Databases, an Introduction

Welcome to the exciting world of database development! In this series of articles, I will introduce you to
databases and help you knowing how to effectively use them.

According to my opinion, if you are reading this article, you must have the basic know how of a file
system and you must have heard of databases.

Now, first of all, we’ll start by taking a scenario to understand the problem, and then find its primary
solution, moving forward step by step, will finally hunt down the best possible solution available to fulfill
our quest.

The story starts with you n me, starting a small store in which we have to maintain data of daily sales.

Primarily, we are using the manual system [file system] for keeping record of the sales. What we do is
just add the daily transactions in our register and at the end of the day, simply calculate the total. Things
go on this way for a while, but now we plan to enhance our business.

So, as our business grows its requirements increases, like we’ll need a bigger place to settle our stuff, we
need more staff hiring and so on. Moreover, we are trying to computerize our system of storing daily
sales data.

For this, we shall move forward to the computerized system of maintaining data in simple files. After
doing this, things go on the same way as before. We have merely added a computer system to our store.

One day, there arises a problem at the store. We come to know that the employee we hired a month
ago was stealing money from the sales, for verification, we need the detailed report for the whole
passed month.

Here, the hitch is that the data was stored in files. There is no security check, no back up, nothing to gain
from the investigation what so ever.

Assume another concern; we need to have more than one check out to facilitate our customers. At the
end of the day, employees calculate the total by simply combining the records and finalize the day’s
sale. We plan to give money off on some of the items that have good sale. For a list of such items, we
definitely need a report, which would be the most difficult one to be made by manual calculations from
each checkout, and our simple files do not provide us the facility to generate us a combined report of
the checkouts in any way.

Now, keeping in mind the above two scenarios, just imagine what a chaos these simple files would
create. Therefore, what we need is, an improved record keeping system, other than the simple file or
flat file system.

Consequently, this is the right place for a database system to jump in. 
From the above case study, one thing is very clear that a database system is not just used to store data
like files; it facilitates us with security, back up, reports from calculations, data manipulations and so
much more of course.

Punch Line: Files store data; database manages and manipulates it as well.

Database - Definition:
Here we have a formal definition for database, you don’t need to learn it by heart, just understand the
concept.

Data: Data are raw facts that constitute building blocks of information. 

Database: Database offers an organized mechanism for storing, managing and retrieving information
from a computer system.

Fundamentals:
I am about to state some of the fundamental concepts that will assist you in differentiating amid files
and databases.

1) Data Redundancy: same data resides at more than one place

2) Data Inconsistency: different records of one person, maintained in two separate files
3) Data Integrity: data remains consistent before and after transaction (transaction – a complete
input, processing n output cycle)
4) Security Enforcement: verifies authorized access

Files:
Now we shall see what the shortcomings of file are:

1) Data redundancy is there as there is no centralized system.

2) Data inconsistency lies because there are multiple copies of same data, you might change one,
but you can’t update all of them.
3) Data integrity cannot be maintained as there isn’t any concept of transaction.
4) Security is nil; there is no concept of users and their access rights.
5) Also, files cannot be updated as per changing requirements; you have to make a new file in
order to take in a new necessity.
6) Deleting any record from a file also needs such things – no express way.
7) Multiple users cannot access a file at the same time.
8) No sharing of data since everyone maintains a separate copy of file.
Consequently file comes out to be a totally unstructured collection of information.

Databases:
While viewing the other side of the picture, we can see that:

1) Redundancy cannot be uprooted at all; rather it can be minimized using databases.

2) In a centralized system, data is always consistent.
3) Integrity issues are resolved as data integrity is one of the building blocks of database - a
database act is basically a transaction.
4) Security is one of the crucial problems handled incredibly in databases since one can grant as
well as revoke the access privileges of every user according to the requirements.
5) Centralized system eliminates the hitch of separate record maintenance; any new thing
introduced in the system can make its room in the existing database. Hence data manipulation
becomes a piece of cake.
6) As the system is centralized, a huge number of users can access the database simultaneously.
7) Data sharing is unproblematic as everyone accesses a separate copy of the same data.

N I guess that’s it. This is all the vital knowledge one must have in order to advance in this field. In my
next article, I’ll share the history and evolution of database.