The Database
As I wrote in my previous post The What’s and the How’s of a full-stack developer’s skill set , I will be just explaining in very brief , what is a database, types of databases and examples of each.
According to Wikipedia a Database is an organized collection of data. This can be as simple as a Text database. When data is organized in a text file in rows and columns, it can be used to store, organize, protect, and retrieve data. Saving a list of names in a file, starting with first name and followed by last name, would be a simple database.
Some desktop application like a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or Microsoft Access can be called a database as well.These programs allow users to enter data, store it, protect it, and retrieve it when needed.
Talking about most of the applications been written these days, there are two types of databases that are used
- Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) :
- It is completely structured way of storing data.
- The amount of data stored mainly depends on the physical memory of the system.
- Databases are table based databases.
There are several RDBMS databases, and have been used in desktop and web applications for years. Some examples are MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Firebird, MariaDB, Oracle DB, SQL server, IBM DB2,IBM Informix, Teradata
- NOSQL :
- It is unstructured way of storing the data.
- In NoSQL, you don’t have any limits on the amount of data stored as you can scale the system horizontally.
- Databases are document based, key-value pairs, graph databases or wide-column stores
Examples : MongoDB, CouchDB, GemFire, Redis, Cassandra, Hazelcast, HBase
If you are looking to be a full-stack developer in the Javascript ecosystem, I would recommend looking into MongoDB as a database choice.
