Pvt John Carlo C Fernandez PA
Introduction to Database Management System and its Users
To understand Database Management System (DBMS), it is necessary to know about
Database and even before that, about Data. Data is any facts or figures which can be
recorded and which has a latent meaning. Database is a collection of such data, more
accurately it is a collection of related data. For e.g. a database of countries of the world and
their calling code. Here, countries and calling code are related to each other and the
database serves a purpose, to provide user with correct calling code. A random collection
where, data is neither related nor serve a purpose cannot be called as a database. In
summary a database is a collection of logically coherent data, which come together to serve
a particular purpose and they emulate some aspect of real world.
Software which is used to manage such databases is called DBMS. For e.g. Oracle, IBM DB2,
Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase. DBMS software is a collection of programs
which facilitate in access, retrieval, security, creation and sharing of database among its
users or other applications. Primary Goal of DBMS Software is to provide an efficient and
convenient way of storing and retrieving data.
DBMS is a very widely used software in different industries like Banking, Railways, Airlines,
Universities and a lot of other industries. Database System is designed to handle very large
amount of data and may extend up to several Terabytes of size. It must also have an inbuilt
mechanism to recover the data in case of system crashes and protect the data for any
unauthorized access and manipulation.
It is interesting to know that we all come across database several times during the day,
during logging into email account, user-id and encrypted password associated with it is
retrieved. During ATM transaction, money is debited and account is updated with the same
in the Database System of the bank, these types of use make us End Users. End users are
basically consumers who are using a product; they might use it for generating monthly
reports, withdrawing money from bank or for specialized and complex use like forecasting
sales for next season.
Database Administrators are needed to administer and monitor usage of the Database. They
are responsible to tune the Database for performance issues, to grant access of DB to users
and initiate recovery in event of system crash and protect the system in case of security
issues.
Pvt John Carlo C Fernandez PA
Database Designers come into picture before a database is built. They gather requirements
from all prospective users; level of access required for each user or a group and designs the
DB which meets the requirement. They are responsible for identifying the data to be
populated and appropriate data strictures for the database. They are generally part of
Database Administrators.
Application programmers are necessary to built user interfaces and applications to satisfy
needs of end users. They develop applications which make data retrieval, creation of reports
more convenient. They are fully aware of all the functionalities of DB and use it to their
advantage.
