INTRODUCTION TO DATABASES

INTRODUCTION TO DATABASES

What is a Database?

A database is an organized assortment of data that is stored electronically. A database allows data retrieval and management. A database is a foundation for a simple website to complex enterprise applications.

Definition of database

A database is a group of methodical information stored on a computer system in electronic format. A data base is controlled by a database management system- DBMS.

Purpose of a database

The purpose of a database is to store data in a particular manner that is simple to retrieve, update, and manage.

Evolution of a database

The initial concept of a database was developed in the 1960s. The early databases were simple but not flexible. The concept of a navigational database became popular in the 1980s. Some examples of databases that evolved during the 1980s were tree-like models and network databases. Relational databases also became popular during the 1980s.

In the 1990s, object-oriented databases became popular. Some examples of object-oriented databases are Object DB, IBMDB2, etc. With the advent of web 2.0, NoSQL became popular in the 2000s. The boom of the Internet and unstructured data gave rise to NoSQL, which supported agile, unstructured data. In recent times, cloud databases and self-driven databases have been in vogue.

Types of databases

There are several types of databases. The type of database to be used depends on the organizational data storage and retrieval need. Some databases are:

Relational database: A relational database organizes the data into a table form with rows and columns. A relational database is suitable for structured data storage. A few examples of a relational database are MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server

Object-oriented database: The object-oriented database organizes the data into objects as in object-oriented programming. A few examples are db4o and ObjectDB.

Distributed databases: In a distributed database, the data is stored across multiple computers. The data is in two or more files on different sites or networks. A distributed database can improve the performance and reliability of the data.

Dataware houses: A data warehouse is designed to resolve and analyze quick queries. A data warehouse is an enterprise system that analyses structured and unstructured data in point-of-sale, marketing automation, and customer relationships. The data received from multiple sources is analyzed and reported.

NoSQL database: The extensive data application uses NoSQL to suit unstructured and semi-structured data. Some examples are MongoDB, Cassandra, and CouchDB.

Cloud databases: The databases are stored and accessed over the cloud. Examples include Amazon RDS, Google Cloud SQL, and Microsoft Azure SQL Database.

Database operations:

The database operations are called CRUD operations, which are created, read, updated and deleted.

Create: The database is created with new data

Read: The data is retrieved from the database

Update: The data is modified in the database

Delete: The data is removed from the database.

Transactions: The transactions in a database are a single logical unit of work.

Database components

The following is comprised of a database, which is the critical component.

Data: Data includes numbers, text, images, and multimedia files. All these raw forms of data are stored in a database.

Schema: A schema in a database has several constraints, such as table names, data types, fields, databases, and the relation between all these entities. Schemas can be conceptual, logical, or physical.

Database management system: Database management is an interface between users and data. A database allows users to retrieve, update, and manage the data flow in and out of the database. A DBMS also facilitates the control of several administrative services, such as performance monitoring, tuning, and data recovery.

Conclusion: A database is an integral part of IT infrastructure. If you wish to learn more about databases, please enroll in our Databases course.