1910
2 Rothfuss Patrick 1973 NULL
3 Lorde Audre 1934 1992
4 Mann Thomas 1975 1995
5 Cather Willa ​1873 ​1947
work_id title pub_year author_id
1 Huckleberry Finn 1986 1
2 Tom Sawyer 1987 1
3 The Name of the Wind 2007 2
4 Sister Outsider 1984 3
5 Death in Venice 1989 4
5 O Pioneers! 1992 5
7 My Ántonia 1999 5

primary keys

and

foreign keys

pub_id name loc
1 Penguin New York
2 Viking New York
3 DAW Books New York
4 Crossing Press New York
5 Vintage New York

redundant information!

pub_id name loc_id
1 Penguin 1
2 Viking 1
3 DAW Books 1
4 Crossing Press 1
5 Vintage 1

+

loc_id location
1 New York
pub_id name loc
1 Penguin New York
2 Viking New York
3 DAW Books New York
4 Crossing Press New York
5 Vintage New York

redundant information!

pub_id name loc_id
1 Penguin 1
2 Viking 1
3 DAW Books 1
4 Crossing Press 1
5 Vintage 1

+

loc_id location
1 New York

Now we could use our "locations" table again, for instance if we wanted to add information on birth city to the authors table!

what about SQL?

so what?

  • more tool agnostic
  • simple to use
  • easy to share
  • can get unwieldy
  • difficult to add new types of information

flat files

  • require coding and development
  • fast
  • allow for more interaction
  • multi-user, multi-access
  • easy to add new types of information
  • more difficult to share

relational databases

so what?

so what?

xml

tidy data

  • Each variable forms a column.

  • Each observation forms a row.

  • Each type of observational unit forms a table.

so what?

Hadley Wickham, "Tidy Data":

https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/tidyr/vignettes/tidy-data.html

even textual data can be tidy!

so what?

Julia Silge and David Robinson, Text Mining with R: A Tidy Approach:
https://www.tidytextmining.com/

## # A tibble: 725,055 x 4
##    book                linenumber chapter word       
##    <fct>                    <int>   <int> <chr>      
##  1 Sense & Sensibility          1       0 sense      
##  2 Sense & Sensibility          1       0 and        
##  3 Sense & Sensibility          1       0 sensibility
##  4 Sense & Sensibility          3       0 by         
##  5 Sense & Sensibility          3       0 jane       
##  6 Sense & Sensibility          3       0 austen     
##  7 Sense & Sensibility          5       0 1811       
##  8 Sense & Sensibility         10       1 chapter    
##  9 Sense & Sensibility         10       1 1          
## 10 Sense & Sensibility         13       1 the        
## # ... with 725,045 more rows

  • what are your relationships?

  • how will you filter the data?

  • how will you sort the data?

  • how often will the data be updated?

    • who will do this updating?

  • how will you share this data?

    • through a website?

    • raw data?

    • both?

so what?

references

Flat files and relational databases

By Ryan Clement

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Flat files and relational databases

For the first Digital Fluencies Lunch with Middlebury's Digital Liberal Arts initiative.

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