For example, a person has several names, a birth date, a sex, a height, various ID numbers, hair and eye color, etc. Each entity is stored in a database file, sometimes called a table. A single database file can be conceptualized as a spreadsheet. The columns are fields, the rows are records. Each record has a value for each field.
Fields can be of different types.
Some fields contain text, such as names. Other fields contain dates, such as date of birth. Other fields contain numbers, such as a person's height in centimeters. The structure of a database is composed of the various complex relations between entity files. People interact as family members, as different roles in a human rights violation, etc.