Jim and Chris,

As a former mainframer I can say that most database programmers think of the stuff in databases as data and its not a record until you report it in a meaningful way.  Jim, that's probably what your friend is referring to, database records as data.  Also databases usually get refreshed with new data so yesterday's report is not the same as today's.

If you save a particular database at a particular time you have a record of a particular day and time of data.  Most databases aren't saved in that fashion so its hard to know what you have from one day to the next.  The reports at a particular day and time are usually considered the records because of the changing nature of the database.

Questions about stuff to be saved from databases have to do with what whether snapshots in time are useful things to save, how much of the database should be saved as a snapshot - - and why should it be saved -will the reports suffice instead, etc..

Susan Fitch Brown
Washington, DC

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