A record is a collection of related field values, i.e. data items, of a given entity. E.g. roll number, name, date of birth and class of a particular student such as 1234, Ritika, 19/11/1982 and MCA is a record.

Records can be following types:

1. Fixed Length Records

2. Variable Length Records

1. Fixed Length Records- In fixed length records all the records contain the data items that consume same amount of space. E.g. employee’s record.

2. Variable Length Records- In variable length records, the records can be of same or different lengths. E.g. student’s records have variable lengths because students can take different number of courses.