Writing Exercise 1: Your interest in this course.

I went rather easy on the grading, since you didn't know what I was looking for yet, and since we're still getting acquainted.

There are often a number of ways to correct an error. If you wrote "database are", this could be changed to "a database is" or "databases are", depending on your preference.

Often times, errors are a little more murky. In this case, I usually put a question mark (?) near my comment. It means that, while you may not have made some absolute and definite error, your word choice is rather odd. You should probably phrase it better so that your reader doesn't stumble over your words.

The single biggest tendency I noticed in this assignment is that most of you think "Database" is God. First of all, the word database should not be capitalized. It is a generic thing, not a proper noun. It is not a country (America), lanugage, (English, Java), deity, (God, Allah), person (George), or brand name (Shredded Wheat, Oracle). It is just a single database, one of many. You can't learn "Database." You can learn database design, or you can learn about databases. You can learn SQL or ASP, since those are languages.

Second, database is singular. Originally, the word data was plural. It means more than one datum, which is basically a fact or tiny nugget of information. However, data is increasingly being treated as a singlular, mass noun, like population or information. Regardless of your position on the pluarality of data, however, database is still a singular thing--an organized collection of data.

Finally--just a quibble--not every piece of software today uses a database. They might nearly all use data of some kind, stored in binary files, text files, and/or file-systems. But they don't all use full-blown database systems.

--Zach