The first day of the course was directed at teaching the students the theory and practice of database design. During the morning theory about entity relationship diagramming and normalizing data structures was taught. In the afternoon the students developed a database structure for one or more of their own sources. The last three hours of the day were reserved for the presentations and discussions of each database structure.

The database programme Access was central at the second day. During the morning teaching comprised data entry and data entry facilities. During the afternoon the course was directed to teach how to design and run queries. As the day before, the own sources of the students were the starting point for the building of data entry programs. However, the querying part of the course was done on a standard database from material of the Historical Sample of the Netherlands. Working with a ‘prepared source’ made sure that all students could practice with the same issues and problems.

The third day opened with the main subject of the course: principles and structure of the Intermediate Data Structure (IDS) and best practices in handling data and making workflows. The last part of the course was again destined to get a better understanding of the students own sources. This time by way of the mapping of the table structure of their sources into the Intermediate Data Structure.

The course was taught by prof. dr. Kees Mandemakers and was attended by 15 participants from 10 different countries.