1) Difference between Information and Data

Information:

Information is delineate because the structured, organized and processed data, conferred inside context,
that makes it relevant and helpful to the one who desires it. Data suggests that raw facts and figures
regarding individuals, places, or the other issue, that is expressed within the type of numbers, letters or
symbols

Information is that the knowledge that is remodeled and classified into an intelligible type, which may
be utilized in the method of deciding. In short, once knowledge end up to be purposeful when
conversion, it’s referred to as info. it’s one thing that informs, in essence, it provides a solution to a
specific question. It may be obtained from numerous sources like newspaper, internet, television,
people, books etc.

Data:

Data is a raw and unorganized fact that required to be processed to make it meaningful. It can be
consider as a facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis.

Data are individual units of information. In analytical processes, data are represented by variables.Data
is always interpreted, by a human or machine, to derive meaning. So, data is meaningless. Data contains
numbers, statements, and characters in a raw form.

Difference between Information and Data:

2)Databases and Database Users in dbms
Databases and database systems are an essential component of life in modern society: most of us
encounter several activities every day that involve some interaction with a database

Databases and database technology have a major impact on the growing use of computers. It is fair to
say that databases play a critical role in almost all areas where computers are used, including business,
electronic commerce, engineering, medicine, genetics, law, education, and library science

The word database is so commonly used that we must begin by defining what a database is. Our initial
definition is quite general.

A database is a collection of related data. By data, we mean known facts that can be recorded and that
have implicit meaning. For example, consider the names, telephone numbers, and addresses of the
people you know.

You may have recorded this data in an indexed address book or you may have stored it on a hard drive,
using a personal computer and software such as Microsoft Access or Excel.

This collection of related data with an implicit meaning is a database.

The preceding definition of database is quite general; for example, we may consider the collection of
words that make up this page of text to be related data and hence to constitute a database.

. However, the common use of the term database is usually more restricted.

A database management system (DBMS) is a collection of programs that enables users to create and
maintain a database.

The DBMS is a general-purpose software system that facilitates the processes of defining, constructing,
manipulating, and sharing databases among various users and applications.

Defining a database involves specifying the data types, structures, and constraints of the data to be
stored in the database.

The database definition or descriptive information is also stored by the DBMS in the form of a database
catalog or dictionary; it is called meta-data.

Constructing the database is the process of storing the data on some storage medium that is controlled
by the DBMS.

Manipulating a database includes functions such as querying the database to retrieve specific data,
updating the database to reflect changes in the miniworld, and generating reports from the data.
Sharing a database allows multiple users and programs to access the database simultaneously.
A database has the following implicit properties:

A database represents some aspect of the real world, sometimes called the miniworld or the universe of
discourse (UoD). Changes to the miniworld are reflected in the database

A database is a logically coherent collection of data with some inherent meaning. A random assortment
of data cannot correctly be referred to as a database.

A database is designed, built, and populated with data for a specific purpose. It has an intended group of
users and some preconceived applications in which these users are interested.

Database Administrators

In any organization where many people use the same resources, there is a need for a chief administrator
to oversee and manage these resources.

In a database environment, the primary resource is the database itself, and the secondary resource is
the DBMS and related software.

Administering these resources is the responsibility of the database administrator (DBA).

The DBA is responsible for authorizing access to the database, coordinating and monitoring its use, and
acquiring software and hardware resources as needed.

The DBA is accountable for problems such as security breaches and poor system response time. In large
organizations, the DBA is assisted by a staff that carries out these functions.

Database Designers

Database designers are responsible for identifying the data to be stored in the database and for
choosing appropriate structures to represent and store this data.

These tasks are mostly undertaken before the database is actually implemented and populated with
data.

It is the responsibility of database designers to communicate with all prospective database users in
order to understand their requirements and to create a design that meets these requirements.

In many cases, the designers are on the staff of the DBA and may be assigned other staff responsibilities
after the database design is completed.

Database designers typically interact with each potential group of users and develop views of the
database that meet the data and processing requirements of these groups.

Each view is then analyzed and integrated with the views of other user groups. The final database design
must be capable of supporting the requirements of all user groups

3)Characteristics of the Database Approach

Here we will discuss the overview of the Database Approach and will mainly focus on its characteristics.
Also, we will cover the Characteristics of the Database Approach in detail. Let’s discuss it one by one.

Overview :

There are different characteristics of the database approach from the much older approach of
programming with files. In a traditional file processing system, each user defines and implements its
own modifications to the files needed for a selected software application as a part of programming the
appliance. In the database approach, one repository maintains data which is defined once then accessed
by various users in that database. In a file system, it will be independently like an application that is free
to name elements. In comparison, during a database, the names or labels of knowledge are defined
once and used repeatedly by queries, transactions, and applications.

Characteristics of database approach :

Some of the most important characteristics of the database approach to the file processing approach
are the following as follows.

Approach-1 :

Self-Describing Nature of a Database System :

One of the most fundamental characteristics of the database approach is that the database system
contains not only the database itself but also an entire definition or description of the database
structure and constraints also known as metadata of the database.

This definition is stored within the DBMS catalog, which contains information like the structure of every
file, the sort and storage format of every data item, and various constraints/rules on the information.

The knowledge stored within the catalog is named meta-data, and it describes the structure of the first
database The catalog is employed by the DBMS software and also by database users such as database
administrators who required to know the information about the database structure.

A general-purpose DBMS software package is not written for a selected database application. Therefore,
it must ask the catalog to understand the structure of the files during a specific database, like the sort
and format of knowledge it will access.

The DBMS software must work equally well with any number of database applications, For example, a
university database, a banking database, or a corporation database as long as because the database
definition is stored within the catalog In traditional file processing, data definition is usually a part of the
files. File processing software can access only specific databases, Database Management software can
access various databases by extracting the database definitions or schemas from the catalog and using
these definitions.

Approach-2 :

Isolation between Programs and Data, and Data Abstraction :

In a traditional file processing system, the structure of database knowledge files is embedded within the
application programs, so any changes to the structure of a file may require changing all programs that
access that file.

Against this, DBMS access programs don’t require such changes in most cases, so independence is
achieved between them.

The structure of knowledge files is stored within the DBMS catalog separately from the programs that
access them. We call this property program-data independence.

The characteristic that allows program-data independence and program-operation independence is

known as data abstraction.

A DBMS provides users with a conceptual representation of knowledge that doesn’t include much of the
small print of how the information is stored or how the operations are implemented internally.
Informally, a knowledge model may be a sort of data abstraction that won’t provide this conceptual
representation.

The information model uses logical concepts, like objects, their properties, and their relationships
between them, which will be easier for many users to know than memory concepts or storage concepts.
Hence, the information model hides storage and implementation details that are not of interest to most
database users, so unnecessary complications are hidden from them.

Approach-3 :

Support for Multiple Views of the Data :

A database sometimes has many users, each of whom may require a special perspective or view of the
database.

A view could also be a subset of the database, or it’s going to contain virtual data that is derived from
the database files but isn’t explicitly stored.

Some users might not get to remember whether the information they ask for is stored or derived.

A multi-user DBMS whose users have a spread of distinct applications must provide facilities for
outlining multiple views. This provides many benefits for large databases such as the Aadhaar database.

Approach-4 :

Sharing of knowledge and Multi-user Transaction Processing :

A multi-user DBMS, as its name implies, must allow multiple users to access the database at an
equivalent time or concurrently.

This is often essential if data for multiple applications is to be integrated and maintained during a single
database such as the latest feature of WhatsApp integration with Facebook.

The DBMS must implement concurrency control in the software to make sure that several users trying to
update equivalent data do so in a controlled manner in order that the results of the updates are correct.

For instance, when several reservation agents attempt to assign a seat on an airline flight, the DBMS
should make sure that each seat is often accessed by just one user agent at a single time for an
assignment to a passenger.

These sorts of applications are generally called online transaction processing (OLTP) applications. A
fundamental role of multi-user DBMS software is to make sure that concurrent transactions operate
correctly and efficiently with no inconsistency.

The concept of a transaction has become central to several database applications. A transaction is an
executing program or process that has one or more database accesses, like reading or updating of
database records or inserting new records.

The isolation property ensures that every transaction appears to execute in isolation from other
transactions, many transactions could also be executed concurrently without affecting each other.

The atomicity property ensures that either all the database operations during a transaction are executed
or none are, these all ACID properties we know.