B.tech - V - KCS501 - Unit 1 - 1 Notes

OVERVIEW OF DBMS
What is Data?
Data is nothing but facts and statistics stored or free flowing over a
network, generally it's raw and unprocessed. For example: When you
visit any website, they might store you IP address, that is data, in return
they might add a cookie in your browser, marking you that you visited
the website, that is data, your name, it's data, your age, it's data.
Data becomes information when it is processed, turning it into
something meaningful. Like, based on the cookie data saved on user's
browser, if a website can analyse that generally men of age 20-25 visit
us more, that is information, derived from the data collected.
What is a Database?
A Database is a collection of related data organised in a way that data
can be easily accessed, managed and updated. Database can be software
based or hardware based, with one sole purpose, storing data.
The Database is an organized collection of structured data to make it
easily accessible, manageable and update. In simple words, you can
say, a database is a place where the data is stored. The best analogy is
the library. The library contains a huge collection of books of different
genres, here the library is database and books are the data.
During early computer days, data was collected and stored on tapes,
which were mostly write-only, which means once data is stored on it,
it can never be read again. They were slow and bulky, and soon
computer scientists realised that they needed a better solution to this
problem.
Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle was amongst the first few,
who realised the need for a software based Database Management
System.
What is DBMS?
DBMS stands for Database Management System. We can break it
like this DBMS= Database + Management System. Database is a
collection of data and Management System is a set of programs to
store and retrieve those data. Based on this we can define
DBMS like this:
A DBMS is a software that allows creation, definition and
manipulation of database, allowing users to store, process and analyse
data easily. DBMS provides us with an interface or a tool, to perform
various operations like creating database, storing data in it, updating
data, creating tables in the database and a lot more.
DBMS also provides protection and security to the databases. It also
maintains data consistency in case of multiple users.
Here are some examples of popular DBMS used these days:
 MySql
 Oracle
 SQL Server
 IBM DB2
 PostgreSQL
 Amazon SimpleDB (cloud based) etc.
What is the need of DBMS?
Database systems are basically developed for large amount of
data. When dealing with huge amount of data, there are two things
that require optimization: Storage of data and retrieval of data.
 Storage: According to the principles of database systems, the
data is stored in such a way that it acquires lot less space as the
redundant data (duplicate data) has been removed before storage.
Let’s take a layman example to understand this:
In a banking system, suppose a customer is having two accounts,
one is saving account and another is salary account. Let’s say
bank stores saving account data at one place (these places are
called tables we will learn them later) and salary account data at
another place, in that case if the customer information such as
customer name, address etc. are stored at both places then this is
just a wastage of storage (redundancy/ duplication of data), to
organize the data in a better way the information should be stored
at one place and both the accounts should be linked to that
information somehow. The same thing we achieve in DBMS.
 Fast Retrieval of data: Along with storing the data in an
optimized and systematic manner, it is also important that we
retrieve the data quickly when needed. Database systems ensure
that the data is retrieved as quickly as possible.
Characteristics of Database Management System

A database management system has following characteristics:
1. Data stored into Tables: Data is never directly stored into the
database. Data is stored into tables, created inside the database.
DBMS also allows to have relationships between tables which
makes the data more meaningful and connected. You can easily
understand what type of data is stored where by looking at all the
tables created in a database.
2. Reduced Redundancy: In the modern world hard drives are very
cheap, but earlier when hard drives were too expensive,
unnecessary repetition of data in database was a big problem. But
DBMS follows Normalisation which divides the data in such a
way that repetition is minimum.
3. Data Consistency: On Live data, i.e. data that is being
continuosly updated and added, maintaining the consistency of
data can become a challenge. But DBMS handles it all by itself.
4. Support Multiple user and Concurrent Access: DBMS allows
multiple users to work on it(update, insert, delete data) at the same
time and still manages to maintain the data consistency.
5. Query Language: DBMS provides users with a simple Query
language, using which data can be easily fetched, inserted,
deleted and updated in a database.
6. Security: The DBMS also takes care of the security of data,
protecting the data from un-authorised access. In a typical
DBMS, we can create user accounts with different access
permissions, using which we can easily secure our data by
restricting user access.
7. DBMS supports transactions, which allows us to better handle
and manage data integrity in real world applications where multi-
threading is extensively used.
Advantages of DBMS
 Segregation of applicaion program.
 Minimal data duplicacy or data redundancy.
 Easy retrieval of data using the Query Language.
 Reduced development time and maintainance need.
 With Cloud Datacenters, we now have Database Management
Systems capable of storing almost infinite data.
 Seamless integration into the application programming languages
which makes it very easier to add a database to almost any
application or website.
Disadvantages of DBMS
 It's Complexity
 Except MySQL, which is open source, licensed DBMSs are
generally costly.
 They are large in size.
DBMS vs. File System
There are following differences between DBMS and File system:
DBMS File System
DBMS is a collection of data. File system is a collection of

In DBMS, the user is not data. In this system, the user has
required to write the to write the procedures for
procedures. managing the database.
DBMS gives an abstract view File system provides the detail

of data that hides the details. of the data representation and
storage of data.
DBMS provides a crash File system doesn't have a crash

recovery mechanism, i.e., mechanism, i.e., if the system
DBMS protects the user from crashes while entering some
the system failure. data, then the content of the file
will lost.
DBMS provides a good It is very difficult to protect a file

protection mechanism. under the file system.
DBMS contains a wide File system can't efficiently

variety of sophisticated store and retrieve the data.
techniques to store and
retrieve the data.
DBMS takes care of In the File system, concurrent
Concurrent access of data access has many problems like
using some form of locking. redirecting the file while other
deleting some information or
updating some information.

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B.tech - V - KCS501 - Unit 1 - 1 Notes

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OVERVIEW OF DBMS

Characteristics of Database Management System

There are following differences between DBMS and File system:

DBMS File System

DBMS is a collection of data. File system is a collection of

DBMS gives an abstract view File system provides the detail

DBMS provides a crash File system doesn't have a crash

DBMS provides a good It is very difficult to protect a file

DBMS contains a wide File system can't efficiently

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