Informatics

Database

Throughout the passing of time, all human history has written down all the events and moments that the world has seen and lived, this not only refers only to history, but also includes arts, philosophies, inventions and economic developments contemplating their negotiations, exchanges and laws among other things. This is why all over the world, every country has stored from the beginning the information in places like museums and libraries, nowadays in digital archives; this is called database.

Database

Related topics

Cache memory, RAM memory, processor, operating system

What is a database?

A database represents a collection of information organized all within a computer so that, it can select and handle information fragments quickly and easily when needed.

Definition

Databases are a compendium of information encompassing the same context, which are stored systematically for later use or by the user through a computer.

These may include not only information for reading but also, numerical files and multimedia content such as images or videos.

Characteristics

Elements

A database consists mainly of three elements:

What is a database for?

Databases allow us to store and verify records, data and files relating to areas such as sales operations, creation processes, product catalogues, warehouses and inventories, field tests, customer profiles, among many other informative data that can be stored.

Generally, in order to manage all this information, file managers are used, which allow the user the possibility to control and manage readings and writings of the files, specifying the creation of reports and analyses of use.

These are usually used mostly in companies for internal management such as personnel and inventory organization, thus reducing the tedious procedures that means to organize information manually (physically through paper files, assuming large expenses on stationery).

At the same time it is also widely used within the scientific area, where databases store information from different experiments that are done in order to reduce the margins of error in subsequent experiments.

Origin

Even though, when we speak of database, the term is directly associated with the computer area, but its origin is found in the first Egyptian civilizations and ancient Rome and Greece.

The Egyptians told their stories through wall paintings in palaces so that future generations would know the stories of their ancestors.

In Rome and Greece, there were scribes who were not only responsible for writing the nations’ history, but also for keeping a trade record of transactions between kings and also, between their people’ merchants.

History

The first databases we can find were the archives collected in Italy that were gradually stored creating the first libraries where philosophers, inventors and historians went to study the ancient history and progress of towns.

With time, the world began to realize that databases were becoming larger, so it was very difficult to contain all that information, in turn, companies had to have exclusive areas determined to data files of those companies.

For this reason, with the first computer advancements, engineers, before talking about color gamma or versatility issues, set themselves the utilitarian goal of storing information on a large scale inside computers, to replace the creation of large rudimentary files. This is how the first storage disks are created, as well as portable storage disks (cassette and floppy disk).

How a database works?

Types

The different database types are classified according to each context they encompass:

Models

There are numerous databases models, some of the most prominent are:

Importance

Databases allow the world to handle large amounts of information in an easy and simple way in order to facilitate work in all areas of human development and in turn, understand the entire evolutionary process that it has gone through.

Examples

Written by Gabriela Briceño V.
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How to cite this article?

Briceño V., Gabriela. (2019). Database. Recovered on 24 February, 2024, de Euston96: https://www.euston96.com/en/database/

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