Identifying the information

The first step in planning is to identify all the information that you would want to retrieve from the database. Identifying the information you want to retrieve helps you decide what data to store. In the case of the stock tracker database, you will be generating reports containing the following information:

• list of the stocks held in one account
• list of the purchase and sell orders of each company in the portfolio. Each order entry will include the stock buy/sell price, the number of stocks purchased or sold, and the commission paid to the broker for placing the trade.

Once you know what you need the database for, you can start defining the fields that are needed in your tables.

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