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Database management system

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A database management system (DBMS) is computer software designed for the

purpose of managing databases. Typical examples of DBMSs include Oracle, DB2,
Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, FileMaker and
Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise. DBMSs are typically used by Database
administrators in the creation of Database systems.

Contents
[hide]
 1 Description
 2 Features and Abilities Of DBMS
o 2.1 Query ability
o 2.2 Backup and replication
o 2.3 Rule enforcement
o 2.4 Security
o 2.5 Computation
o 2.6 Change and access logging
o 2.7 Automated optimization
o 2.8 Meta-data repository
o 2.9 History
o 2.10 Navigational DBMS
o 2.11 Relational DBMS
o 2.12 SQL DBMS
 3 See also
 4 References

 5 External references

[edit] Description
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:

1. A modeling language to define the schema of each database hosted in the DBMS,
according to the DBMS data model.
o 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).
o 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.
2. 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).
3. 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.
o It also controls the security of the database.
o 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.
o If the DBMS provides a way to interactively enter and update the
database, as well as interrogate it, this capability allows for managing
personal databases. However, it may not leave an audit trail of actions or
provide the kinds of controls necessary in a multi-user organization. These
controls are only available when a set of application programs are
customized for each data entry and updating function.
4. A transaction mechanism, that ideally would guarantee the ACID properties, in
order to ensure data integrity, despite concurrent user accesses (concurrency
control), and faults (fault tolerance).
o It also maintains the integrity of the data in the database.
o The DBMS can maintain the integrity of the database by not allowing
more than one user to update the same record at the same time. The
DBMS can help prevent duplicate records via unique index constraints; for
example, no two customers with the same customer numbers (key fields)
 can be entered into the database. See ACID properties for more
information (Redundancy avoidance).

The DBMS accepts requests for data from the application program and instructs the
operating system to transfer the appropriate data.

When a DBMS is used, information systems can be changed much more easily as the
organization's information requirements change. New categories of data can be added to
the database without disruption to the existing system.

Organizations may use one kind of DBMS for daily transaction processing and then
move the detail onto another computer that uses another DBMS better suited for random
inquiries and analysis. Overall systems design decisions are performed by data
administrators and systems analysts. Detailed database design is performed by database
administrators.

Database servers are specially designed computers that hold the actual databases and run
only the DBMS and related software. Database servers are usually multiprocessor
computers, with RAID disk arrays used for stable storage. Connected to one or more
servers via a high-speed channel, hardware database accelerators are also used in large
volume transaction processing environments.

DBMS's are found at the heart of most database applications. Sometimes DBMSs are
built around a private multitasking kernel with built-in networking support although
nowadays these functions are left to the operating system.

[edit] Features and Abilities Of DBMS

One can characterize a DBMS as an "attribute management system" where attributes are
small chunks of information that describe something. For example, "color" is an attribute
of a car. The value of the attribute may be a color such as "red", "blue", "silver", etc.
Lately databases have been modified to accept large or unstructured (pre-digested or pre-
categorized) information as well, such as images and text documents. However, the main
focus is still on descriptive attributes.

DBMS roll together frequently-needed services or features of attribute management. This

allows one to get powerful functionality "out of the box" rather than program each from
scratch or add and integrate them incrementally. Such features include:

[edit] Query ability

Querying is the process of requesting attribute information from various perspectives and
combinations of factors. Example: "How many 2-door cars in Texas are green?"

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. If the DBMS provides a way to interactively enter and update the
database, as well as interrogate it, this capability allows for managing personal databases.
However, it may not leave an audit trail of actions or provide the kinds of controls
necessary in a multi-user organization. These controls are only available when a set of
application programs are customized for each data entry and updating function.

[edit] Backup and replication

Copies of attributes need to be made regularly in case primary disks or other equipment
fails. A periodic copy of attributes may also be created for a distant organization that
cannot readily access the original. DBMS usually provide utilities to facilitate the process
of extracting and disseminating attribute sets.

When data is replicated between database servers, so that the information remains
consistent throughout the database system and users cannot tell or even know which
server in the DBMS they are using, the system is said to exhibit replication transparency.

[edit] Rule enforcement

Often one wants to apply rules to attributes so that the attributes are clean and reliable.
For example, we may have a rule that says each car can have only one engine associated
with it (identified by Engine Number). If somebody tries to associate a second engine
with a given car, we want the DBMS to deny such a request and display an error
message. However, with changes in the model specification such as, in this example,
hybrid gas-electric cars, rules may need to change. Ideally such rules should be able to be
added and removed as needed without significant data layout redesign.

[edit] Security

Often it is desirable to limit who can see or change which attributes or groups of
attributes. This may be managed directly by individual, or by the assignment of
individuals and privileges to groups, or (in the most elaborate models) through the
assignment of individuals and groups to roles which are then granted entitlements.

[edit] Computation

There are common computations requested on attributes such as counting, summing,

averaging, sorting, grouping, cross-referencing, etc. Rather than have each computer
application implement these from scratch, they can rely on the DBMS to supply such
calculations.
[edit] Change and access logging

Often one wants to know who accessed what attributes, what was changed, and when it
was changed. Logging services allow this by keeping a record of access occurrences and
changes.

[edit] Automated optimization

If there are frequently occurring usage patterns or requests, some DBMS can adjust
themselves to improve the speed of those interactions. In some cases the DBMS will
merely provide tools to monitor performance, allowing a human expert to make the
necessary adjustments after reviewing the statistics collected.....

[edit] Meta-data repository

Main article: Metadata

Metadata (also spelled meta-data) is information about information. For example, a

listing that describes what attributes are allowed to be in data sets is called "meta-
information".

[edit] History

Databases have been in use since the earliest days of electronic computing. Unlike
modern systems which can be applied to widely different databases and needs, the vast
majority of older systems were tightly linked to the custom databases in order to gain
speed at the expense of flexibility. Originally DBMSs were found only in large
organizations with the computer hardware needed to support large data sets.

[edit] Navigational DBMS

As computers grew in capability, this trade-off became increasingly unnecessary and a

number of general-purpose database systems emerged; by the mid-1960s there were a
number of such systems in commercial use. Interest in a standard began to grow, and
Charles Bachman, author of one such product, IDS, founded the Database Task Group
within CODASYL, the group responsible for the creation and standardization of
COBOL. In 1971 they delivered their standard, which generally became known as the
Codasyl approach, and soon there were a number of commercial products based on it
available.

The Codasyl approach was based on the "manual" navigation of a linked data set which
was formed into a large network. When the database was first opened, the program was
handed back a link to the first record in the database, which also contained pointers to
other pieces of data. To find any particular record the programmer had to step through
these pointers one at a time until the required record was returned. Simple queries like
"find all the people in Sweden" required the program to walk the entire data set and
collect the matching results. There was, essentially, no concept of "find" or "search". This
might sound like a serious limitation today, but in an era when the data was most often
stored on magnetic tape such operations were too expensive to contemplate anyway.

IBM also had their own DBMS system in 1968, known as IMS. IMS 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, and Bachman's 1973 Turing Award award presentation was The Programmer
as Navigator.

IMS is classified as a hierarchical database. IDS and IDMS (both CODASYL databases)
as well as CINCOMs TOTAL database are classified as network databases.

[edit] Relational DBMS

Edgar Codd worked at IBM in San Jose, California, in one of their offshoot offices that
was primarily involved in the development of hard disk systems. He was unhappy with
the navigational model of the Codasyl approach, notably the lack of a "search" facility
which was becoming increasingly useful. 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.[1]

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 was to use a "table" of fixed-length records. A linked-list system
would be very inefficient when storing "sparse" databases where some of the data for any
one record could be left empty. The relational model solved this by splitting the data into
a series of normalized tables, with optional elements being moved out of the main table to
where they would take up room only if needed.

In the relational model, related records are linked together with a "key".

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 these data would be placed in a single record, and unused items would
simply not be placed in the database. In 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.
Linking the information back together is the key to this system. In the relational model,
some bit of information was used as a "key", uniquely defining a particular record. When
information was being collected about a user, information stored in the optional (or
related) tables would be found by searching for this key. For instance, if the login name
of a user is unique, addresses and phone numbers for that user would be recorded with
the login name as its key. This "re-linking" of related data back into a single collection is
something that traditional computer languages are not designed for.

Just as the navigational approach would require programs to loop in order to collect
records, the relational approach would require loops to collect information about any one
record. Codd's solution to the necessary looping was a set-oriented language, a
suggestion that would later spawn the ubiquitous SQL. Using a branch of mathematics
known as tuple calculus, he demonstrated that such a system could support all the
operations of normal databases (inserting, updating etc.) as well as providing a simple
system for finding and returning sets of data in a single operation.

Codd's paper 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, using student programmers to produce
code. Beginning in 1973, INGRES delivered its first test products which were generally
ready for widespread use in 1979. During this time, a number of people had moved
"through" the group — perhaps as many as 30 people worked on the project, about five at
a time. INGRES was similar to System R in a number of ways, including the use of a
"language" for data access, known as QUEL — QUEL was in fact relational, having been
based on Codd's own Alpha language, but has since been corrupted to follow SQL, thus
violating much the same concepts of the relational model as SQL itself.

IBM itself did only one test implementation of the relational model, PRTV, and a
production one, Business System 12, both now discontinued. Honeywell did MRDS for
Multics, and now there are two new implementations: Alphora Dataphor and Rel. All
other DBMS implementations usually called relational are actually SQL DBMSs.

In 1968, the [2] University of Michigan began development of the Micro DBMS
relational database management system. It was used to manage very large data sets by the
US Department of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency and researchers from
University of Alberta, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University. It ran on
mainframe computers using Michigan Terminal System. The system remained in
production until 1996.

[edit] SQL DBMS

IBM started working on a prototype system loosely based on Codd's concepts as System
R in the early 1970s — unfortunately, System R was conceived as a way of proving
Codd's ideas unimplementable[citation needed], and thus the project was delivered to a group of
programmers who were not under Codd's supervision, never understood his ideas fully
and ended up violating several fundamentals of the relational model. The first "quickie"
version was ready in 1974/5, and work then started on multi-table systems in which the
data could be broken down so that all of the data for a record (much of which is often
optional) did not have to be stored in 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 (DB2).

Many of the people involved with INGRES became convinced of the future commercial
success of such systems, and formed their own companies to commercialize the work but
with an SQL interface. Sybase, Informix, NonStop SQL and eventually Ingres itself were
all being sold as offshoots to the original INGRES product in the 1980s. Even Microsoft
SQL Server is actually a re-built version of Sybase, and thus, INGRES. Only Larry
Ellison's Oracle started from a different chain, based on IBM's papers on System R, by
beating them to market when the first version was released in 1978.

Stonebraker went on to apply the lessons from INGRES to develop a new database,
Postgres, which is now known as PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL is primarily 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 was also read and Mimer SQL was developed from the mid-70s
at Uppsala University. In 1984, this project was consolidated into an independent
enterprise. In the early 1980s, Mimer introduced transaction handling for high robustness
in applications, an idea that was subsequently implemented on most other DBMS.

[edit] See also

 Column-oriented DBMS
 Data warehouse
 Database-centric architecture
 Directory service
 Distributed database management system
 Hierarchical model
 Navigational database
 Network model
 Object model
 Object database (OODBMS)
 Object-relational database (ORDBMS)
 Relational model (RDBMS model)
 Relational database management system (RBDMS)
 Run Book Automation (RBA)
 Comparison of relational database management systems
  SQL is a language for database management

[edit] References
1. ^ [1] Codd, E.F. (1970). "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data
Banks". Communications of the ACM 13 (6): 377–387.

[edit] External references

 Databases Information
 [3] Association for Computing Machinery SIGIR Forum archive Volume 7 , Issue
4
 [4] The origins of the data base concept, early DBMS systems including IDS and
IMS, the Data Base Task Group, and the hierarchical, network and relational data
models are discussed in Thomas Haigh, "'A Veritable Bucket of Facts:' Origins of
the Data Base Management System," ACM SIGMOD Record 35:2 (June 2006).
 [5] How Database Systems Share Storage

[hide]
v•d•e

Database management systems

Database models · Database normalization · Database storage · Distributed DBMS ·
Referential integrity · Relational algebra · Relational calculus · Relational database ·
Relational DBMS · Relational model · Transaction processing
Database · ACID · Null · Candidate key · Foreign key · Primary key ·
Concepts
Superkey · Surrogate key
Trigger · View · Table · Cursor · Log · Transaction · Index · Stored
Objects
procedure · Partition
Select · Insert · Update · Merge · Delete · Join · Union · Create · Drop ·
SQL
Begin work · Commit · Rollback · Truncate · Alter
Relational · Flat file · Deductive · Dimensional · Hierarchical · Network ·
Implementations
Object-oriented · Object-relational · Temporal · XML data stores
Concurrency control · Query language · Query optimizer · Query plan ·
Components
ODBC · JDBC
Database products: Object-oriented (comparison) · Relational (comparison)

This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of
Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_management_system"

Categories: All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements
since February 2007 | Databases | Database management systems
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