MbShea@PWP@English@UMCP

Audience: The main audience are programmers who want to use databases. However, I believe anyone looking to learn about databases can also benefit. Professions, such as scientists and researchers, which work extensively with data may benefit from learning about databases.

Context: Data is used in many professions. However, having lots of data is not that useful if the data cannot be organized, interpreted, or analyzed in a meaningful way. Having immense amounts of unstructured data cannot be understood, viewed, or fed into a computer program in order to analyze the data. This is where databases come into play. Databases allow unstructured data to be human-readable and facilitate the process of using computer programs. This is why many businesses and organizations use databases today. Having some knowledge of databases can help anyone working with large datasets or information understand how to manipulate and analyze the data better.

Purpose: This document will serve as a beginner's guide to understanding what databases are, the different types of databases, the use cases of databases, and how databases can apply to different professions. The general idea is to get the reader to understand if databases are something he or she wants to use in his or her profession. If the reader understands his or her need for databases, then I can point them in the right direction to learning more about databases. I do not intend to teach them specific database languages or systems as there are many databases and each is different.

Document type: An informational guide in the form of either a website or brochure.

S, do you think you can write to both programmers and scientists/database users in the same document? I think you are in the better position to let me know if you can combine audiences, with efficiencies and effectiveness.

Your document guide seems best as a tutorial. Can you make this as a website or can you develop a written guide (manual?) that would direct people to helpful web resources? For example, would you refer readers to parts of Stack Exchange, GitHub, Reddit threads, or even books? This web or resource curation approach will help you avoid the problem you note: being too focused on one program or language.

Let me know what you think.