Database activity module

The Database module allows the teacher and/or students to build, display and search a bank of record entries about any conceivable topic. The format and structure of these entries can be almost unlimited, including images, files, URLs, numbers and text amongst other things. You may be familiar with similar technology from building Microsoft Access or Filemaker databases.

• The first task is to add the database. You will be asked to give it a name, provide some text explaining its intended purpose to users and set a few other options.

• Next you define the kind of Fields that define the information you wish to collect. For example a database of famous paintings may have a picture field called painting, for uploading an image file showing the painting, and two text fields called artist and title for the name of the artist and the painting.

• It is then optional to edit the database templates to alter the way in which the database displays entries.

information to define a structured format for information - a set of fields. Teachers and/or students can then contribute to the "database" and build up a collection of structured records.

• Note that if you later edit the fields in the databases you must use the Reset template button, or manually edit the template, to ensure the new fields are added to the display

• Finally the Teacher and/or Students can start entering data and (optionally) commenting on and grading other submissions. These entries can be viewed alone, viewed as a list or searched and sorted.

Note: Please don't confuse this activity type with Moodle's underlying SQL database, which stores all of the information used in Moodle courses and is only of interest to Moodle Administrators.

See also

• Glossary module, which performs a similar though more specialised, text-based role and is available for previous versions of Moodle.