Database Systems: My SQL

Today’s technology is capable of storing extremely large amounts of data, but such data collections are useless unless we are able to extract those particular items of information that are pertinent to the task at hand.

Database Fundamentals

The term database refers to a collection of data that is multidimensional in the sense that internal links between its entries make the information accessible from a variety of perspectives.

This is in contrast to a traditional file system, sometimes called a flat file, which is a one-dimensional storage system, meaning that it presents its information from a single point of view. Whereas a flat file containing information about composers and their compositions might provide a list of compositions arranged by composer, a database might present all the works by a single composer, all the composers who wrote a particular type of music, and perhaps the composers who wrote variations of another composer’s work.

Database Management Systems

A typical database application involves multiple software layers, which can be grouped into two major layers—an application layer and a database management layer. The application software handles the communication with the user of the database and may be quite complex, as exemplified by applications inwhich users access a database by means of a website. In that case the entire application layer consists of clients throughout the Internet and a server that uses the database to fill the requests from the clients. Note that the application software does not directly manipulate the database. The actual manipulation of the database is accomplished by the database management system (DBMS). Once the application software has determined what action the user is requesting, it uses the DBMS as an abstract tool to obtain the results. If the request is to add or delete data, it is the DBMS that actually alters the database. If the request is to retrieve information, it is the DBMS that performs the required searches.

The following is a recording of a prototype of a database system: the video shows what front end (Visual studio code for website coding) and back end users (MySQL) will see on their screen, and what they will be able to do once given access. A series of queries of books was used for this prototype.