Data Base Management

Managing Databases And Their Categories

Data bases are used in all kinds of businesses and it is important that they are kept running as efficiently as possible. That is where data base management comes into play. Many data base managing systems, which are software that aid in organizing, obtaining information from and putting data into data bases, are designed to work with specific data base models.

A well-built database management system (DBMS) can be used for almost all of a company's database information. They can run on personal computers, for personal uses, or on giant mainframes that control all of a company's database.

There are many types of data base management systems and most places with computers will use some form of one. Example database management software includes computerized library systems, flight reservation systems, and computerized inventory systems. Even an email client's address book is a type of database management system.

Basically a data base will store information in a series of columns and rows known as a table. When a particular piece of data needs to be retrieved, the data base system will use pointers to find that piece of data and bring it forward to be used. There are many applications for database management systems, including accounting work, engineering work, and bibliographic work.

A data base management system can be used with several different categories of databases, based on how the data is stored.  The six major categories of databases are the following:

• Flat model
• Hierarchical model
• Network model
• Relational model
• Dimensional model
• Object database model

The flat model is the simply category and is essentially a table or a matrix for data.  The hierarchical model organizes data into a tree-like structure and allows a 1:N relationship between types of data. The network model is similar to the hierarchical model, only it is capable of larger relationships between types of data and allowing pointers to flow between data more efficiently based upon these relationships.

The relational model uses relations, attributes, and domains to organize data based on multiple tables.  The dimensional model is a mixture of several types of database categories. It primarily uses a table format that is described using dimensions, but it also follows a hiearchical structure.

Finally the object database model uses object-oriented programming techniques to store and manipulate data.  It is becoming one of the most popular types of databases used and it helps bring database applications and programming applications closer together.

A company should not just stick with one database model, however.  Using multiple models for different types of data is a great way to keep things organized and easy to access.