Database management is a system of managing the information that supports a business’s operations. It includes data storage, distributing it to users and applications and modifying it as needed and monitoring the changes in the data and preventing it from getting corrupted due to unexpected failure. It is a part of the entire informational infrastructure of a business that assists in decision making in corporate growth, as well as compliance with laws such as the GDPR and California Consumer Privacy Act.
The first database systems were invented in the 1960s by Charles Bachman, IBM and others. They evolved into information management systems (IMS) that allowed the storage and retrieve huge amounts of data for a wide range of uses, from calculating inventory to supporting complicated financial accounting and human resources functions.
A database consists of a set of tables that organize data according to a particular pattern, for example, one-to-many relationships. It uses primary keys to identify records, and allow cross-references between tables. Each table contains a number of fields, referred to as attributes, that contain information about the entities that comprise the data. The most popular type of database that is currently in use is a relational model developed by E. F. “Ted” Codd at IBM in the 1970s. This model is based on normalizing the data, making it more easy to use. It also makes it easier to update data, avoiding the need to change several databases.
Most DBMSs support multiple types of databases by providing different internal and external levels of organization. The internal level focuses on costs, scalability, and other operational concerns like the design of the database’s physical storage. The external level determines how the database is presented in user interfaces and other applications. It could comprise a mix of external views based on different data models highperformance-hack.com. It also may include virtual table that are computed using generic data in order to improve the performance.