What is DBMS ? Explanation

The term data­base is made up of 2 sep­a­rate words i.e data & base.

DBMS Stands for Database Management System.

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The database is base for data i.e  an assembled group of data

A Data­base allows easy & effi­cient stor­age, retrieval & mod­i­fi­ca­tion of data, regard­less of the data being manipulated.

A data­base is an orga­nized col­lec­tion of sim­i­lar data, sim­i­lar data refers to the col­lec­tion of data that is stored based on the same context.

Eg. A Stu­dents’ data­base con­tains ‘sim­i­lar’ data. All stu­dents  & every student’s entry con­tains a sim­i­lar type of information.

DBMS is a collection of interrelated data & a set of programs to access those data.

The pri­ma­ry goal of a DBMS is to pro­vide a way to store & retrieve data­base infor­ma­tion i.e both con­ve­nient & efficient.

The data­base is the com­bi­na­tion of 2 words:-

Data­base + Man­age­ment Sys­tem = DBMS

A data­base is a col­lec­tion of relat­ed infor­ma­tion stored, so that is avail­able to many users for dif­fer­ent purposes.

On the oth­er hand, a man­age­ment sys­tem is a col­lec­tion of pro­grams that enables users to cre­ate & main­tain the database.

DBMS can also be defined “as an inter­face between the appli­ca­tion pro­gram & the oper­at­ing sys­tem to access or manip­u­late the database”.

Dic­tio­nary is one of the most com­mon e.g of a data­base where words are arranged alphabetically.

Need for DBMS

Earlier there were standalone systems for separate applications each with their own set of files, due to which data such as add may be duplicated in many separate systems, such as employee’s add may be held once in payroll system & again in the personal system which causes waste of space &  inconsistency.

Might be a pos­si­bil­i­ty for the address to be updat­ed in one sys­tem but not in the oth­er, Hence Mak­ing the data inconsistent.

These all prob­lems led to the devel­op­ment of the DB approach.

The benefit of DBMS

DBMS are very good at orga­niz­ing & main­tain­ing large col­lec­tions of per­sis­tent data.

A DBMS is like a suit­case where all the stuff(data) is put so that it is in one place & easy to reach.

It pro­tects the data from unau­tho­rized access & acci­den­tal cor­rup­tion or loss due to hard­ware & soft­ware failures.

It allows con­cur­rent access, which means a sin­gle piece of data can be accessed by more than one user at a time.

1. Users: In DBMS , 3 broad cat­e­gories of users — appli­ca­tion pro­gram­mers, end user & DBA 

The appli­ca­tion pro­gram­mers devel­op the appli­ca­tion programs. 

These pro­grams can manip­u­late the DB in all pos­si­ble ways.

The end-users access the DB using a query lan­guage pro­vid­ed by the DB System.

DBA(Data­base Admin­is­tra­tor) is the per­son who is respon­si­ble for the design, con­struc­tion & main­te­nance of a DB.

2. Soft­ware: It includes the DBMS O.S., net­work soft­ware & the appli­ca­tion program.
3. Hard­ware: It can range from a PC to a net­work of computers.

It also includes var­i­ous stor­age devices (like hard disks) & input & out­put devices (like mon­i­tor, print­er, etc.)

4. Data:  Data stored in the DB includes numer­i­cal data includ­ing whole num­bers & float­ing point num­bers & non-numer­i­cal data such as char­ac­ters, data or logic(True/False).