This prototype database was designed to meet the general needs of users from different backgrounds regarding cemeteries and cemeteries. The scenario is described as follows: A consortium of international archaeological and historical societies collaborated to fund a multidisciplinary database of international historic cemeteries with a history dating back at least 100 years. As the database will be used for research as well as town planning purposes by a wide variety of people, including historians, local councils, genealogists, sociologists and epidemiologists, it is intended that it will include no only information about the cemeteries themselves, but also about the buildings, individual headstones and records of the people buried there. [Emphasis added] Key words and phrases (highlighted) were used to determine appropriate entities and their attributes, and to help determine the types of queries that might be useful to key stakeholders. This database will serve a wide range of users, each with different needs. Before building this database, I created a list of questions that I thought would be of interest to a given stakeholder, and then made sure my database could answer them. I have listed a sample of these questions in Appendix I and provided relevant queries to demonstrate the usefulness of the database. Entities From the scenario described above, I have determined that the following primary entities are most appropriate for a relational database: cemeteries, burial plots, burial records, monuments, buildings, and inscriptions. Each main entity and its significant attributes will be described below; however, a complete list of attributes can be found in the appendix. Cemeteries and Cemeteries Each cemetery or graveyard will exist in the database as a separate entity, and all other entities can be traced back to their relevant cemetery. Curl (1999) defines a cemetery as: “a burial ground, in particular a large landscaped park or land laid out expressly for the deposition or burial of the dead, not being a cemetery attached to a place of worship. » Accordingly, a cemetery is not simply a place containing one or more corpses, but a defined place specifically intended to be used for burying the dead. While Curl attempts to distinguish a graveyard from a churchyard, my database takes a broader approach and includes all formal burial sites (cemeteries in general), including those associated with cemeteries, barrows and war memorials . As Rugg (2000) noted, cemeteries also "provide the ability for users to locate a specific grave » .