What is better a databse or a filing cabinet?

Answer 1

Since you have trouble spelling, you might have better luck retrieving the things you file in a database. However, neither one is better than the other. A filing cabinet is what you use when you have to store pieces of paper in an orderly fashion. You need to learn a filing system, or else you just have a big metal box that you can't find anything in. You then have to FOLLOW that filing system each time you put a piece of paper IN the filing cabinet in order to ever locate that piece of paper again later. If you can scan those pieces of paper, or better yet, never print out a paper copy in the first place, then a database can be a very powerful way of storing data, especially if you have LOTS of data that needs to be searched and accessed for meaningful results. If you needed to provide the list of all the voters in 3 counties to your election committee, it would be an incredible nightmare to attempt this with a filing cabinet. A database could be set up and once you learned how to use it, (months), you could produce a list in less than 30 seconds if it was a simple search AND if the data was already in a format the database could use. If you only have a few dozen invoices to file for a company, then a filing cabinet is a very logical choice. On the other hand, my mother wanted a list of all her DVDs printed out, so that she could tell whether or not she already HAD a copy of a given movie. That way, she wouldn't buy too many duplicates. It could have been done either way, but in the end, the database won out, because it was much easier to sort the list alphabetically on the database than it was by hand. You have to learn what applications are best for the filing cabinet, and which are best on the database. If you know how to use both, you will know how to decide this for yourself. Otherwise, you will have to explain what problems you need to solve and how much training you have with either filing cabinets or database programs. Then someone could give you useful advice, but you will still have to make the final decision yourself.