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Database management systems
A database is a common word today.
Everyone talks of having his own database. The police maintains one on criminals
and bad characters, the income tax officials on defaulters, and the scientists
maintain one on the latest discoveries. In general, keeping a collection of
related information is said to be 'maintaining a database'.
In an office, a purchase manager
has information about the suppliers. She has all their brochures and price
lists. Therefore she has a database. She may require knowing the suppliers
capable of offering steel tubes of a particular diameter. She has the requisite
data - what she needs now is a selection of the relevant information based on
certain criteria. The requirement could be more detailed. She may want the
dealers capable of supplying the steel tubes having a price less than some
cut-off, and in alphabetic order. All such juggling of a body of data comes
under the ambit of database management systems.
Raw data is different from
information. Raw data is just a collection of some related details. When this
data is organized in a meaningful manner, it becomes information. For example,
let us consider the words, 'information', 'is', 'you', 'this', 'see' and. This
is just a collection of words, or verbal data say. When this data is organized
meaningfully, one can construct the sentence 'you see, this is information'.
Thus it may be observed that 'processed data' leads to the generation of
information. A database management system is a means of storing data and
converting it into information as and when required. Consider a supplier
database. Details of each supplier's product would include the specifications,
price, discounts, and supplier database. Details of each supplier's product
would include the specifications, price, discounts, supplier's name or code and
so on. These are all related data forming a unit called a Record. Each
individual part of data forming a record is called a field. A collection of
similar records is a file (in older databases) or a table, in modern relational
database terminology. A collection of files (or tables) from a database.
Some of the common older databases
are Dbase, FoxPro. The more modern relational databases (databases which allow
users to perceive the data as being arranged in tables) in today's market are
INGRESS, SYBASE, ORCALE, INFORMIX etc. Microsoft has an RDBMS (relational
database management system) called MS-ACCESS commonly found on personal
computers.
