Thread started: Jan 11 2008, 9:58 PM EST
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A DBMS is a complex set of software programs that controls the organization, storage, management, and retrieval of data in a database. A DBMS includes:
A modeling language to define the schema of each database hosted in the DBMS, according to the DBMS data model.
The four most common types of organizations are the hierarchical, network, relational and object models. Inverted lists and other methods are also used. A given database management system may provide one or more of the four 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).
The dominant model in use today is the ad hoc one embedded in SQL, despite the objections of purists who believe this model is a corruption of the relational model, since it violates several of its fundamental principles for the sake of practicality and performance. Many DBMSs also support the Open Database Connectivity API that supports a standard way for programmers to access the DBMS.
Data structures (fields, records, files and objects) optimized to deal with very large amounts of data stored on a permanent data storage device (which implies relatively slow access compared to volatile main memory).
A database query language and report writer to allow users to interactively interrogate the database, analyze its data and update it according to the users privileges on data.
It also controls the security of the database.
Data security prevents unauthorized users from viewing or updating the database. Using passwords, users are allowed access to the entire database or subsets of it called subschemas. For example, an employee database can contain all the data about an individual employee, but one group of users may be authorized to view only payroll data, while others are allowed access to only work history and medical data.
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