Database — Introduction
In this article, we’ll learn the basics of Data & an introduction to databases (what, why, and DBMS)
What is Data?
Data is made up of small facts and information without context. 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.
There are multiple types of data. Some of the more common types of data include the following:
Single character, Boolean (true or false), Text (string), Number (integer or floating-point), Picture, Sound, Video
What is database?
A database is an organized collection of structured information, or data, typically stored electronically in a computer system.
It’s a structured system to put your data in that imposes rules upon that data, and the rules are yours because the importance of these problems changes based on your needs. Maybe your problem is the size, while someone else has a smaller amount of data where the sensitivity is a high concern.
It’s the things you can’t see that is going on in the background; the security, the enforced integrity of the data, the ability to get to it fast and get to it reliably, the robustness; serving lots of people at the same time and even correctly survive crashes and hardware issues without corrupting the data.
And that’s what we need to do here; understand how to describe our structure and define those rules, so all these invisible things will actually happen.
Types of Database Structures
Databases are widely divided into two major types or categories, namely, Relational or Sequence Databases and Non-relational or Non-sequence databases or No SQL databases. An organization may use them individually or combined, depending on the nature of data and functionality required.
Why Do We Need A Database?
When you have some data, and you want to store this data somewhere. This data could be anything. It could be about customers, products, employees, orders, …etc. This data could be in text format, numeric, dates, document files, images, audio, or video.
If you have a bunch of data, maybe 10,000 customers, “Are you going to scroll down in the spreadsheet to get the 9999 customers?!”, What if the security was a concern, “Do you care about if someone else got access to your data?”, What if you accidentally put redundant information, “Is it fine to have duplicate information along with the spreadsheet?”.
This takes us to the next question, “When do we actually need a database?”. Consider the following potential problems:
Size
You may have thousands or millions of rows of customers, or any piece of information.
Accuracy
“Do you care if someone entered incorrect data?”. If yes, nothing could actually prevent me from typing incorrect data into a spreadsheet.
Security
If the data is sensitive, and you need to restrict access to the data; It doesn’t need to be shared with everyone. In addition, “Do you need to know who made every change at every point?”.
Redundancy
If the redundant data (having multiple copies of the same data) will lead to conflict, you would need to have only non-repeated unique data.
Importance
“What if you had a disconnect or a crash, and you lost your data?”. You’ve probably felt that pain before. And it’s unacceptable to lose important data like orders of a customer, allergies of a patient, flight bookings, …etc.
Overwriting
How about having more than one person overwriting the same data at the same time. How about 10 at the same time or 100 people at the same time?. You’ll end up with everybody overwriting everybody else’s changes.
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If you are saying “Yes” to one of these problems, or all of them and more besides, to keep the data reliable, secured, and maintainable. So, you need to have a database.
Database Management System (DBMS)
We often mistakenly say our database is Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, MongoDB. But, they aren’t databases, they are database management systems (DBMS).
The DBMS is the software that would be installed on your personal computer or on a server, then you would use it to manage one or more databases.
The database has your actual data and the rules about that data, while the DBMS is the program that surrounds and manages your actual data, and it enforces the rules you specified on your data. The rules for example could be the type of the data, like integer or string, or the relationship between them.
In practice, it’s very common to have multiple databases. The database that deals with your order and customer information might be completely independent of your database that deals with human resource information. And in many organizations, you don’t just have multiple databases but multiple DBMS. Sometimes it’s because one DBMS is better at something than the other.
There are different DBMS, and they are categorized under:
- Relational Database Management Systems
- Hierarchical Database Systems
- Network Database Systems
- Object-Oriented Database Systems
- NoSQL Database Systems
Conclusions
In conclusion, a database is a far more efficient mechanism to store and organize data than spreadsheets, it allows for a centralized facility that can easily be modified and quickly shared among multiple users. Having a web based front end removes the requirement of users having to understand and use a database directly, and allows users to connect from anywhere with an internet connection and a basic web browser. It also allows the possibility of queries to obtain information for various surveys.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please send me your comment.
Thank you.
