First electronic database it is very important in any organization

1. Improved security: Database security is the protection of the database from

unauthorized users. Without suitable security measures, integration makes the data more
vulnerable than file-based systems. However, integration allows the Database administrator to
define, and the DBMS to enforce, database security. This may take the form of user names and
passwords to identify people authorized to use the database.
2. Economy of scale: Combining all the organization’s operational data into one database,
and creating a set of applications that work on this one source of data, can result in cost savings.
3. Increased concurrency: Many DBMSs manage concurrent database access, ensuring
that two or more users are allowed to access the same file simultaneously, without interfering
with each other, or resulting in loss of information or its integrity.
4. Improved backup and recovery services: modern DBMSs provide facilities to
minimize the amount of processing that is lost following a failure.

Improved Data Sharing and Data Security

Proper database management systems help increase organizational accessibility to data,
which in turn helps the end users share the data quickly and effectively across the
organization.
A management system helps get quick solutions to database queries, thus making data
access faster and more accurate. End-users like salespeople will have enhanced access to
the data, enabling a faster sales cycle and a more sound decision making.

Effective Data Integration

Implementing a data management system promotes an integrated picture of an
organization’s operations. It becomes easy to see how processes in one segment of the
organization affect other segments.

5.
 Disadvantages of relying on electronic databases as
compared to manual databases
1. Complexity: The provision of the functionality we expect of a good database makes it
complex to set up. Database designers, database administrators, and end-users must understand
this functionality to take full advantage of it. Failure to understand the system can lead to bad
design decisions, which can have serious consequences for an organization.
2. Cost of setting up a database: The cost of setting up an electronic database varies
significantly, depending on the hardware, software and functionality required.
3. The need for conversion & difficult transition: This includes the cost of converting
existing applications to run on the new DBMS and hardware plus the cost of training staff to use
these new systems, and possibly the employment of specialist staff to help with the conversion
and running of the system.
4. Performance: Typically, a file-based system is written for a specific application, such as
invoicing. As a result, performance is generally very good. However, the DBMS is written to be
more general, to cater for many applications rather than just one. The effect is that some
applications may not run as fast as they used to.
5. Higher impact of a failure: The centralization of resources increases the vulnerability of
the system. Since all users and applications rely on the availability of the DBMS, the failure of
certain components can bring all operations to a halt.

DATABASES, ELECTRONIC

Electronic databases are organized collections of data, or information,

that are stored in computer-readable form. In general, electronic
databases are of two types: those that can be accessed by large
mainframe computers and those that can be accessed by small
personal computers. However, this distinction is becoming less
important as small (in physical size) computers continue to increase in
power. In general, mainframe data-bases—most of which are highly
specialized—are maintained by large businesses, institutions, and
government agencies. Databases can be either publicly available or
private. Private databases can be accessed only by employees of the
organization that maintains the databases. Public databases are
designed for access by the public. Databases for personal computers
typically are created and used by individuals, small businesses, and
units within large businesses; they can be used for a wide variety of
purposes.
Definitions
The term "database" is used in two senses. One refers to the organized
collection of data that is created, maintained, and searched. The other
refers to the software that is used to create and maintain the data.
Database management systems are often simply called "databases."
This entry concentrates on large, publicly available databases, together
with the services that make them available.
The term "data" refers to facts, numbers, letters, and symbols that
describe an object, idea, condition, situation, and so on. Data
elements, which are the smallest units of information to which
reference is made, are combined to create records. Data elements in a
bibliographic reference include the names of the author or authors, the
title of referenced work, the journal name, the pagination, the volume
number, the issue number, and the date of publication. A data set is a
collection of similar and related data records or data points that have
not yet been organized for computer processing. A data file is an
aggregation of data sets or records treated as a unit. While databases
are also collections of related data and information, the difference
between a data file and a database is that a database is organized (by a
database management system) to permit the user to search and retrieve
or process and reorganize the data.
The data in a database may be predominantly:
 word oriented (e.g., textual, bibliographic, directory, dictionary,
full text),
 numeric (e.g., properties, statistics, time series, experimental
values),
 image—both fixed images (e.g., photographs, drawings,
graphics) and moving images (e.g., a film of microbes under
magnification or time-lapse photography of a flower opening), or
 sound (e.g., a recording of the sound of a tornado, wave action,
or an explosion).

The discussion in this entry is concerned primarily with digital data,

although a large portion of raw data is recorded as analog data, which
also can be digitized. Digital data are represented by the digits zero to
nine. In the case of analog data, numbers are represented by physical
quantities (e.g., the lengths obtained from a slide rule, the
measurements of voltage currents). These physical quantities can be
converted to digital data through an analog-to-digital converter.
Because word-oriented, numeric, image, and sound databases differ,
they are processed by different types of software that are specific to
each type of data. Digital data may be processed or stored on various
types of media, including magnetic media (e.g., tapes, hard drives,
diskettes, random access memory) and optical media (e.g., CD-ROMs,
digital video discs). Users can access the data either through portable
media or, more generally, through online sources.
The term "data" can refer to raw data, processed data, or verified data.
Raw data consist of original observations (e.g., those collected by
satellite and beamed back to Earth) or experimental results (e.g.,
laboratory test data). Raw data are subsequently processed or reduced
to make them more useable, organized, or simplified. Large data sets
need to be cleaned, processed, documented, and organized to enable
their use. These activities are occasionally called "curation." In
general, the more curated the data are, the more broadly useable they
become to users outside the original research group or subdiscipline.
Verified data are data whose quality and accuracy have been assured.
For experimental data, this means that the original test or experiment
has been duplicated and the same data have been produced. For
observational data, it means that either the data have been compared
with other data whose quality is known or the instrument through
which the data were obtained has been properly calibrated and tested.
Many databases are used to retrieve and extract specific data points,
facts, or textual information for use in building a derivative database
or data product. A derivative database, which is the same as a value-
added database or a transformative database, builds on a preexisting
database and may include extractions from multiple databases as well
as original data. When dealing with derivative databases, the question
of intellectual property rights arises and must be resolved.
Availability of Online Public Databases
The range of public databases has grown to the extent that it is now
possible to find data on almost any subject. Databases have been
created for nearly every major field and many subfields in science,
technology, medicine, business, law, social sciences, politics, arts,
humanities, and religion as well as for news (worldwide, regional, or
subject-related), problems (specific to topics and organizations),
missions (such as transportation, defense, shipping, robotics, oil
spills, solid waste), and consumer interests such as shopping and
automobile repair.
The first comprehensive database directory, Computer-Readable
Databases (CRD), was compiled and edited by Martha E. Williams
and was published in 1976 by the American Society for Information
Science. CRD originally covered 301 publicly available databases, but
by the mid-1980s, the number of publicly and commercially available
electronic databases that were listed in CRD had grown to more than
three thousand. Gale Research, Inc. (which became the Gale Group in
1999) acquired CRD in 1987 and continued to publish it until 1992,
when they renamed it the Gale Directory of Databases (GDD). By the
year 2000, GDD had grown to include more than twelve thousand
databases. Both CRD and GDD included all types of public,
commercial databases (i.e., word-oriented, number-oriented, picture-
oriented, and sound-oriented databases), as well as multimedia, which
include combinations of these types.
Access Services
When a database is developed for public use, it is usually made
accessible to users through a telephone connection to the host
computer ("online") where it resides; wireless access, however, is
gaining importance as a technology for access. Database services may
be provided by the producer of the database or, more commonly, by a
separate organization that offers online searching of one or more
databases.
In order to find information online, one needs to know which database
is likely to contain that information. There are several ways of
identifying specific databases. One way is through the use of printed
directories such as GDD. Another way is through online directories
that are maintained by search services for those databases on their
systems. Yet another way is through the various search engines on
the World Wide Web. Search engines may use various methods to
index or catalog web-site contents. Web crawlers robotically go from
website to website and index their contents. Examples of web crawlers
include Alta Vista, Excite, Hot-Bot, Magellen, and WebCrawler.
Some search engines, such as Yahoo, Lycos, and LookSmart, use
directories that are generated by humans who intellectually catalog
websites. Metacrawlers check many search engines to produce a
single list of databases so that the user does not have to check
each search engine individually.
Organizations that provide online search services are also called
online vendors. They have the computers and software (computer
programs) that allow outside users to search databases themselves for
data and information, whether it is in the form of numeric data, text,
images, sounds, or a mixture of these formats.
Users and Access
Users of public databases include most groups of people whose
profession, business, and educational activities require quick access to
information. This includes scientists, lawyers, doctors, stockbrokers,
financial analysts, librarians, executives, students, and other
researchers. Some public databases and search services are focused on
consumer needs, providing access to such information as flight
schedules, merchandise catalogs, movie reviews, theater schedules,
restaurant information, and hotel/motel availability and reservation
services. In addition, there are financial, bibliographic, and other
services that were initially developed for professional and business
users.
Online access to a database usually requires that the user has computer
access to an account with a search service that offers such access, a
password to log onto the service, knowledge of how to use the service,
and information about specific features of the database.
Procedures that users need to know in order to take full advantage of
search services and the databases to which they provide access vary
widely in complexity. This complexity depends on the type of stored
information and the user that the database was designed to serve. For
example, searching a database for physical or chemical properties of a
certain class of substance requires a different and less widely held
kind of knowledge than does searching a database for the names of
theaters in a given geographic area. Similarly, an online system
intended for professional researchers who use the system daily can be
very complex and therefore will contain more useful features than one
aimed at occasional end users. Some database producers and/or
vendors offer their services to users over the Internet, providing access
to all or a sampling of their database product, either for free or for a
fee.
Types of Databases
Databases are organized and maintained in different ways for different
types of information (i.e., words, numbers, sounds, and images). Each
information type has a distinctive machine representation and requires
a distinct kind of software. Word-oriented databases contain words,
phrases, sentences, paragraphs, or text as their principal data. The
principal data in numeric databases, often called "databanks," consist
of numbers and symbols that represent numbers, statistics,
experimental values, time series (i.e., events or phenomena observed
over a span of time), tables of numbers, graphs that are based on such
tables, and similar material. Pictorial databases, many of which are
constructed for scientific or engineering purposes, may contain
representations of virtually any multidimensional structure (e.g.,
chemical structures, nuclear particles, graphs, figures, photographs,
architectural plans, and geographic maps). Moving picture databases
can represent virtually anything shown in motion. Audio databases,
which contain sounds, can represent music, voices, sounds of nature,
and anything than can be heard.
Alphabetic and alphanumeric strings of characters cannot be handled
by numeric processing software. In other words, these strings cannot
be added, subtracted, multiplied, or divided. Therefore, they require
software that is designed specifically for handling character strings.
Word-oriented databases allow the users to search the database for
strings of characters that match the strings of characters in, for
example, names, titles, and keywords. Most of these databases allow
the user to search using partial words (i.e., truncated words that use a
wildcard symbol such as an asterisk to permit multiple endings on the
word stem). For example, a user who conducts a single search using
the string or partial word "bridg*" would be able to retrieve
information related to "bridge," "bridges," "bridged," "bridging," and
other similar words or phrases. Word-oriented databases were the
earliest publicly available electronic databases They were introduced
in the 1960s and contained predominantly information related to
science, engineering, technology, and medicine. These early databases
contained bibliographic references to published scientific and
technical literature, and there were initially only a few dozen of them.
They have since multiplied into the thousands.
Bibliographic databases range in size from small files such as the Acid
Rain database (with approximately four thousand citations) and the
Age Line database (with approximately fifty thousand citations) to
large files such as Medline (with more than eleven million citations in
the biomedical and health sciences fields). Chemical Abstracts Service
produces several databases, which in the year 2000 collectively
included more than twenty-two million document citations to
documents.
Full-text databases provide access to the texts of such documents as
legal cases and statutes, wire services, journal articles, encyclopedias,
and textbooks. Except for the Lexis-Nexis service, which has a large
set of legal databases that are mostly grouped in "libraries" of
databases, most of the full-text databases were established after 1980.
The first full-text database, Lexis, was established in 1973 by Mead
Data Central (which later became the Lexis-Nexis service). Lexis-
Nexis is one of the world's largest word-oriented database services,
and among services that have legal databases, it is approached in size
only by Westlaw, a legal database service established in 1975 by West
Publishing Company (which later became the West Group). The
Westlaw service includes billions of pages of information in thirteen
thousand databases in a few dozen "libraries" (all represented as a few
dozen entries and umbrella entries in GDD).
Online newspapers, newsletters, journals, and textbooks are among the
numerous full-text databases that are available online. Examples
include the United Press International and Associated Press wire
services, The New York Times and Wall Street Journal newspapers,
and U.S. News and World Report and Newsweek magazines. Examples
of electronic journals are the Harvard Business Review and many of
the American Chemical Society journals. Electronic encyclopedias
include the Academic American Encyclopedia and Encyclopaedia
Britannica.. Among the many thousands of medical textbook
databases are Gray's Anatomy, Textbook of Surgery, and Principles
and Practices of Emergency Medicine.
In numeric databases, numbers and symbols are the principal data that
are stored and processed. Generally, compared to word-oriented
databases, numeric databases involve less fetching and character-
string matching and more processing. Most of the programming for a
numerical database involves manipulating the data mathematically and
presenting it in reports that are formatted and labeled in forms that are
familiar to the specific class of users for which the database is
designed. Statistical routines, time series, and other programs for
manipulating data mathematically work in the same way for numeric
data regardless of whether the data relate to sociology, economics,
finance, chemistry, or any other field. One example of a large time
series database is the National Online Manpower Information Systems
(NOMIS), which is produced by the University of Durham in England
and has more than twenty billion time series records in its databases.
Pictorial databases are relatively specialized and are fewer in number.
Their data consist chiefly of specifications for shapes, distances,
geometrical relationships (including three-dimensional relationships),
colors, and the like. The computer processing of pictorial data
(including photographs and videos) requires sophisticated programs
for such functions as video pattern matching, coordinate matching,
and extraction of specific features of photographs, maps, videos, or
other pictorial representations. Computer processing of sounds has its
own set of requirements for matching and analyzing sounds (e.g., by
parsing and other techniques).
Production and Distribution
Databases are produced by a wide variety of commercial,
governmental, academic, and nonprofit organizations. The way in
which a database is created depends on whether it is a primary
database (e.g., containing the text of an original article) or a secondary
database (e.g., providing references, abstracts, or index entries
associated with an original article). To prepare a secondary database,
the producers cull the primary literature for source material, books,
journals, dissertations, government reports, and conference
proceedings in order to identify items that are relevant to the subject
area of the database. For each item selected for mention in the
secondary database, the producers prepare a bibliographic record that
lists the names of the author or authors, the title of the article or book,
and further information that is needed in order to find the cited
publication. The record is then entered into the database, and
individual data elements (e.g. author, title, date of publication, journal
name, volume number, issue number, page range, and so on) are
identified by a specific code or position in the record. In some
bibliographic databases, the records include index terms and/or
keywords for the articles and books that are referenced. Other
bibliographic databases also include abstracts of the articles.
Most large databases are updated periodically (e.g., monthly, weekly,
continuously). These updates may be put on magnetic tape and
shipped, they may be transmitted directly to search service
organizations for incorporation, or they may be made available for
downloading from the producer's website. Some small databases are
issued on floppy disks or CD-ROMs for use on personal computers.
Other small databases are sold as a part of handheld devices that
contain both information and searching capabilities. Some large
databases are sold or leased to government agencies and corporations
for in-house use. Other large databases are sold or licensed to online
search services where they are reformatted by the search service's
software or search engine in order to allow searching by their
customers.
Electronic databases are accessed mainly through online search
services (i.e., database vendors) and/or directly through the Internet.
These services provide online databases together with software for
search and retrieval, data manipulation, and modeling. They are
sometimes called "information utilities," because, like electric or gas
utilities, an online search service serves a widely distributed network
of users. Several hundred such services in the United States and
Europe provide access to more than twelve thousand databases and
databanks worldwide with billions of records.
If a database is part of a commercial online service, anyone with a
microcomputer, a modem, and a telephone can have access to it for a
fee. The search fee includes charges for accessing the database itself
and for the use of its search software. There may also be charges for
printing or downloading search results.
The fees required for using search services vary widely from service
to service and from database to database. Many services charge only
for the actual use of the service. Others require subscription fees,
monthly or yearly minimum payments, and the like. Information that
is available at web-sites on the Internet may be entirely free, or it may
require a payment.
Charges usually are based on usage or on units accessed, retrieved, or
delivered. Usage is measured in terms of connect time (i.e., the
number of minutes that are used to carry out an online search), or in
terms of the number of records accessed, viewed, retrieved,
downloaded, or printed, or in terms of computer resource units.
Resource units measure the amount of the computer facility (including
machine time and storage capacity) that is used in a search. The units
accessed, retrieved, or delivered may be, for example, bibliographic
references in a bibliographic database, individuals identified in an
employment database, or time series in a time series database. The
units may be displayed on the user's terminal, printed out by the
search service and sent to the user, or, more commonly, downloaded
by the user for local printing and use.
Among the commercial online services for searching numeric
databases are Standard & Poor's DRI (Data Products Division), GE
Information Services, The WEFA Group, and the Oxford Molecular
Group (Chemical Information System). All of these except Chemical
Information System provide mainly business-oriented databases;
Chemical Information System provides mainly scientific databases.
Among the vendors of word-oriented databases are Lexis-Nexis, The
Dialog Corporation (DIALOG Information Services, Inc.), the U.S.
National Library of Medicine, West Group (Westlaw), Compu Serve
Information Service, America Online, Inc., and Dow Jones and
Company, Inc.
DIALOG, the largest of the online search services that provide mostly
bibliographic databases, began offering commercial search services in
1972. At that time, it featured two government-produced databases—
ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) and NTIS
(National Technical Information Service). By the year 2000, DIALOG
had several hundred databases with nine terabytes of data. The U.S.
National Library of Medicine began its search service in 1971,
offering the Medline database with 147,000 records. By the year 2000,
the U.S. National Library of Medicine had dozens of databases with
about eleven million records. Lexis-Nexis, the largest service to
provide mostly textual databases, introduced its commercial online
service in 1973 with a database of 208,000 documents or 2.5 billion
characters. By the year 2000, it had burgeoned to more than 2.8 billion
searchable documents or 2.6 trillion characters of data.
See also:Bibliography; Cataloging and Knowledge
Organization; Computer Software; Computing; Database
Design; Information Industry; Internet and the World Wide
Web; Knowledge Management; Libraries, Digital; Library
Automation; Management Information Systems; Systems Designers.
Bibliography
Faerber, Marc, and Nagel, Erin, eds. (2000). Gale Directory of
Databases, 2 vols. Detroit, MI: Gale Group.
Williams, Martha E. (1985). "Electronic Databases."Science 228:445-
456.
Williams, Martha E. (1994). "Implications of the Internet for the
Information Industry and Database Providers." Online & CD-ROM
Review 18(3): 149-156.
Martha E. Williams
INTRODUCTION Tangible interfaces have shown much promise since the founding works of Ullmer and
Ishii [11]. They have shown particularly interesting concepts when used to create user interfaces which
mix tangible interaction with other modalities, such as speech or gesture based interaction (e.g. Papier-
Mâché [13]). However the development of such multimodal interfaces remains a difficult task needing
knowledge in various state-of-the-art domains like speech recognition, RFID hardware management or
gesture tracking. Furthermore, the integration of natural communication means recognition systems
and of
1. Database Complexity
The design of the database system is complex, difficult and is very time consuming task to perform.
2. Substantial hardware and software start-up costs Huge amount of investment is needed to setup the
required hardware and the softwares needed to run those applications.
3. Damage to database affects virtually all applications programs If one part of the database is
corrupted or damaged because of the hardware or software failure, since we don’t have many versions of
the file, all the application programs which are dependent on this database are implicitly affected.
4. Extensive conversion costs in moving form a file-based system to a database system If you are
currently working on file based system and need to upgrade it to database system, then large amount of
cost is incurred in purchasing different tools, adopting different techniques as per the requirement.
5. Initial training required for all programmers and user. Large amount of human efforts, the time and
cost is needed to train the end users and application programmers in order to get used to the database
systems.
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