What is Data?

Before we learn about databases, we need to first understand what data is. Data is information or facts related to an object that is under consideration. In other words, data can be a collection of a distinct small unit of information or fact. It can be in a variety of forms like text, numbers, media, bytes, binary data, etc. For example, data for an individual can be a person’s name, height, weight age, ethnicity, hair color, date of birth, and mattress. Data can also be pictures, images, or files. It can be stored on a piece of paper or in the form of electronic memory. The word ‘Data’ is derived from the word ‘datum’ which means a single piece of information.

Understanding Database

Every organization has various types of information that need to be stored and managed according to certain requirements. Information can vary from human resources, business, electronic, commerce, engineering, medicine, genetics, law education, libraries finance, and another line of business.

The information coming from different lines of business is stored and processed in a formal system called the Information System. In today’s time, these information systems are equivalent to databases. A database is software for collecting and organizing information to make it easily accessible and manageable. It can store information about people, productions, orders, sales, games, or anything else. The main goal of the database is to store a large amount of information electronically by storing, retrieving, and accessing data.

Data in most of the databases are stored as rows and columns in multiple tables making it easier to process and efficient in querying it. The database makes it easier to access, modify, manage, update, and organize the data. We can use SQL (Structured Query Language) to interact with most of these databases.

In many organizations, data is stored in a spreadsheet in the form of rows and columns. When the data grows bigger, it becomes difficult to search for or pull the required data from the spreadsheet. In addition, to this, data becomes redundant and inconsistent when the size of the data grows. It is a good idea to store data in a database as part of a database management system to prevent this issue from happening. Let’s take a look at some examples of databases.

• Online Telephone Directory: It uses the database to store data on people, phone numbers, and other contact details.

• Social Media Website: It uses a database to store, manipulate, and present data related to members, their friends, contacts, and messages.

Characteristics of Database

Organizations use databases to store data that can be used to make several business decisions. Most of the databases have the below characteristics.

• Insulates the data from different applications
• Supports sharing of data by multiple users at once, enabling multiple transactions at the same time
• Supports multiple views of the same data
• Maintains the data secure
• Helps the business to improve their business by helping them grow their revenue.

Database Management System (DBMS)

A DBMS or Database Management System is the software responsible for the creation, retrieval, updating, and management of the data. It ensures that the data is consistent, organized, and easily accessible by serving as an interface between the database and its end-users or application software.

Generally, a DBMS has the following elements.

• Kernel Code: It manages the memory and storage of the DBMS
• Metadata Repository: It is also called a data dictionary where you will find the information related to the data.
• Query Language: It is the language that enables applications to access the data.

Characteristics of Database System

Types of Database Management System

There are mainly five types of databases. They are given below.

• Relational Database management system
• Network Database system
• Hierarchical Database System
• Object-oriented Database System
• NoSQL(Non-Relational) databases

NoSQL has been added recently as a separate type of database.

Examples of Database

There are many databases out in the market whose usage depends upon the application and the business usage. Below are some Popular SQL and NoSQL databases that we can see in the market

Relational Database

• Oracle database
• Microsoft SQL Server
• MySQL database
• PostgreSQL
• Redis
• IBM DB2
• MySQL

Non-Relational Databases

• MongoDB
• Apache Cassandra
• Apache CouchDB
• Apache HBase