USE OF DATABASES

Use of Databases & how the information is stored



Use of Databases & how the information is stored

Introduction

Software refers to the programs that run on a computer, and which make the hardware useful. Software comes in two basic forms known as operating systems and applications programs. Operating systems are the software that configure and present computer hardware to the user, and which in doing so co-ordinate basic activities such as memory management, capturing data from the keyboard and mouse, generating an image on the display screen, printing, and networking. In one of their early PC manuals, IBM once described a computer's operating system as like a policeman that directs the traffic (of computer activity) at a busy intersection (Silberschatz & Galvin, 2008).

Operating Systems

A computer's operating system determines which traditional, locally-installed applications it can run. The main choices of desktop or laptop operating system today are Windows, Mac OS or Linux, although alternatives such as Google Chrome OS and Android are becoming more mainstream possibilities. It is possible to have multiple operating systems installed on one computer, and even to run one operating system within another. However, the vast majority of computers only ever have one operating system.

As reported by Ubergizmo, by April 2011 31.71 per cent of PCs were running Windows 7, 31.56 per cent were running Windows XP, 19.07 per cent were running Windows Vista, 14.87 per cent were running Mac OS X, 0.70 per cent were running Linux, and 2.09 per cent were running something other operating system (Lubomur , 2003).

The fact that Windows XP has only recently been overtaken by Windows 7 in the above rankings has to signal just what a mess Microsoft has made of Windows over the last decade. Anybody purchasing a professional version of Windows 7 today still has the option of running a Windows XP mode precisely because if they could not they would have to abandon too many perfectly serviceable older applications. Many new netbook computers are still even shipping with Windows XP, whilst in companies many IT departments are quite understandably continuing to invoke downgrade rights that allow new hardware delivered with Windows 7 to be 'reverted' to the company's Windows XP standard.

The reason that so many computers world-wide still run a two-generations-old operating system is two-fold (Silberschatz & Galvin. 2008). Firstly, Microsoft utterly misjudged the market with Vista and delivered a bloated operating system that in all practical respects was worse than the one it was intended to replace. Indeed it is not hard to predict that when, in ten years time, people look back at the gradual fall of Microsoft, they will cite the launch of Vista as the beginning of the end of the years in which one company could tell us all what to do on our desktops.

As noted in the figures above, those personal computers not running Windows are almost all running either Mac OS (if they are Apple Macs), or one of the many versions of ...