Database management is a system for managing data that supports the company’s business operations. It includes data storage and distribution to users and application programs making changes as needed as well as monitoring changes to the data and preventing the data from becoming corrupted by unexpected failures. It is a part of a company’s total informational infrastructure that supports decision-making and corporate growth, as well as compliance with laws like the GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act.
In the 1960s, Charles Bachman and IBM among others developed the first database systems. They evolved into information management systems (IMS) which allowed for the storage and retrieve huge amounts of data for a variety of uses, from calculating inventory to supporting complex financial accounting and human resources functions.
A database is tables that arrange data according to some pattern, for example, one-to-many relationships. It utilizes primary key to identify records and allows cross-references between tables. Each table has a variety of fields, known as attributes, which provide information about the entities that comprise the data. Relational models, created by E. F. “TedCodd Codd in the 1970s at IBM as a database, are the most popular database type currently. This design is based on normalizing data to make it more user-friendly. It is also easier to update data since it doesn’t require changing certain sections of the database.
Most DBMSs can accommodate different types of databases by offering different levels of external and internal organization. The internal level deals with costs, scalability, and other operational issues, such as the layout of the database’s physical storage. The external level is the representation of the database in user interfaces and applications. It may include a mix of different external views based on different models of data and can include virtual tables that are computed using generic data in order to improve the performance.