If they choose Excel, they will only have a single table, with each record describing an individual order. A retail shop plans to store customer information in a database.To show the difference between Microsoft Excel and a relational database, let’s look at this example. Generally speaking, flat files contain information that is alphanumeric and requires very little formatting. In Excel, the columns of the table represent one dimension of the database, while each row is a separate record. In fact, it accounts for 90 percent of flat file databases! Microsoft Excel is a great example of a flat file database. Let’s learn more about flat file databases, how they are structured and when you should use them.Ī flat file is a simple database in which similar strings of data are stored as records in a table. However, you can import flat files into Microsoft Access.

Flat file databases are not the same as relational databases, which use multiple tables to store information. These files are stored as plain text and have no markup, separating relational data with a comma. A flat file database is a collection of data stored in a two-dimensional database.

Flat file example