You know how you have to put your toys away when you're done playing, so you can find them easily the next time you want TO PLAY with them? A database is like a shelf to put your toys away, except the toys are data instead. Now, the database can always find the right data easily - whether it's "all the dinosaur toys" or "all the yellow toys," the COMPUTER can get everything out to play with very quickly, because it's in a database.