Database Applications, Advantages of DBMS, Basic Components of DBMS

Four basic components of Database Management System:

(i) Data: Raw facts which we want to feed in the computer.

(ii) Hardware: On which the data to be processed.

(iii) Software: The interface between the hardware and user, by which the data will change into the information.

(iv) User: There are so many types of users some of them are application programmer, end case users and DBA.

Database Applications: 

Airline Reservation Systems – Data items are: single passenger reservations; Information about flights and airports; Information about ticket prices and tickets restrictions. 

Banking Systems – Data items are accounts, customers, loans, mortgages, balances, etc. Failures are not tolerable. Concurrent access must be provided.

Corporate Records – Data items are: sales, accounts, bill of materials records, employee and their dependents.

Library Management- Data items are: books record, student record, etc.

Hospitals- especially Private hospital,

Student Attendance etc.

Advantages of DBMS:

Data administration: Data administration or data resource management is an organizational function working in the areas of information systems and computer science that plans, organizes, describes and controls data resources.

Data integrity and security:

i) Data Integrity means, that  the data values entered in the database must be checked to ensure that they fall within the correct format and range. For ex- Suppose A teacher  entering  the detail of  school students . If he entered the age of a student as 55 which is impossible. So here Data Integrity checks it and it also checks whether the referring field is existing or not means the student whose detail is entering , exists in the database.

ii) Data security means protecting a database from destructive forces and the unwanted actions of unauthorized users.

Data independence: Application programs should be as independent as possible from details of data representation and storage. The DBMS can provide an abstract view of the data to insulate application code from such details. In other words, The files stored in Database are independent  of  their  storage details and  the change in  one  file doesn’t effect the other until and unless they related to each other.

Concurrent Access/Recovery: A DBMS schedules concurrent accesses(Number of users can access a single file Concurrently) to the data in such a manner that users can think of the data as being accessed by only one user at a time. Further, the DBMS protects users from the system failures.

Crash Recovery: The DBMS maintains  a continuous  record  for  the changes made to the data, so, if there is any system crash by power failure or something, it can restore the Database.

Reduced application development time: Clearly, the DBMS supports many important functions that are common to many applications accessing data stored in the DBMS. This, in conjunction with the high-level interface to the data, facilitates quick development of applications. Such applications are also likely to be more robust than applications developed from scratch because many important tasks are handled by the DBMS instead of being implemented by the application.With  the help  of  some Predefined functions like Concurrency control, Crash Recovery etc, DBMS helps us to develop applications in very less time.

Reduction of Redundancies: Redundancy means duplicating i.e making the same copy of data again and again. Reduction of Redundancy means, avoiding  the duplication  of data. As you have seen on your computer that on a same folder you cannot keep two file with same name.