This prototype database has been designed to meet the general needs of users from a range of different backgrounds in relation to 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 whose history dates back at least 100 years. As the database will be used for research and planning by a wide variety of people, including historians, local councillors, genealogists, sociologists and epidemiologists, it is expected that it will include information not only on the cemeteries themselves, but also on the buildings , on the individual gravestones and the registers 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 suspected might interest a particular stakeholder and then made sure my database could answer them. I have listed a sample of these questions in Appendix I and have provided relevant questions to demonstrate the usefulness of the database. Entities From the scenario described above, I have determined that the following main entities are most appropriate for a relational database: cemeteries, burial plots, burial records, monuments, buildings, and inscriptions. Each principal 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 graveyard or cemetery will exist in the database as a distinct entity and all other entities can be traced back to the relevant cemetery. Curl (1999) defines a cemetery as: "a place of burial, especially a large landscaped park or land expressly provided for the deposition or inhumation of the dead, which is not a cemetery attached to a place of worship." 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 cemetery 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 noted by Rugg (2000), Cemeteries also provide users with the ability to locate a specific grave .