MS Excel has the ability to reference cells from other sheets. You can display data from another sheet by referencing it.

If you’re new to databases, relational data works the same way. Knowing how relational data is structured is crucial in knowing how to build data structures, and is the first step in learning additional data concepts, such as indexing, primary and foreign keys, and data normalization.

In this session, we will use MS Excel to demonstrate how relational data works. We will take a simple data set and break it up into separate sheets to show how they might be referenced, and discuss why relational data is important for a database environment.

This session is intended for newbies who are just getting started with learning about databases; however, advanced users are welcome to contribute to the discussion!