Ans: Before the database management system, we should know about the data and the database. There are two very confusing terms. DATA and INFORMATION.
The difference between data and information is as follows:
Data: Data is the raw and isolated facts about an entity or record. For example text, audio, image, map, etc.
Information: Information is processed, meaningful and usable data.
For example
₹100, ₹200, ₹400, ₹600 this is just simple data.
Electricity bill for January month: ₹100
Electricity bill for February month: ₹200
and this is information about monthly
Electricity bill for March month: ₹400
electricity bill which is gradually increasing
Electricity bill for April month: ₹600
We can say that first, we see that ₹100, ₹200, ₹400, ₹600. These are just figures of rupees. But as we see above when these data are processed. This data becomes information.
Database: A database is the collection of comparable or related data.
For example Collection of information of all students, teaching faculty, other staff members, and all the other informations related to college in one place. Then we call it the database of the college.
Now, when we have lots of data in our database in the form of database servers etc. Then, the question is what we have to do with the data present in the database, obviously, users want to access that data. They can make updates, or they want to insert new data or they want to delete some already stored data.
How are these operations possible?
We just need a system that helps us to perform these operations like (Updation, Insertion, and Deletion). So, the Data Base Management System was introduced that is capable to perform all operations.
So, DBMS is a system that has a collection of operations that helps users to perform operations like (Updation, Insertion, Deletion, etc.) in an easy way within the database. It provides easiness to the users.
Or we can also say that a Database management system is the software and collection of the program which is used to create, manipulate, retrieve and delete databases.
So basically we can say that DBMS is general-purpose software that helps to manage the databases and have these capabilities.
Capabilities of DBMS
- Storage of data: Data can be stored in the database by performing the “Insertion” operation of DBMS. A database management system is capable of storing new data within the database.
- Retrieval of data: Data that is stored in the database can be fetched through the “Select” query of DBMS. A database management system is capable to show or fetch the stored data from the database.
- Data update: Data that is already stored in the database can be updated too in the database by performing the update operation of DBMS. A database management system is capable to update any data within the database.
- Security: Within the database, we can make our data more secure with the help of DBMS. No unauthorized user can access any data within the database without permission.
- It supports ACID properties. ACID stands for Accuracy, Completeness, Isolation, and Durability.
- There is no data redundancy. It means there is no duplicate data.
- If the database gets deleted or corrupted due to any reason, we can back up it.