Database

A database is an organized collection of data.

[1]
It is the collection
of schemas, tables, queries, reports, views, and
other objects. The data are typically organized
to model aspects of reality in a way that
supports processes requiring information, such
as modelling the availability of rooms in hotels
in a way that supports finding a hotel with
vacancies.
A database management system (DBMS) is
a computer software application that interacts
with the user, other applications, and the
database itself to capture and analyze data. A
general-purpose DBMS is designed to allow the
definition, creation, querying, update, and
administration of databases. Well-known
DBMSs
include MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Micro

soft SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, SAP HANA,

and IBM DB2. A database is not
generally portable across different DBMSs, but
different DBMS can interoperate by
using standards such
as SQL and ODBC or JDBC to allow a single
application to work with more than one DBMS.
Database management systems are often
classified according to the database model that
they support; the most popular database
systems since the 1980s have all supported
the relational model as represented by
the SQL language.[disputed discuss] Sometimes a
DBMS is loosely referred to as a 'database'.

Key Features
1. Offering text standardization function to help
with (1) data cleaning, (2) reducing volume
of text information, (3) merging data from
different sources or having different
character sets

2. Ability to categorize information (text in

particular, and tagged data more generally),
using built-in or ad hoc taxonomies (with a
customized number of categories and
subcategories), together with clustering
algorithms. A data record can be assigned to
multiple categories.
3. Ability to efficiently store images, books,
records with high variance in length, possibly
though an auxiliary file management system
and data compression algorithms,
accessible from the database.
4. Ability to process data remotely on your
local machine, or externally, especially
computer-intensive computations performed
on a small number of records. Also,
optimizing use of cache systems for faster
retrieval.
5. Offer SQL to NoSQL translation and SQL
code beautifier.
6. Offer great visuals (integration with
Tableau?) and useful, efficient dashboards
(integration with Birt?)
7. API and Web/browser access: database
calls can be made with HTTPS requests,

with parameters (argument and value)

embedded in the query string attached to the
URL. Also, allow recovery of extracted /
processed data on a server, via HTTPS
calls, automatically. This is a solution to
allow for machine-to-machine
communications.
8. DBA tools available to sophisticated users,
such as fine-tuning query optimization
algorithms, allowing hash joins, switching
from row to column database when needed
(to optimize data retrieval in specific cases).
9. Real time transaction processing and built in
functions such as computations of "time
elapsed since last 5 transactions" at various
levels of aggregation.
10. Ability to automatically erase old records
and keep only historical summaries
(aggregates) for data older than (say) 12
months.
11. Security (TBD)

Version History

Version 3.0 Release date: 28 January 2003.

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added on a daily basis.
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Version 2.4 Release date: 23 October 2001.
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modified.
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Version 2.3 Release date: 27 April 2000.
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Version 2.2 Release date: 19 March 1999.
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Version 2.1 Release date: 07 July 1998.
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search query is now displayed
with the results.
2009 entries.

Version 2.0 Release date: 18 February 1998.

New interface, as part of the
"NIST Reference on Constants,
Units, and Uncertainty."
Approximate spelling and pdf
formatted citations introduced.
2009 entries.
Version 1.0 Release date 8 November 1996.
1607 entries.

Real-life usage
1.

Online Television Streaming

Any online streaming service, such as Hulu or Netflix, uses databases to
generate a list of TV shows and movies to watch, track an individuals show
preferences, and provide a list of recommended viewing. The power required to
analyze such an enormous amount of data is done through highly-specialized
database management technology, such as Cassandra. In fact, Hulu has
recently been relying heavily Cassandra.

2.

Social Gaming
Gaming done across social networks is extremely data intensive. Gathering
individual player information from around the globe and serving it to players on
demand requires a high availability database software. One example is the
popular Game of Thrones Ascent, a free role playing game launched by
Disruptor Beam and based on the hit HBO series, Game of Thrones.
Their Percona Server-based database solution helps eliminates data bottlenecks
during high-usage periods.

3.

Personal Cloud Storage

If you save photos or documents to your smartphone or tablet, its likely your
data is stored in the cloud, a large, central storage environment with a small
portion dedicated just to you. Syncing this data across your devices requires
powerful databases able to call up your data at a moments notice, wherever
you are.

4.

Sports
Fan participation in national sports doesnt just utilize the power of the
database, it depends upon it. From fantasy football leagues to March Madness
brackets, they all depend on huge databases full of player statistics, game
performances, injury reports, and more, all calculating the odds of a win on a
weekly basis.

5.

Finances
From the stock market to your local bank, databases are abundant across the
financial world. Tracking the vast amount of information behind the worlds daily
transactions, not to mention the financial models that analyze that data to
predict future activity, requires extremely powerful databases.

6.

Government Organizations
Government organizations around the world are constantly collecting data for
research, defense, legislation, and humanitarianism purposes, to name a few.
This data is collected, stored and analyzed using powerful and far-reaching
database services.

7.

Social Media
Every social media platform stores reams of user information in databases used
to recommend friends, businesses, products, and topics to the end user. This
cross-referencing of data is immensely complex and uses highly reliable and
capable database software, including for example, MySQL which is used
in Facebook data centers.

8.

ECommerce
Any online organization that sells its products or services uses databases to
organize their products, pricing information, user purchase history and then
recommend other potential products to customers. This data is stored in highly
secure databases, protected by the standards set through PCI Compliance.

9.

Healthcare

Doctors offices and healthcare organizations, among others, store extensive

amounts of patient data for easy accessibility. The databases behind this
collection of information are not only large and complex, but are also secure and
protected by HIPAA Compliance standards. Healthcare.gov relies on a NoSQL
database to manage their health insurance information. Cassandra is one such
example of a NoSQL database software.

10.

Weather

Predicting the weather across the globe is incredibly complex and depends on a
myriad of factors, all gathered, stored and analyzed within databases, ready to
deliver todays weather to your local TV station or smartphone app. The Weather
Company, for example, takes in over 20 terabytes of data per day. The company
has used a number of databases to support this data, including
MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Cassandra, and more.
Databases are as unavoidable in daily life as they are necessary a fact which is made
clear by our above list. Of course, there are many types of software that run and support the
numerous databases in our lives. Liquid Web offers a number of these database services,
allowing us to take your needs into account and provide you with a custom hosting plan that
meets your requirements. If you need help deciding which database solution is best for
you, let us know wed be happy to help.

Five types of database

available in the
computer world
DBMS
Access (Jet, MSDE)
Adabas D
Adaptive Server Anywhere
Adaptive Server Enterprise
Advantage Database Server

Vendor
Microsoft
Software AG
Sybase
Sybase
Extended Systems

Type
R
R
R
R
R

Primary Market
Desktop
Enterprise
Mobile/Embedded
Enterprise
Mobile/Enterprise