Database

A database is usually a set of data that models real life situations (The amount of stock available in a superstore). The data is stored so that it supports the processes that require this information. Database managements systems (DBMS) are software usually used to allow the administration of certain of such databases. These databases are very important when opening up a business as it supports the business from the inside (All company computers have access to certain information) as well as the outside (All online interactions made by the user). There are many types of databases. Some examples of adjectives used to characterize different databases are: – Active database o Driven by ‘events’ caused by the user – Cloud database o A database on ‘a cloud’ – Data warehouses o Archives data from external sources such as market research firms o This database is usually only accessed by a manager to see operational data – Deductive database o Combines logic programming with a relational database – Distributed database o The data and DBMS are spread throughout many computers – Document-oriented database o Stores, retrieving, and managing semi-constructed data. – Embedded database o DBMS that is integrated with an application software that requires access to stored data in which requires no access of the DBMS, this way there is no need for maintenance on the database – End-user database o Made up of data developed by end-users. Usually the data consists of documents, presentations, and spreadsheets. – Federal database system o Made up of many different databases that is controlled by a federated database management system. – Graph database o Uses nodes, edges and properties to represent stored information – Hypermedia database o Words in this database represent objects such as another piece of text, pictures, or videos. o Useful for organizing large amount of information – such as an encyclopedia. The largest Hypermedia database is the World Wide Web. – In memory database o Database that resides in main memory. These databases are faster than disk databases – Knowledge database o A database that specializes in the retrieval, storage, and organization of knowledge. Such as problems and their solution. – Mobile databases o Carried and synchronized with mobile devices – Operational database o Stores important data about the operations of an organization. o Most of the updates of the database are transactions. o An example of an operational database is a customer database, which stores all of the information about the customer. – Parallel database o Improves performance of databases through parallelization o There are 3 main types of parallel databases architectures o Shared memory architecture ? Multiple processors share a memory space. o Shared disk architecture ? Each processing unit acts independently, but data is shared. o Shared nothing architecture ? Each processing unit acts independently, nothing is shared. – Probabilistic database o Uses ‘fuzzy logic’ to draw inferences from imprecise data – Real-time database o Processes transactions fast enough for the results to come back instantly – Spatial database o Stores data with multidimensional features. Ex. A pinpointed location – Temporal database o Can do things with time such as log-in valid time and transaction time – Terminology-oriented database o Built on an object-oriented database – customized for specific fields – Unstructured database o Used to store things that usually hard to store in the normally found databases such as email messages, documents, or media