Database management is a system for managing information that supports an organization’s business operations. It involves storing data, disseminating it to applications and users making edits as needed as well as monitoring changes in data and stopping data corruption due unexpected failure. It is a component of the entire informational infrastructure of a business that assists in decision making in corporate growth, as well as compliance with laws like the GDPR and California Consumer Privacy Act.
The first database systems were invented in the 1960s by Charles Bachman, IBM and others. They developed into information management systems (IMS) which allowed huge amounts of data to be stored and retrieved for a variety of reasons. From calculating inventory, to supporting complex financial accounting functions and human resource functions.
A database is a set of tables that are organized according to a certain pattern, for example, one-to-many relationships. It uses primary keys to identify records and permit cross-references between tables. Each table has a set of attributes, or fields, that contain information about data entities. Relational models, developed by E. F. “Ted” Codd in the 1970s at IBM as a database, are the most well-known database type today. The design is based on normalizing the data, making it more easy to use. It also makes it simpler to update data without the need to update various databases.
Most DBMSs can support multiple database types by providing different levels of internal and external organization. The internal level is concerned with the cost, scalability, and other operational issues, like the physical layout of the database. The external level is the way the database is represented in user interfaces and other applications. It could comprise a mix of external views based on different models of data and may include virtual table that are computed using generic data in order to improve the performance.
