Database management is a system for managing information that supports the organization’s business processes. It includes data storage, distributing it to applications and users and then modifying it if necessary and monitoring the changes in the data and preventing the data from becoming corrupted due to unexpected failure. It is an integral part of the overall infrastructure of a business that supports decision making as well as corporate growth and compliance with laws like the GDPR and California Consumer Privacy Act.
In the 1960s, Charles Bachman and IBM among others came up with the first database systems. They evolved into the information management systems (IMS) that made it possible to store and retrieve large amounts of data for a wide range of purposes, ranging from calculating inventory to supporting complicated financial accounting and human resources functions.
A database is a set of tables that store data according to a certain arrangement, like one-to-many relationships. It utilizes primary key to identify records and allow cross-references among tables. Each table is comprised of a variety of fields, called attributes, that represent facts about the data entities. Relational models, which were developed by E. F. “Ted” Codd in the 1970s at IBM as a database, are the most widely used type of database in the present. This model is based on normalizing data to make it more user-friendly. It is also simpler to update data because it does not require the changing of various databases.
Most DBMSs can support different types of databases by offering different levels of external and internal organization. The internal level is concerned with the cost, scalability, and other operational issues, such as the physical layout of the database. The external level is how the database is represented in user interfaces and other applications. It can include a combination of different external views (based on the different data models) and may also include virtual tables that are constructed using generic data to improve performance.