Database Management Systems Explained
June 27, 2009 by Dunkin
If you are among the billions of people who use a computer system on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, the possibilities are quite high that you might also be using some form of database programs that are administering you with the information that you view on the Internet. This data is typically sorted in a software program called a database management system (which is also known by its acronym: DBMS). Databases have been functioning since the inception of computer usage decades ago and have only evolved in their functionality, speed and capacity over more recent years. To begin with, there was only one type of database management system: the navigational database management system. So named because this system would navigate from one information point to the next until it found the component that was being looked for. This was often very time consuming as the navigational database management system had to search through every bit of data in the database one step at a time. As time progressed, so did database research and a new management system was developed: the nested relational database management system.
The nested relational database management system is so named due to the relationship qualities that the data contained within have with each other. For instance, in this relational database system, all the data is kept in tables and any such related data to the original is stored in a separate table that is then linked back to the original data. Upon searching for a piece of information, the computer system no longer requires to put the request through the rigors of the navigational system and the searched information is then retrieved at a much more accelerated pace — this is also true of any associated or related data. This action is carried out with keys and each key is assigned to a particular record so there will be no cross contaminating of information. This is the most common type of database management system in use nowadays.
Additionally to the navigational and nested relational database management system, there is also an object database management system that is quite typically used by large corporations that have a need for more complex data analyzing and processing. It is clear to see that the inception and development of the database management system over the course of the years has provided us products for every range of application and variety of computer use.
thanks you!!
Very helpful.
Aaaah gampaaang, serahkan semua ama gw!!haaha RT ehh anjiss beneran nih kita rabu ngerjain dbms ama radhi..
شكراً الله يجعلك في الجنة آمين
i smiled through this whole video!!!! FREAKIN AWESOME!!!
- 600 pages of translation, and
your accomplishments would be what ?
You get OUT of anything in life no more than you put INTO it.
You might want to look back on your cavalier admission of laziness and ask yourself what's wrong with this picture. THAT, it seems to me, is what YOU need to "learn rather quickly."
As to the course…
No matter how good a programmer someone might be, his/her custom application of slick code sitting atop a lousy database design will be a bust. Database design is its own kind of art form. This course, clearly, covers much of what one needs to know in order to create a good and flexible database structure before one begins writing the code to make it functional and useful.
A very, very simple example of bad database design: Not separating the name field into logical sub-parts. In other words, not having a "First Name" field, and then a separate "Middle Name or Initial" field, and then a separate "Last Name" field. If one puts the entire first, middle and last name into the same field, then how, later, does one print-out a report wherein the name is in the format "last-comma-first"?
Of course, one can write a semi-sophisticated parsing algorithm, but no amount of sophistication can successfully cope with things like last names which have spaces in them, for example. Computers join things together really well, but they don't bust them apart very accurately. Good database design, therefore, ensures that all data is broken down and stored in said database in the smallest and most logical constituent parts possible so it will be easier for the computer to put things back together however one desired it at report time.
That is the kind of stuff that that course teaches… only, obviously, including much, much more sophisticated stuff than my simple example. I'm just trying to help you understand the essence of it.
Databases have parts which "relate" to one another so that one doesn't have to keep entering the same information over and over into different parts of the system. Building and organizing those parts can be tricky. If not done right, the database will be cumbersome to use, and slow. Good structural and access optimzation techniques are called for to figure it all out… and that means a lot of "what if" kind of mathematics… hence the requirement for algebra and calculus.
This is not the sort of course in which one may be "lazy." If you're not prepared to do the work, then don't take the course.
Hope that helps.
I honestly don't know what software you may be talking about. Most software used may be proprietary in that their code is secret, but the way data is stored is relatively universal. Most use a relational database like (MS SQL, Oracle, IBM DB2, MySQL, etc.) That data can be exported to nearly any conceivable format. The problem is that in a relational database system, records do not exist in the way people think. Each field in a “record” may reside in a different table. To create the “record” the program or programmer will have to pull the proper information together. Why do we need to do this? Because it is more efficient. I can share information between applications and only have to update it once rather than updating several databases containing the same data.
But again, what does “easily accessed and manipulated by programs commonly available to the public.” mean? I hope you understand that I'm truly trying to figure this out, because replacing the software that we run (if it doesn't meet this nebulous standard) could cost millions in terms of software, hardware and staff time.