Database structure at the Press Association

The Press Association covers news and comments about every aspect of life from politics, finance, sports, general news to domestic products. In terms of volume and type of information, this is a large amount of data to collect and store in an organised manner. The data is handled by a large number of people of different backgrounds and interests and is processed and tailored as required for different types of readers and research. To accomplish these requirements and maintain data consistency, integrity and security, database management has been the main tool in PA´s everyday operation. The PA database management system consists of several sub-systems which are responsible for processing each individual database. Some of these are described briefly: editorial system, sports system, elections system, TV programmes system, graphic system and message switch and networks