Data Base Management Systems (Introduction)

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Friends, in this post we shall discuss the basics of DBMS (Data Base Management Systems) which will be helpful for you for IBPS Specialist Officers Exam (IT Officers). 

Before going into details, lets have a look at the basic terminology of DBMS.

Data :  Data is the raw material from which Useful Information is derived. The word data is the Plural form of Datum (but nowadays, people commonly using data for both singular and plural). 

               Simply we can say that, data is a collection of unorganized  facts, but can be made organized into useful information.

Some examples of data are Prices, Weights, Costs, Number of items sold or purchased etc.

Information : The data, that have been processed in such a ways so as to increase the knowledge  of the person who uses the data is known as information.  Of-course, now a days these terms data and information are closely related and now a days people often interchanging their meanings. 

Data (or) Information Processing : The process of converting the facts into meaningful information is known as Data processing. It is also known as Information processing.

Meta Data : Simply we can say it as the Data about the Data. In other words, The Data that describes the properties of other data is known as Metadata. I mean, Meta Data keeps the information of the Other Data, i.e., it keeps the information HOW and WHERE the other data is stored. 

Data Base : A database is a collection of data (information) of some given Organization (a company for example), that can be processed through one or more programs by multiple users. 

Some examples are A bank, A hospital, A company etc.....

Data Base Management Systems : Now you can define the database management systems easily, A Data Base Management System (simply called as DBMS) is A System that manages the Data Base..... 

Not Satisfied? ok " A Software that manages the collection of Data"

Need a technical Definition? "A software that provides an efficient environment to help us in STORING and RETRIEVING the Data Base of an enterprise. 

Our DBMS, Defines Data, Stores Data, Maintains data and ofcourse, Deletes the Data... Thats it :)

Simply our Database is the CONTAINER for a collection of computerized data files. Our DBMS tells us n helps us in  how to insert, maintain and delete these files. 

Now lets have a look at some advantages of Database Management Systems

• Reduction of Redundancies : Redundancy means duplicating ( I mean, making the same copy of data again and again). Reduction of Redundancy means, avoiding the duplication of data (Remember the warning message "The file named XYZ.JPG is already exist. do you want to replace it???", yea the same thing
• Data Independence and Efficient Access : The files stored in Database are independent of their storage details.And the change in one file doesnt effect the other (until and unless they related to each other).
• Data Integrity : Data Integrity means, that the data values entered in the database must be checked to ensure that they fall within the correct format and range. Confused? lets see an example. Suppose I am entering the students details of a School. what is I entered the age of the student as 55 ??? people will laugh at me. So the value should be less than 17. And ofcourse, the Data Integrity also checks whether the referring field is existing or not. I mean, if i want to enter the marks of a person named shivani sharma, first of all it checks whether the name of that person exists in its database or not...
• Data Security : All of us knows about Security. So no need to discuss. We shall discuss about this in detail later...
• Less Application Development Time : With the help of some Predefined functions like Concurrency control, Crash Recovery etc, DBMS helps us to develop applications in very less time.
• Conflict Resolution : It helps us in resolving the conflicts among various users to access the same data file
• Data Administration : DBMS provides maintenance and administration of data by providing a common base for the large collection of data being shared by several users. 
• Concurrent Access : Number of users can access a single file Concurrently (I mean, at the same time).
• Crash Recovery : The DBMS maintains a continuous record for the changes made to the data, so , if there is any system crash by power failure or something, it can restore the Database...

Click Here for The Transaction Management (ACID Properties)

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