Database : What is a Database, How it Works

Database system is a system for electronic data management. The essential task of a Database system is to manage large amounts of data efficiently, consistently and in a durable fashion and it need to save in different subsets, need based forms for the users and application programs.

Database system consists of two parts: the management software, called database management system (DBMS) and the amount of data to be managed – the actual database (DB). The management software organizes internally structured storage of data and controls all read and write accesses to the database. Database systems are available in various forms. The most familiar form of a database system is the relational database system.

One of the first major Database system was applied in IMS with Data Language One. The resulting database were managed and hierarchically structured. Significant progress has been achieved in the 1960s and 1970s. While actually in the 1990s, a few commercial vendors of database software dominated the market notably IBM, Informix , Ashton-Tate with dBase , Microsoft with SQL Server and Oracle. Above all, MySQL and PostgreSQL achieved significant market shares. In response, the leading commercial manufacturer to offer Open Source versions of their database software.

Understanding Database technology

Database systems have become a core component of enterprise software. This makes Database system a critical part of many companies and government agencies escalation of the availability.

The database management system (DBMS) is the software that is installed for the database system and configured. The DBMS defines the database model has to secure a majority of the requirements listed below and a decisive impact on functionality and speed of the system. Database management systems themselves are highly complex software systems.

The essential features of today’s database management systems are:

• Overwriting and deleting data
• Management of metadata
• Arrangements for data security
• Privacy
• Integrity
• Multi-user operation by the transaction concept
• Optimization of queries
• Enabling triggers and stored procedures
• Provision of key data about the technology and operation of the DBMS

Another important part of Database security is the concept of transaction, the data from race conditions by protecting the ability to have multiple users. Otherwise data may be modified by different users simultaneously.

A query to the database system is first translated into the logical operations of relational algebra. Thereafter database operators actually performs the logical operation on data. The choice of the operators and their order of execution is called to create an implementation plan by the query optimizer. The Optimizer is a particularly complex part of the database software and has a significant impact on the overall system efficiency.

Purposes and Models of Database System

In support of database applications, database systems offer triggers and stored procedures. A trigger initiates an action in the database when a particular event has occurred frequently during insert or update operations. Stored procedures are used to running scripts in the database. Because stored procedures are executed within the database system, they are often the most efficient way to manipulate data.

The DBS is a primary interface database language for the following purposes:

• Data retrieval and manipulation ( DML )
• Database management and definition of data structures ( DDL )
• Authorization control ( DCL )

In the relational DBMS, these categories are in one language ( SQL ), combines with other systems, there is a separation in form but quite different languages. To access the data of DBS privileges are managed. Without permission may not be the appropriate operation performed.

Depending on the database model requires the database schema can be adapted to specific structuring choices:

Hierarchically : The data objects can only in a parent-child relationship to each other.
Network-like : The data objects are linked together in networks.
Relational : The data is managed in line at a table. There can be any relationships between data. They are defined by values of certain columns.
Object-oriented : the relationships between data objects are managed by the database system itself. Objects can inherit properties from other objects and data.

This article is written by Mr. Kanai Lal Saha, who has been regularly writing excellent articles on core computing, Virtualization and Cloud Computing.