In computing , a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system ( DBMS ), the software that interacts with end users , applications , and the database itself to capture and analyze the data. The DBMS additionally encompasses the core facilities provided to administer the database. The sum total of the database, the DBMS and the associated applications can be referred to as a database system . Often the term "database" is also used loosely to refer to any of the DBMS, the database system or an application associated with the database.
87-484: The International Plant Names Index ( IPNI ) describes itself as "a database of the names and associated basic bibliographical details of seed plants , ferns and lycophytes ." Coverage of plant names is best at the rank of species and genus . It includes basic bibliographical details associated with the names. Its goals include eliminating the need for repeated reference to primary sources for basic bibliographic information about plant names. The IPNI also maintains
174-432: A data modeling construct for the relational model, and the difference between the two has become irrelevant. The 1980s ushered in the age of desktop computing . The new computers empowered their users with spreadsheets like Lotus 1-2-3 and database software like dBASE . The dBASE product was lightweight and easy for any computer user to understand out of the box. C. Wayne Ratliff , the creator of dBASE, stated: "dBASE
261-427: A star schema , consisting of one highly normalized table containing the facts, and surrounding denormalized tables containing each dimension. An alternative physical implementation, called a snowflake schema , normalizes multi-level hierarchies within a dimension into multiple tables. A data warehouse can contain multiple dimensional schemas that share dimension tables, allowing them to be used together. Coming up with
348-484: A 1962 report by the System Development Corporation of California as the first to use the term "data-base" in a specific technical sense. As computers grew in speed and capability, a number of general-purpose database systems emerged; by the mid-1960s a number of such systems had come into commercial use. Interest in a standard began to grow, and Charles Bachman , author of one such product,
435-440: A custom multitasking kernel with built-in networking support, but modern DBMSs typically rely on a standard operating system to provide these functions. Since DBMSs comprise a significant market , computer and storage vendors often take into account DBMS requirements in their own development plans. Databases and DBMSs can be categorized according to the database model(s) that they support (such as relational or XML ),
522-443: A database management system. Existing DBMSs provide various functions that allow management of a database and its data which can be classified into four main functional groups: Both a database and its DBMS conform to the principles of a particular database model . "Database system" refers collectively to the database model, database management system, and database. Physically, database servers are dedicated computers that hold
609-404: A database. One way to classify databases involves the type of their contents, for example: bibliographic , document-text, statistical, or multimedia objects. Another way is by their application area, for example: accounting, music compositions, movies, banking, manufacturing, or insurance. A third way is by some technical aspect, such as the database structure or interface type. This section lists
696-444: A database. Some products have approached the problem from the application programming end, by making the objects manipulated by the program persistent . This typically requires the addition of some kind of query language, since conventional programming languages do not have the ability to find objects based on their information content. Others have attacked the problem from the database end, by defining an object-oriented data model for
783-437: A descendant. The operations of the network model are navigational in style: a program maintains a current position, and navigates from one record to another by following the relationships in which the record participates. Records can also be located by supplying key values. Although it is not an essential feature of the model, network databases generally implement the set relationships by means of pointers that directly address
870-408: A designated single attribute or a set of attributes that can act as a "key", which can be used to uniquely identify each tuple in the table. A key that can be used to uniquely identify a row in a table is called a primary key. Keys are commonly used to join or combine data from two or more tables. For example, an Employee table may contain a column named Location which contains a value that matches
957-543: A different chain, based on IBM's papers on System R. Though Oracle V1 implementations were completed in 1978, it was not until Oracle Version 2 when Ellison beat IBM to market in 1979. Stonebraker went on to apply the lessons from INGRES to develop a new database, Postgres, which is now known as PostgreSQL . PostgreSQL is often used for global mission-critical applications (the .org and .info domain name registries use it as their primary data store , as do many large companies and financial institutions). In Sweden, Codd's paper
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#17327654265801044-463: A different type of entity . Only in the mid-1980s did computing hardware become powerful enough to allow the wide deployment of relational systems (DBMSs plus applications). By the early 1990s, however, relational systems dominated in all large-scale data processing applications, and as of 2018 they remain dominant: IBM Db2 , Oracle , MySQL , and Microsoft SQL Server are the most searched DBMS . The dominant database language, standardized SQL for
1131-423: A few of the adjectives used to characterize different kinds of databases. Connolly and Begg define database management system (DBMS) as a "software system that enables users to define, create, maintain and control access to the database." Examples of DBMS's include MySQL , MariaDB , PostgreSQL , Microsoft SQL Server , Oracle Database , and Microsoft Access . The DBMS acronym is sometimes extended to indicate
1218-432: A full path (as opposed to upward link and sort field) is not also included for each record. Such limitations have been compensated for in later IMS versions by additional logical hierarchies imposed on the base physical hierarchy. The network model expands upon the hierarchical structure, allowing many-to-many relationships in a tree-like structure that allows multiple parents. It was most popular before being replaced by
1305-493: A list of standardized author abbreviations . These were initially based on Brummitt & Powell (1992) , but new names and abbreviations are continually added. IPNI is the product of a collaboration between The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew ( Index Kewensis ), The Harvard University Herbaria (Gray Herbarium Index), and the Australian National Herbarium ( APNI ). The IPNI database is a collection of
1392-403: A member in any number of sets. A set consists of circular linked lists where one record type, the set owner or parent, appears once in each circle, and a second record type, the subordinate or child, may appear multiple times in each circle. In this way a hierarchy may be established between any two record types, e.g., type A is the owner of B. At the same time another set may be defined where B
1479-642: A person's name, a book's ISBN , or a car's serial number) is sometimes called a "natural" key. If no natural key is suitable (think of the many people named Brown ), an arbitrary or surrogate key can be assigned (such as by giving employees ID numbers). In practice, most databases have both generated and natural keys, because generated keys can be used internally to create links between rows that cannot break, while natural keys can be used, less reliably, for searches and for integration with other databases. (For example, records in two independently developed databases could be matched up by social security number , except when
1566-407: A row are assumed to be related to one another. For instance, columns for name and password that might be used as a part of a system security database. Each row would have the specific password associated with an individual user. Columns of the table often have a type associated with them, defining them as character data, date or time information, integers, or floating point numbers. This tabular format
1653-449: A set of operations based on the mathematical system of relational calculus (from which the model takes its name). Splitting the data into a set of normalized tables (or relations ) aimed to ensure that each "fact" was only stored once, thus simplifying update operations. Virtual tables called views could present the data in different ways for different users, but views could not be directly updated. Codd used mathematical terms to define
1740-447: A single large "chunk". Subsequent multi-user versions were tested by customers in 1978 and 1979, by which time a standardized query language – SQL – had been added. Codd's ideas were establishing themselves as both workable and superior to CODASYL, pushing IBM to develop a true production version of System R, known as SQL/DS , and, later, Database 2 ( IBM Db2 ). Larry Ellison 's Oracle Database (or more simply, Oracle ) started from
1827-518: A single parent for each record. A sort field keeps sibling records in a particular order. Hierarchical structures were widely used in the early mainframe database management systems, such as the Information Management System (IMS) by IBM , and now describe the structure of XML documents. This structure allows one-to-many relationship between two types of data. This structure is very efficient to describe many relationships in
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#17327654265801914-635: A single value for each of its attributes. A relational database contains multiple tables, each similar to the one in the "flat" database model. One of the strengths of the relational model is that, in principle, any value occurring in two different records (belonging to the same table or to different tables), implies a relationship among those two records. Yet, in order to enforce explicit integrity constraints , relationships between records in tables can also be defined explicitly, by identifying or non-identifying parent-child relationships characterized by assigning cardinality (1:1, (0)1:M, M:M). Tables can also have
2001-436: A standard set of dimensions is an important part of dimensional modeling . Its high performance has made the dimensional model the most popular database structure for OLAP. Products offering a more general data model than the relational model are sometimes classified as post-relational . Alternate terms include "hybrid database", "Object-enhanced RDBMS" and others. The data model in such products incorporates relations but
2088-452: A strong demand for massively distributed databases with high partition tolerance, but according to the CAP theorem , it is impossible for a distributed system to simultaneously provide consistency , availability, and partition tolerance guarantees. A distributed system can satisfy any two of these guarantees at the same time, but not all three. For that reason, many NoSQL databases are using what
2175-454: A time by navigating the links, they would use a declarative query language that expressed what data was required, rather than the access path by which it should be found. Finding an efficient access path to the data became the responsibility of the database management system, rather than the application programmer. This process, called query optimization, depended on the fact that queries were expressed in terms of mathematical logic. Codd's paper
2262-409: Is a precursor to the relational model. These models were popular in the 1960s, 1970s, but nowadays can be found primarily in old legacy systems . They are characterized primarily by being navigational with strong connections between their logical and physical representations, and deficiencies in data independence . In a hierarchical model , data is organized into a tree-like structure , implying
2349-960: Is called eventual consistency to provide both availability and partition tolerance guarantees with a reduced level of data consistency. NewSQL is a class of modern relational databases that aims to provide the same scalable performance of NoSQL systems for online transaction processing (read-write) workloads while still using SQL and maintaining the ACID guarantees of a traditional database system. Databases are used to support internal operations of organizations and to underpin online interactions with customers and suppliers (see Enterprise software ). Databases are used to hold administrative information and more specialized data, such as engineering data or economic models. Examples include computerized library systems, flight reservation systems , computerized parts inventory systems , and many content management systems that store websites as collections of webpages in
2436-515: Is classified by IBM as a hierarchical database . IDMS and Cincom Systems ' TOTAL databases are classified as network databases. IMS remains in use as of 2014 . Edgar F. Codd worked at IBM in San Jose, California , in one of their offshoot offices that were primarily involved in the development of hard disk systems. He was unhappy with the navigational model of the CODASYL approach, notably
2523-577: Is not constrained by E.F. Codd 's Information Principle, which requires that all information in the database must be cast explicitly in terms of values in relations and in no other way Some of these extensions to the relational model integrate concepts from technologies that pre-date the relational model. For example, they allow representation of a directed graph with trees on the nodes. The German company sones implements this concept in its GraphDB . Some post-relational products extend relational systems with non-relational features. Others arrived in much
2610-406: Is only an approximation to the mathematical model defined by Codd. Three key terms are used extensively in relational database models: relations , attributes , and domains . A relation is a table with columns and rows. The named columns of the relation are called attributes, and the domain is the set of values the attributes are allowed to take. The basic data structure of the relational model
2697-462: Is organized. Because of the close relationship between them, the term "database" is often used casually to refer to both a database and the DBMS used to manipulate it. Outside the world of professional information technology , the term database is often used to refer to any collection of related data (such as a spreadsheet or a card index) as size and usage requirements typically necessitate use of
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2784-426: Is possible for products to offer support for more than one model. Various physical data models can implement any given logical model. Most database software will offer the user some level of control in tuning the physical implementation, since the choices that are made have a significant effect on performance. A model is not just a way of structuring data: it also defines a set of operations that can be performed on
2871-421: Is still pursued in certain applications by some companies like Netezza and Oracle ( Exadata ). IBM started working on a prototype system loosely based on Codd's concepts as System R in the early 1970s. The first version was ready in 1974/5, and work then started on multi-table systems in which the data could be split so that all of the data for a record (some of which is optional) did not have to be stored in
2958-486: Is the ADABAS DBMS of Software AG , introduced in 1970. ADABAS has gained considerable customer base and exists and supported until today. In the 1980s it has adopted the relational model and SQL in addition to its original tools and languages. Document-oriented database Clusterpoint uses inverted indexing model to provide fast full-text search for XML or JSON data objects for example. The relational model
3045-404: Is the basis of query optimization. There is no loss of expressiveness compared with the hierarchic or network models, though the connections between tables are no longer so explicit. In the hierarchic and network models, records were allowed to have a complex internal structure. For example, the salary history of an employee might be represented as a "repeating group" within the employee record. In
3132-415: Is the owner of A. Thus all the sets comprise a general directed graph (ownership defines a direction), or network construct. Access to records is either sequential (usually in each record type) or by navigation in the circular linked lists. The network model is able to represent redundancy in data more efficiently than in the hierarchical model, and there can be more than one path from an ancestor node to
3219-415: Is the table, where information about a particular entity (say, an employee) is represented in rows (also called tuples ) and columns. Thus, the " relation " in "relational database" refers to the various tables in the database; a relation is a set of tuples. The columns enumerate the various attributes of the entity (the employee's name, address or phone number, for example), and a row is an actual instance of
3306-667: The Integrated Data Store (IDS), founded the Database Task Group within CODASYL , the group responsible for the creation and standardization of COBOL . In 1971, the Database Task Group delivered their standard, which generally became known as the CODASYL approach , and soon a number of commercial products based on this approach entered the market. The CODASYL approach offered applications
3393-599: The Michigan Terminal System . The system remained in production until 1998. In the 1970s and 1980s, attempts were made to build database systems with integrated hardware and software. The underlying philosophy was that such integration would provide higher performance at a lower cost. Examples were IBM System/38 , the early offering of Teradata , and the Britton Lee, Inc. database machine. Another approach to hardware support for database management
3480-524: The contents of the data are used as keys in a lookup table, and the values in the table are pointers to the location of each instance of a given content item. This is also the logical structure of contemporary database indexes , which might only use the contents from a particular columns in the lookup table. The inverted file data model can put indexes in a set of files next to existing flat database files, in order to efficiently directly access needed records in these files. Notable for using this data model
3567-434: The database models that they support. Relational databases became dominant in the 1980s. These model data as rows and columns in a series of tables , and the vast majority use SQL for writing and querying data. In the 2000s, non-relational databases became popular, collectively referred to as NoSQL , because they use different query languages . Formally, a "database" refers to a set of related data accessed through
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3654-471: The hierarchical model and the CODASYL model ( network model ). These were characterized by the use of pointers (often physical disk addresses) to follow relationships from one record to another. The relational model , first proposed in 1970 by Edgar F. Codd , departed from this tradition by insisting that applications should search for data by content, rather than by following links. The relational model employs sets of ledger-style tables, each used for
3741-622: The 1980s and early 1990s. The 1990s, along with a rise in object-oriented programming , saw a growth in how data in various databases were handled. Programmers and designers began to treat the data in their databases as objects . That is to say that if a person's data were in a database, that person's attributes, such as their address, phone number, and age, were now considered to belong to that person instead of being extraneous data. This allows for relations between data to be related to objects and their attributes and not to individual fields. The term " object–relational impedance mismatch " described
3828-448: The 1990s) use the navigational concept to provide fast navigation across networks of objects, generally using object identifiers as "smart" pointers to related objects. Objectivity/DB , for instance, implements named one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many named relationships that can cross databases. Many object databases also support SQL , combining the strengths of both models. In an inverted file or inverted index ,
3915-686: The University of Michigan began development of the MICRO Information Management System based on D.L. Childs ' Set-Theoretic Data model. MICRO was used to manage very large data sets by the US Department of Labor , the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency , and researchers from the University of Alberta , the University of Michigan , and Wayne State University . It ran on IBM mainframe computers using
4002-539: The ability to navigate around a linked data set which was formed into a large network. Applications could find records by one of three methods: Later systems added B-trees to provide alternate access paths. Many CODASYL databases also added a declarative query language for end users (as distinct from the navigational API ). However, CODASYL databases were complex and required significant training and effort to produce useful applications. IBM also had its own DBMS in 1966, known as Information Management System (IMS). IMS
4089-438: The actual databases and run only the DBMS and related software. Database servers are usually multiprocessor computers, with generous memory and RAID disk arrays used for stable storage. Hardware database accelerators, connected to one or more servers via a high-speed channel, are also used in large-volume transaction processing environments . DBMSs are found at the heart of most database applications . DBMSs may be built around
4176-431: The application program (typically as objects). Even further, the type system used in a particular application can be defined directly in the database, allowing the database to enforce the same data integrity invariants. Object databases also introduce the key ideas of object programming, such as encapsulation and polymorphism , into the world of databases. A variety of these ways have been tried for storing objects in
4263-424: The building, state, and country. A measure is a quantity describing the fact, such as revenue. It is important that measures can be meaningfully aggregated—for example, the revenue from different locations can be added together. In an OLAP query, dimensions are chosen and the facts are grouped and aggregated together to create a summary. The dimensional model is often implemented on top of the relational model using
4350-431: The data. The relational model, for example, defines operations such as select , project and join . Although these operations may not be explicit in a particular query language , they provide the foundation on which a query language is built. The flat (or table) model consists of a single, two-dimensional array of data elements, where all members of a given column are assumed to be similar values, and all members of
4437-610: The database, and defining a database programming language that allows full programming capabilities as well as traditional query facilities. Object databases suffered because of a lack of standardization: although standards were defined by ODMG , they were never implemented well enough to ensure interoperability between products. Nevertheless, object databases have been used successfully in many applications: usually specialized applications such as engineering databases or molecular biology databases rather than mainstream commercial data processing. However, object database ideas were picked up by
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#17327654265804524-399: The dimensional model, a database schema consists of a single large table of facts that are described using dimensions and measures. A dimension provides the context of a fact (such as who participated, when and where it happened, and its type) and is used in queries to group related facts together. Dimensions tend to be discrete and are often hierarchical; for example, the location might include
4611-442: The entity (a specific employee) that is represented by the relation. As a result, each tuple of the employee table represents various attributes of a single employee. All relations (and, thus, tables) in a relational database have to adhere to some basic rules to qualify as relations. First, the ordering of columns is immaterial in a table. Second, there can not be identical tuples or rows in a table. And third, each tuple will contain
4698-511: The following functions and services a fully-fledged general purpose DBMS should provide: Database model A database model is a type of data model that determines the logical structure of a database . It fundamentally determines in which manner data can be stored, organized and manipulated. The most popular example of a database model is the relational model , which uses a table-based format. Common logical data models for databases include: An object–relational database combines
4785-417: The hardware needed to support a given transaction volume. In the 1990s, the object-oriented programming paradigm was applied to database technology, creating a new database model known as object databases . This aims to avoid the object–relational impedance mismatch – the overhead of converting information between its representation in the database (for example as rows in tables) and its representation in
4872-400: The inconvenience of translating between programmed objects and database tables. Object databases and object–relational databases attempt to solve this problem by providing an object-oriented language (sometimes as extensions to SQL) that programmers can use as alternative to purely relational SQL. On the programming side, libraries known as object–relational mappings (ORMs) attempt to solve
4959-423: The key of a Location table. Keys are also critical in the creation of indexes, which facilitate fast retrieval of data from large tables. Any column can be a key, or multiple columns can be grouped together into a compound key. It is not necessary to define all the keys in advance; a column can be used as a key even if it was not originally intended to be one. A key that has an external, real-world meaning (such as
5046-430: The lack of a "search" facility. In 1970, he wrote a number of papers that outlined a new approach to database construction that eventually culminated in the groundbreaking A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks . In this paper, he described a new system for storing and working with large databases. Instead of records being stored in some sort of linked list of free-form records as in CODASYL, Codd's idea
5133-430: The location of a record on disk. This gives excellent retrieval performance, at the expense of operations such as database loading and reorganization. Popular DBMS products that utilized it were Cincom Systems ' Total and Cullinet 's IDMS . IDMS gained a considerable customer base; in the 1980s, it adopted the relational model and SQL in addition to its original tools and languages. Most object databases (invented in
5220-576: The model: relations, tuples, and domains rather than tables, rows, and columns. The terminology that is now familiar came from early implementations. Codd would later criticize the tendency for practical implementations to depart from the mathematical foundations on which the model was based. The use of primary keys (user-oriented identifiers) to represent cross-table relationships, rather than disk addresses, had two primary motivations. From an engineering perspective, it enabled tables to be relocated and resized without expensive database reorganization. But Codd
5307-459: The multivalue model, we have the option of storing the data as on table, with an embedded table to represent the detail: (A) Invoice Table - one entry per invoice, no other tables needed. The advantage is that the atomicity of the Invoice (conceptual) and the Invoice (data representation) are one-to-one. This also results in fewer reads, less referential integrity issues, and a dramatic decrease in
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#17327654265805394-533: The names registered by the three cooperating institutions and they work towards standardizing the information. The standard of author abbreviations recommended by the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants is Brummitt and Powell's Authors of Plant Names . A digital and continually updated list of authors and abbreviations can be consulted online at IPNI. The IPNI provides names that have appeared in scholarly publications, with
5481-655: The objective of providing an index of published names rather than prescribing the accepted botanical nomenclature . Database Small databases can be stored on a file system , while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage . The design of databases spans formal techniques and practical considerations, including data modeling , efficient data representation and storage, query languages , security and privacy of sensitive data, and distributed computing issues, including supporting concurrent access and fault tolerance . Computer scientists may classify database management systems according to
5568-401: The real world; recipes, table of contents, ordering of paragraphs/verses, any nested and sorted information. This hierarchy is used as the physical order of records in storage. Record access is done by navigating downward through the data structure using pointers combined with sequential accessing. Because of this, the hierarchical structure is inefficient for certain database operations when
5655-480: The relational approach, the data would be normalized into a user table, an address table and a phone number table (for instance). Records would be created in these optional tables only if the address or phone numbers were actually provided. As well as identifying rows/records using logical identifiers rather than disk addresses, Codd changed the way in which applications assembled data from multiple records. Rather than requiring applications to gather data one record at
5742-446: The relational model, and is defined by the CODASYL specification. The network model organizes data using two fundamental concepts, called records and sets . Records contain fields (which may be organized hierarchically, as in the programming language COBOL ). Sets (not to be confused with mathematical sets) define one-to-many relationships between records: one owner, many members. A record may be an owner in any number of sets, and
5829-599: The relational model, has influenced database languages for other data models. Object databases were developed in the 1980s to overcome the inconvenience of object–relational impedance mismatch , which led to the coining of the term "post-relational" and also the development of hybrid object–relational databases . The next generation of post-relational databases in the late 2000s became known as NoSQL databases, introducing fast key–value stores and document-oriented databases . A competing "next generation" known as NewSQL databases attempted new implementations that retained
5916-419: The relational model, the process of normalization led to such internal structures being replaced by data held in multiple tables, connected only by logical keys. For instance, a common use of a database system is to track information about users, their name, login information, various addresses and phone numbers. In the navigational approach, all of this data would be placed in a single variable-length record. In
6003-455: The relational/SQL model while aiming to match the high performance of NoSQL compared to commercially available relational DBMSs. The introduction of the term database coincided with the availability of direct-access storage (disks and drums) from the mid-1960s onwards. The term represented a contrast with the tape-based systems of the past, allowing shared interactive use rather than daily batch processing . The Oxford English Dictionary cites
6090-524: The same place by adding relational features to pre-relational systems. Paradoxically, this allows products that are historically pre-relational, such as PICK and MUMPS , to make a plausible claim to be post-relational. The resource space model (RSM) is a non-relational data model based on multi-dimensional classification. Graph databases allow even more general structure than a network database; any node may be connected to any other node. Multivalue databases are "lumpy" data, in that they can store exactly
6177-623: The same problem. XML databases are a type of structured document-oriented database that allows querying based on XML document attributes. XML databases are mostly used in applications where the data is conveniently viewed as a collection of documents, with a structure that can vary from the very flexible to the highly rigid: examples include scientific articles, patents, tax filings, and personnel records. NoSQL databases are often very fast, do not require fixed table schemas, avoid join operations by storing denormalized data, and are designed to scale horizontally . In recent years, there has been
6264-535: The same way as relational databases, but they also permit a level of depth which the relational model can only approximate using sub-tables. This is nearly identical to the way XML expresses data, where a given field/attribute can have multiple right answers at the same time. Multivalue can be thought of as a compressed form of XML. An example is an invoice, which in either multivalue or relational data could be seen as (A) Invoice Header Table - one entry per invoice, and (B) Invoice Detail Table - one entry per line item. In
6351-478: The social security numbers are incorrect, missing, or have changed.) The most common query language used with the relational model is the Structured Query Language ( SQL ). The dimensional model is a specialized adaptation of the relational model used to represent data in data warehouses in a way that data can be easily summarized using online analytical processing, or OLAP queries. In
6438-582: The technology progress in the areas of processors , computer memory , computer storage , and computer networks . The concept of a database was made possible by the emergence of direct access storage media such as magnetic disks , which became widely available in the mid-1960s; earlier systems relied on sequential storage of data on magnetic tape . The subsequent development of database technology can be divided into three eras based on data model or structure: navigational , SQL/ relational , and post-relational. The two main early navigational data models were
6525-463: The two related structures. Physical data models include: Other models include: A given database management system may provide one or more models. The optimal structure depends on the natural organization of the application's data, and on the application's requirements, which include transaction rate (speed), reliability, maintainability, scalability, and cost. Most database management systems are built around one particular data model, although it
6612-423: The type(s) of computer they run on (from a server cluster to a mobile phone ), the query language (s) used to access the database (such as SQL or XQuery ), and their internal engineering, which affects performance, scalability , resilience, and security. The sizes, capabilities, and performance of databases and their respective DBMSs have grown in orders of magnitude. These performance increases were enabled by
6699-410: The underlying database model , with RDBMS for the relational , OODBMS for the object (oriented) and ORDBMS for the object–relational model . Other extensions can indicate some other characteristics, such as DDBMS for a distributed database management systems. The functionality provided by a DBMS can vary enormously. The core functionality is the storage, retrieval and update of data. Codd proposed
6786-455: The use of a "database management system" (DBMS), which is an integrated set of computer software that allows users to interact with one or more databases and provides access to all of the data contained in the database (although restrictions may exist that limit access to particular data). The DBMS provides various functions that allow entry, storage and retrieval of large quantities of information and provides ways to manage how that information
6873-460: The use of a "language" for data access , known as QUEL . Over time, INGRES moved to the emerging SQL standard. IBM itself did one test implementation of the relational model, PRTV , and a production one, Business System 12 , both now discontinued. Honeywell wrote MRDS for Multics , and now there are two new implementations: Alphora Dataphor and Rel. Most other DBMS implementations usually called relational are actually SQL DBMSs. In 1970,
6960-443: Was ICL 's CAFS accelerator, a hardware disk controller with programmable search capabilities. In the long term, these efforts were generally unsuccessful because specialized database machines could not keep pace with the rapid development and progress of general-purpose computers. Thus most database systems nowadays are software systems running on general-purpose hardware, using general-purpose computer data storage. However, this idea
7047-538: Was a development of software written for the Apollo program on the System/360 . IMS was generally similar in concept to CODASYL, but used a strict hierarchy for its model of data navigation instead of CODASYL's network model. Both concepts later became known as navigational databases due to the way data was accessed: the term was popularized by Bachman's 1973 Turing Award presentation The Programmer as Navigator . IMS
7134-412: Was also read and Mimer SQL was developed in the mid-1970s at Uppsala University . In 1984, this project was consolidated into an independent enterprise. Another data model, the entity–relationship model , emerged in 1976 and gained popularity for database design as it emphasized a more familiar description than the earlier relational model. Later on, entity–relationship constructs were retrofitted as
7221-403: Was different from programs like BASIC, C, FORTRAN, and COBOL in that a lot of the dirty work had already been done. The data manipulation is done by dBASE instead of by the user, so the user can concentrate on what he is doing, rather than having to mess with the dirty details of opening, reading, and closing files, and managing space allocation." dBASE was one of the top selling software titles in
7308-408: Was introduced by E.F. Codd in 1970 as a way to make database management systems more independent of any particular application. It is a mathematical model defined in terms of predicate logic and set theory , and implementations of it have been used by mainframe, midrange and microcomputer systems. The products that are generally referred to as relational databases in fact implement a model that
7395-422: Was more interested in the difference in semantics: the use of explicit identifiers made it easier to define update operations with clean mathematical definitions, and it also enabled query operations to be defined in terms of the established discipline of first-order predicate calculus ; because these operations have clean mathematical properties, it becomes possible to rewrite queries in provably correct ways, which
7482-422: Was picked up by two people at Berkeley, Eugene Wong and Michael Stonebraker . They started a project known as INGRES using funding that had already been allocated for a geographical database project and student programmers to produce code. Beginning in 1973, INGRES delivered its first test products which were generally ready for widespread use in 1979. INGRES was similar to System R in a number of ways, including
7569-490: Was to organize the data as a number of " tables ", each table being used for a different type of entity. Each table would contain a fixed number of columns containing the attributes of the entity. One or more columns of each table were designated as a primary key by which the rows of the table could be uniquely identified; cross-references between tables always used these primary keys, rather than disk addresses, and queries would join tables based on these key relationships, using
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