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RDBMS a Introduction
Database Management System
A Database Management System (DBMS) is a computer program for
managing a permanent, self-descriptive repository of data. This repository
of data is called a database and is store in one or more files. There are
many reasons why you could use a DBMS:
Crash recovery; The database is protected from hardware crashes,
disk media failures, and some user errors
Sharing between users; Multiple users can access the database at
the same time
Sharing between applications; Multiple application programs can
read and write data to the same database
Security; Data can be protected against unauthorized read and write
access
Integrity; You can specify rules that data must satisfy. A DBMS can
control the quality of its data over and above facilities that that may
be provided by application programs
Extensibility; Data may be added to the database without disrupting
existing programs. Data can be reorganized for faster performance.
Data distribution; The database may be partitioned across various
sites, organizations, and hardware platforms
An entire branch of computer science is devoted to studying DBMS issues
and answering questions such as:
What paradigm is most conducive it represents database structure?
What kind of language provides the most natural interaction?
How can a database capture more of the true meaning of its data?
How should a database be organized for maximum performance and
flexibility?
Several DBMS paradigms are available: hierarchical, network, relational,
and object-oriented. Hierarchical and network DBMS bring the conceptual
DBMS close to underlying physical data structures. Thus they are efficient
but difficult to use and fading in the marketplace. Relational DBMS
dominate todays marketplace. Relational DBMS present the database at a
higher level of abstraction than hierarchies and networks and are easy to
use. Relational DBMS implementations are improving in performance as
they mature and use smarter optimization techniques. Object-oriented
may be the wave to the future
RDBMS Properties
An RDBMS is easily accessible. You execute commands in the Structured
Query Language (SQL) to manipulate data. SQL is the international
Standards Organization (ISO) standard language for interacting with a
RDBMS.
An RDBMS provides full data independence. The organization of the data
is independent of the applications that use it. You do not need to specify
the access routes to tables or know how data is physically arranged in a
database.
A relational database is a collection of individual, named objects. The basic
unit of data storage in a relational database is called a table. A table
consists of rows and columns used to store values. For access purpose,
the order of rows and columns is insignificant. You can control the access
order as required.