An Introduction to Database technology and Database Management

An Introduction to Database technology and Database Management

Data, Information, Knowledge and their Interrelationship

Data are stored and captured signal readings and symbols. Symbol contains numbers, words, images and diagrams. Signal contains sensor readings of sound, smell, light, touch and taste. Recording of situations or activities is the basic purpose of data, to try to pick up real event or true picture.

Information is the message that includes appropriate meaning, input for decision, action and implication. The information objective is to help in decision making, problem solving and opportunity realization.

Knowledge is the awareness, understanding and acting capacity that resides in the brain. Value formation is the basic objective of knowledge.

The data, knowledge and information are considered as interchangeable. The dual source of both information and data is situations and activities. Both situations and activities create information (appropriate meaning for someone) which is captured as data, or lost (Liew, 2007).

Database

A database is defined as structure that organizes raw data and information for storage, update, manipulation and access

Advantages of using Database

Database applications are everywhere in you daily life and in your associated organizations. The processing, gathering and use of information that is related to the business operations are fundamental for its success for e.g. in customer mailing, list requires to be managed in a proper way.

In Information Technology, database is one of the key stone and its ability of organizing, managing and processing information in a controlled and structured manner is important for various aspects of the efficiency of the modern business. Database has many advantages over using flat files like Microsoft Excel it holds much more data since the data and the applications that manipulate data is separate, it is easier for databases to keep data integrity. It can be accessed by multiple users at the same time (this claim needs to be modified now multiple users can access excel simultaneously using skydrive although it is not quite user friendly) efficient operations through performance optimization.

Why Study Database

This is a required course in the curriculum; you cannot graduate without passing it. The median salary for a database administrator is $95,000 in LA country, California (according to Salary.com, 2011 data). It pays to learn.

Database Management System

DBMS is software that we use to create and manipulate databases, e.g. DB2 which is used for this course, Access, and Oracle. The relationship between DBMS and Databases is similar to the homework file ...