Meet Maya, the office manager at a small but growing company called BrightTech. With 20 employees and lots of spreadsheets flying around, she faced a big challenge:
“How do I keep track of who works here, their jobs, their time off, and salaries—without losing my mind?”
Her solution?
Build a database.
(And no, Maya wasn’t a programmer.)
STEP 1: Understand the People and Process
Maya took a notebook and listed what she needed to manage:
- Employees and their contact info
- Job titles and departments
- Who reports to whom
- Leave (vacation) records
- Salary information
- Performance reviews
She realized:
“This is just organized information. I can split this into tables.”
STEP 2: Sketch the Tables Like a Mind Map
Here’s what Maya came up with:
| Table Name | What It Stores |
| Employees | Basic info: name, email, phone, hire date |
| Departments | Department names like HR, Sales, IT |
| Jobs | Titles like Developer, Analyst, Manager |
| Salaries | Employee ID, amount, date |
| LeaveRecords | Vacation requests by date and reason |
STEP 3: Define Relationships Between Tables
Maya learned an important lesson:
“Don’t repeat information—connect it instead.”
So instead of putting the department name in every employee row, she just linked it with a key.
Here’s how they connect:
- Every employee belongs to one department
- Every employee has one job title
- Every salary record is for one employee
- Leave records are also for one employee
These links are called relationships.
STEP 4: Write Simple Table Designs
Maya then defined the tables using plain English (translated later to SQL):
Employees Table
- EmployeeID (primary key)
- FirstName
- LastName
- Phone
- HireDate
- DepartmentID → links to Departments
- JobID → links to Jobs
Departments Table
- DepartmentID (primary key)
- DepartmentName
Jobs Table
- JobID (primary key)
- JobTitle
Salaries Table
- SalaryID (primary key)
- EmployeeID → links to Employees
- Amount
- EffectiveDate
LeaveRecords Table
- LeaveID (primary key)
- EmployeeID → links to Employees
- LeaveDate
- Reason
- Status
STEP 5: Sample SQL Table Code (Optional for Tech Teams)
CREATE TABLE Employees (
EmployeeID INT PRIMARY KEY,
FirstName VARCHAR(50),
LastName VARCHAR(50),
Email VARCHAR(100),
Phone VARCHAR(15),
HireDate DATE,
DepartmentID INT,
JobID INT
);
CREATE TABLE Departments (
DepartmentID INT PRIMARY KEY,
DepartmentName VARCHAR(50)
);
CREATE TABLE Jobs (
JobID INT PRIMARY KEY,
JobTitle VARCHAR(50)
);
CREATE TABLE Salaries (
SalaryID INT PRIMARY KEY,
EmployeeID INT,
Amount DECIMAL(10, 2),
EffectiveDate DATE
);
CREATE TABLE LeaveRecords (
LeaveID INT PRIMARY KEY,
EmployeeID INT,
LeaveDate DATE,
Reason VARCHAR(100),
Status VARCHAR(20)
);STEP 6: How Maya Uses the Database
- The HR team views all employees and their departments easily.
- The Finance team runs reports from the Salaries table.
- The Manager can pull all vacation history from LeaveRecords.
- Everyone gets clean data and no more messy spreadsheets!
Conclusion: Databases Make It Work, Simply
Maya didn’t start with code—she started with understanding the business.
She broke it into real-life categories, designed simple linked tables, and let the database do the work.
“I didn’t build software,” she said.
“I just built a better way to organize people and decisions.”
