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Google Interview Question - Databases
“Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew.”
This question has an infinite number of solutions. Feel free to comment below and add your own answer!
This was an actual question asked at an interview with Google.
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In school you have to take notes because you can’t remember everything. A database is like a notebook for the computer, but much bigger. It also remembers where in the notebook things are, so many times it can flip to the page you want without reading everything from the beginning.
Lists of things and properties of them.
Lists of Lists.
And then we ask the computer to pull up specific lists based on properties of the stuff we’re looking for.
Grocery lists, say. Many of them.
And we want to get everything off all the lists that are $1.00.
1. They donn’t REALLY need to get all of it. So just find a decent enough analogy.
2. You shouldn’t use any words that require pre-existing knowledge (store, retrieve, heck even "information")
3. You want them to walk away feeling they have gained a real insight into what you are describing
It’s like your clothes drawer. Just like your clothes drawer you have different “drawers” to put different things in, and when you want to find them you know where they are. With a database you can create as many drawers as you want for different things you want to remember.
I tend to follow three points when trying to explain something to someone truly non-technical.
Ace nailed it! I just learned what a database is, (after so many years of confusion!) Thank you very much indeed;)
A database is like a store room where you store your data so that you can get it later when you need it.
I hope my 8 years nephew would understand this…
:)
A database is like a shopping list with lots of items, eg. Apples, Bananas, Potatoes, Soap, Toothpaste, Chocolate.
Then say that you want to buy the fruit and vegetables, then the database will show you all the items under in these groups. eg. Apples and Bananas and Potatoes.
Its more useful when there’s thousands of items
believe it :)
Ace is so good he doesn’t need but one.
:P @ace: Where are your other 2 sentences?
A database is an organized collection of information about a particular subject.
This is way harder than it seems: A database is a bunch of computers connected to one computer that stores information. This information can be used from any of the connected computers.
Databases are made to store a lot of data safely in one place. However, you don’t have to be in that one place to retrieve this data. Big businesses usually use computer databases.
A database has a lot of information stored in one place. Using computers, a you can get to the information from any computers. Databases are like a giant filing cabinet.
Difficulty
Currently: Moderate (5.43)