Database Types and Applications

Types of Databases and Applications

• Traditional applications include numeric and textual databases
• More recent applications include multimedia databases, geographic information systems (GIS), biological and genome databases, data warehouses, mobile databases, and real-time and active databases

Recent Developments

• Social networks capture a lot of information about people and communications among people
• Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo collect their own repository of web pages for searching purposes
• New technologies are emerging from non-database software vendors to manage vast amounts of data generated on the web
• NOSQL (Not Only SQL) systems and Big Data storage systems involving large clusters of distributed computers are emerging
• A large amount of data resides on the “cloud” in huge data centers using thousands of machines

Main Characteristics of the Database Approach

• Sharing of data and multi-user transaction processing
• Allowing a set of concurrent users to retrieve from and update the database
• Concurrency control within the DBMS guarantees that each transaction is correctly executed or aborted
• Recovery subsystem ensures each completed transaction has its effect permanently recorded in the database
• OLTP (Online Transaction Processing) is a major part of database applications, allowing hundreds of concurrent transactions to execute per second

Database Users

• Database administrators are responsible for authorizing access to the database, coordinating and monitoring its use, acquiring software and hardware resources, controlling its use, and monitoring efficiency of operations
• Database designers define the content, structure, constraints, and functions or transactions against the database
• End-users use the data for queries, reports, and some of them update the database content

Historical Development of Database Technology

• Early database applications used hierarchical and network models, which still dominate the market
• Relational model was introduced in 1970 and relational DBMS products emerged in the early 1980s
• Object-oriented and emerging applications include object-oriented database management systems (OODBMSs) and object-relational DBMSs (ORDBMSs)
• Data on the web and e-commerce applications use XML, HTML, and script programming languages like PHP and JavaScript

Extending Database Capabilities

• DBMSs are adding new functionality in areas like scientific applications, earth and atmospheric sciences, astronomy, XML, image storage and management, audio and video data management, data warehousing and data mining, spatial data management, and time series and historical data management

When Not to Use a DBMS

• If the database and applications are simple, well-defined, and not expected to change
• If access to data by multiple users is not required
• If the database system is not able to handle the complexity of data because of modeling limitations
• If the database users need special operations not supported by the DBMS