Documenting a Day
Common Types of Applications
Microsoft Corporation, Public domain,
via Wikimedia CommonsWe use different applications to format, edit, store, retrieve and perform calculations on our data. The four common types are word processors, spreadsheets, presentations, and database applications. Each of these applications has strengths in specific areas for their intended uses. Some of the applications have some feature overlap. These features that overlap are helpful to the end user, so you don't need to switch between applications just for a particular feature.
Word Processors
Word processors are used when the end goal is to provide a document for someone to read. A word processor is best for the task when there is a lot of detail that is not numeric in nature. A word processor is best when you have paragraphs of words, or you want fancy headers or footers.
Word processing applications such as Microsoft Word, Corel WordPerfect, Apple Pages, and Google Docs all have strengths in writing and editing documents that are intended to be read. These applications offer formatting options to change text size, bolding, italicizing, text style, and fonts. These features are intended to bring legibility or style to the text. The main differences between the applications are price, ease of use, or additional features such as dictionaries, thesaurus, and image placement options.
Spreadsheets
Spreadsheets are best for calculating data. There are limited font styling tools, but a spreadsheet's strength is dealing with data, not paragraphs. Spreadsheet applications represent data tables with text or numbers in separate cells, rows, and columns. This application includes Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers, Google Sheets, and Corel Quattro Pro. I lament the passing of Lotus 123. By separating data into separate spaces, the application has additional functions which can perform math calculations on numbers and merge or separate text from different cells. Each cell can be individually called upon by its column and row number as a cell to perform a function upon.
Presentations
Rather than formatting an entire document for reading, as a word processor does, a presentation application is intended to be shown on a large screen with large, easily readable text. Presentation applications are intended to create visually creative slides with text and graphics. Animations can be applied to nearly any element, such as the backgrounds, text, images, and icons. Sound can also be included. These applications include Microsoft Powerpoint, Apple Keynote, Google Slides, and Corel Presentations. These presentations have many text formatting options that word processors have to make the text more appealing. . Text is intended to be short and easily readable in small chunks. Presentations are intended to supplement a speech that someone may be giving. It is not intended to be the dialogue alone.
Database Applications
Databases are used when you need to store large amounts of data, which can be text or numerical and you need to quickly search and find data. Database applications are much larger beasts than any of the previously mentioned applications. Spreadsheets can hold massive amounts of data, but they can also be difficult to use when they become large. Databases use multiple tables of data in columns and rows. Using various languages such as SQL, you can retrieve data from a specific field in one table and combine it with fields from other tables. There are various database applications available. Some of these are easy for a single user, and some require teams of people to maintain. Microsoft Access is a simple database that a single user can use. Microsoft also has SQL Server, which is intended for very large databases. MySQL is another SQL type of database. There are also databases called NoSQL, which rely on other languages to retrieve data. Amazon DynamoDB is one of these NoSQL databases.
