Databases: Definitions

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Data: data can be facts related to any object in consideration. For example, your name, age. A database is a systematic collection of data. They support electronic storage and manipulation of data. Databases make data management easy.

A database management system (DBMS) is the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and analyze the data.

Types of Database

Relational databases: The name comes from the way that data is stored in multiple, related tables. Within the tables, data is stored in rows and columns. It defines database relationships in the form of tables. Most popular! E.g: Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, MySQL, PostgreSQL and IBM Db2.

NoSQL:  Includes databases that doesn’t use SQL as its primary data access language. These types of databases are also sometimes referred to as non-relational databases. data in a NoSQL database doesn’t have to conform to a pre-defined schema, so great to store unstructured or semi-structured data. 

Other DB Types

• Graph Database
• Distributed Database
• Object oriented Database
• Cloud Database
• Wide-column dbs
• Time series DB

Why Use a Database?

• Can store very large numbers of records efficiently
• quick and easy to find information.
• Easy to add new data and to edit or delete old data.
• Data can be searched easily, e.gfind all users in Lagos.
• More than one person can access the same database at the same time – multi-access.
• Security and data integrity