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Toshio is tempted to tell Joni that “we” aren’t looking through anything. He’s the
one doing the searching. But he holds his tongue. “Well, the problem is we have foot-
age of dozens of different buildings at PetroTex, from several different drones, over
about a 2-week period. Tracking down the footage of exactly when the equipment was
stolen means we have to search through hundreds of different video files. This could
take all night,” he answers matter-of-factly.
“There’s got to be a faster way to do this. Can’t we just search for the footage
somehow?” Joni says.
“No,” Toshio says calmly. “We don’t have a way to track the data about the vid-
eos. The video files are sequentially numbered and stored in directories for a specific
company. We can also see the date and time the video file was created, but there are
several different drones. It’s just…”
Cam interrupts Toshio to try to keep him from getting distracted. “Toshio and
I have talked about creating a database to track all of our video files. We’ve just been
busy trying to automate the data collection and storage process.”
“Well, how long would it take to make it? How much would it cost?”
Joni asks.
“We’re not sure. We don’t even know which database manage-
ment system we’d use. Toshio and I have both used Microsoft Access, but
Toshio mentioned something called MongoDB that might be better for tracking
video files.”
Toshio pauses the video he’s reviewing and starts pointing at a listing of video files
“We don’t have in a directory. “Instead of searching through all of these manually, I could just specify
a way to track the characteristics about each video like company name, building name, date, time, and
elevation. It would return the URLs for videos matching those characteristics. We’d
data about the know right where they are on our file server.”
videos.” “Sounds good to me. Anything to keep us from spending our Friday nights looking
Image source: rommma/Fotolia through video footage. Let’s do it,” Joni quips.
Cam tries to get things back on track. “OK, great, we’ll put it on our list. There’s no
doubt that a database will keep us from having to search through all this footage. For
now, though, we should probably focus on finding the footage for Jess. We’ve got a lot
to go through tonight.”

STUdy QUeSTIonS

Q5-1 What is the purpose of a database?
Q5-2 What is a database?
Q5-3 What is a database management system (DBMS)?

Q5-4 How do database applications make databases more useful?
Q5-5 How are data models used for database development?
Q5-6 How is a data model transformed into a database design?

Q5-7 How can Falcon Security benefit from a database system?
Q5-8 2026?
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