Database management is a system of managing information that is used to support a company’s business operations. It involves storing data, distributing it to application programs and users and modifying it as needed, monitoring changes in the data and preventing the data from becoming corrupted by unexpected failures. It is one component of a company’s informational infrastructure, which supports decision-making, corporate growth and compliance with laws like the GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act.
In the 1960s, Charles Bachman and IBM along with other companies developed the first database systems. They developed into information management systems (IMS) that made it possible to store and retrieve huge amounts of data for a broad range of applications, from the calculation restaurant-lesaintnicolas.com of inventory to supporting complex financial accounting and human resources functions.
A database consists of a set of tables that arrange data in accordance with a specific arrangement, like one-to-many relationships. It uses primary key to identify records, and also allows cross-references between tables. Each table has a collection of attributes, or fields, that represent facts about data entities. Relational models, invented by E. F. “TedCodd Codd in the 1970s at IBM and IBM, are the most popular database type in the present. This design is based on normalizing the data, making it easier to use. It is also easier to update data because it doesn’t require changing several databases.
The majority of DBMSs are able to support multiple types of databases through different levels of internal and external organization. The internal level is concerned with costs, scalability, and other operational issues including the layout of the database’s physical storage. The external level is the way the database appears in user interfaces and other applications. It can include a combination of various external views (based on the various data models) and can also include virtual tables that are created from generic data in order to improve performance.