What is Data?

In simple words, data can be facts related to any object in consideration. For
example, your name, age, height, weight, etc. are some data related to you. A
picture, image, file, pdf, etc. can also be considered data.

What is Database?
A database is a systematic collection of data. They support electronic storage
and manipulation of data. Databases make data management easy.

Let us discuss a database example: An online telephone directory uses a

database to store data of people, phone numbers, and other contact details.
Your electricity service provider uses a database to manage billing, client-
related issues, handle fault data, etc.

Let us also consider Facebook. It needs to store, manipulate, and present

data related to members, their friends, member activities, messages,
advertisements, and a lot more. We can provide a countless number of
examples for the usage of databases.

Types of Databases
Here are some popular types of databases.

Distributed databases:
A distributed database is a type of database that has contributions from the
common database and information captured by local computers. In this type
of database system, the data is not in one place and is distributed at various
organizations.

Relational databases:
This type of database defines database relationships in the form of tables. It is
also called Relational DBMS, which is the most popular DBMS type in the
market. Database example of the RDBMS system include MySQL, Oracle,
and Microsoft SQL Server database.

Object-oriented databases:
This type of computers database supports the storage of all data types. The
data is stored in the form of objects. The objects to be held in the database
have attributes and methods that define what to do with the data. PostgreSQL
is an example of an object-oriented relational DBMS.

Centralized database:
It is a centralized location, and users from different backgrounds can access
this data. This type of computers databases store application procedures that
help users access the data even from a remote location.

Open-source databases:
This kind of database stored information related to operations. It is mainly
used in the field of marketing, employee relations, customer service, of
databases.

Cloud databases:
A cloud database is a database which is optimized or built for such a
virtualized environment. There are so many advantages of a cloud database,
some of which can pay for storage capacity and bandwidth. It also offers
scalability on-demand, along with high availability.

Data warehouses:
Data Warehouse is to facilitate a single version of truth for a company for
decision making and forecasting. A Data warehouse is an information system
that contains historical and commutative data from single or multiple sources.
Data Warehouse concept simplifies the reporting and analysis process of the
organization

Graph databases:
A graph-oriented database uses graph theory to store, map, and query
relationships. These kinds of computers databases are mostly used for
analyzing interconnections. For example, an organization can use a graph
database to mine data about customers from social media.

Personal database:
A personal database is used to store data stored on personal computers that
are smaller and easily manageable. The data is mostly used by the same
department of the company and is accessed by a small group of people.
Hierarchical:
This type of DBMS employs the “parent-child” relationship of storing data. Its
structure is like a tree with nodes representing records and branches
representing fields. The windows registry used in Windows XP is a
hierarchical database example.

Network DBMS:
This type of DBMS supports many-to-many relations. It usually results in
complex database structures. RDM Server is an example of database
management system that implements the network model.

Database Components: Database Components There are five

main components of a database:

Hardware:
The hardware consists of physical, electronic devices like computers, I/O
devices, storage devices, etc. This offers the interface between computers
and real-world systems.

Software:
This is a set of programs used to manage and control the overall database.
This includes the database software itself, the Operating System, the network
software used to share the data among users, and the application programs
for accessing data in the database.

Data:
Data is a raw and unorganized fact that is required to be processed to make it
meaningful. Data can be simple at the same time unorganized unless it is
organized. Generally, data comprises facts, observations, perceptions,
numbers, characters, symbols, images, etc.

Procedure:
Procedure are a set of instructions and rules that help you to use the DBMS. It
is designing and running the database using documented methods, which
allows you to guide the users who operate and manage it.
Database Access Language:
Database Access language is used to access the data to and from the
database, enter new data, update already existing data, or retrieve required
data from DBMS. The user writes some specific commands in a database
access language and submits these to the database.

What is a Database Management System (DBMS)?

Database Management System (DBMS) is a collection of programs that
enable its users to access databases, manipulate data, report, and represent
data. It also helps to control access to the database. Database Management
Systems are not a new concept and, as such, had been first implemented in
the 1960s.

Charles Bachman’s Integrated Data Store (IDS) is said to be the first DBMS in
history. With time database, technologies evolved a lot, while usage and
expected functionalities of databases increased immensely.

History of Database Management System

Here, are the important landmarks from the history:

 1960 – Charles Bachman designed first DBMS system.

 1970 – Codd introduced IBM’S Information Management System (IMS).
 1976 – Peter Chen coined and defined the Entity-relationship model
also know as the ER model.
 1980 – Relational model becomes a widely accepted database
component.
 1985 – Object-oriented DBMS develops.
 1990 – Incorporation of object-orientation in relational DBMS.
 1991 – Microsoft ships MS access, a personal DBMS and that displaces
all other personal DBMS products.
 1995 – First Internet database applications.
 1997 – XML applied to database processing. Many vendors begin to
integrate XML into DBMS products.

Advantages of DBMS
 DBMS offers a variety of techniques to store & retrieve data.
  DBMS serves as an efficient handler to balance the needs of multiple
applications using the same data.
 Uniform administration procedures for data.
 Application programmers never exposed to details of data
representation and storage.
 A DBMS uses various powerful functions to store and retrieve data
efficiently.
 Offers Data Integrity and Security.
 The DBMS implies integrity constraints to get a high level of protection
against prohibited access to data.
 A DBMS schedules concurrent access to the data in such a manner that
only one user can access the same data at a time.
 Reduced Application Development Time.

Disadvantage of DBMS
DBMS may offer plenty of advantages but, it has certain flaws-

 Cost of Hardware and Software of a DBMS is quite high which

increases the budget of your organization.
 Most database management systems are often complex systems, so
the training for users to use the DBMS is required.
 In some organizations, all data is integrated into a single database
which can be damaged because of electric failure or database is
corrupted on the storage media.
 Use of the same program at a time by many users sometimes lead to
the loss of some data.
 DBMS can’t perform sophisticated calculations.