Tech Topic Connection

 

            Data can give great insights into the behaviors and trends of every business, but only if the data is organized, stored, and accessible to business decision-makers. Data management is a technical topic interrelated to many information technology and computer science concepts covered in the course, TEC101: Fundamentals of Information Technology & Literacy. The course text starts by defining data as simply a “collection of facts and values” and information as “processed data that gives meaning to the facts and values.” To access the information gathered, a DBMS (database management system) is an application that creates, maintains, and accesses databases. This app allows users greater capabilities to update data, and query information from multiple databases. (Vahid & Lysecky, 2019)

            Foundational concepts in IT include computer hardware specifications, programming languages, operating systems, computer applications, and security protocols to help safeguard your data. The earliest computers of the 1900s were enormous and used switches to perform calculations. This concept of “On” represented by 1 and “Off” represented by 0 forms the binary basis for computing applications in the modern age. The shift of people from traditional industry to “creating, managing, and using computerized information” has expanded exponentially only in the last 30 years. (Vahid & Lysecky, 2019) This shift in behavior makes the need to maintain, access, and update lots of data is imperative not only to corporations but also to individuals for personal life management and planning.

            All computer applications use the same principles to operate. Essentially, hardware or physical components are used to house the software, which provides the instructions in binary representation to perform various tasks. Variations in hardware specifications differ depending on what software will be running and the end user’s memory and storage capabilities will be needed. For example, a film editor will need significant storage capacity as video and audio raw files in an uncompressed state take a lot of memory. Over time, and due to Moore’s Law, storage capacity has increased significantly, causing the size of the IC (integrated circuits) to get smaller and smaller but still perform the required tasks.

            With all that storage, more and more data can be stored and ultimately recalled, providing trends and insights into behaviors that could never be analyzed in the past. A Techopedia article provides the following seven reasons why a database management system is needed:

1. Computers do not start as thinking on their own and are just an extension of our own human logic. We provide the instructions, and then it can perform them much faster than we can individually. “The database that you create to manage human knowledge will enhance your abilities to correlate, query, and report the collected information of your organization” or life. (Brown, 2023)
2. According to Brown, a centralized database can provide many, if not all, of the answers directly to the stakeholder without having to waste time hunting for information. The accuracy and integrity of the data management system help ensure consistent and accurate results each time.
3. Answering complex questions with speed and accuracy is far more time-efficient and reduces the chance of error. A good DBMS needs to be designed with complexity in mind.
4. A good DBMS allows the end user to dive into the data directly without having to deal with the “intricacies of database links and forms.”
5. As data grows, automated processes to organize and transform data become imperative to help manage the information and make it accessible to others.
6. A central repository or “one-stop-shop” to access important information about a business allows multiple people to access the same information and collaborate better by staying informed of trends in the organization.
7. Everyone wants to make and save money. Too much time is wasted trying to gather and analyze data; a solid DBMS reduces and sometimes completely eliminates the waste, allowing businesses to focus on company objectives.

Technology expert, Margaret Rouse explains “A database management system (DBMS) is middleware that allows programmers, database administrators (DBAs), software applications and end users to store, organize, access, query and manipulate data in a database.” (Rouse, 2023). In her Techopedia article, she provides a timeline for the evolution of DBMS, as shown below.

Year	Event
1964	Development of the first database, an Integrated Data Store (IDS), by Charles Bachman at General Electric.
1966	IBM introduces the Information Management System (IMS), a joint development with Rockwell and Caterpillar.
1970	Edgar F. Codd introduces the relational model in a paper titled “A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks“.
1974	The Structured Query Language (SQL) is created.
1976	Peter Chen introduces the Entity-Relationship Model in his paper “The Entity-Relationship Model – Toward a Unified View of Data“.
1979	Oracle releases the first commercial relational database that uses SQL.
1980	IBM introduces System R, the SQL-based relational database management system.
1981	SQL/DS, the first full-function DBMS to run on personal computers, is released by IBM.
1983	The first version of DB2 by IBM is released for mainframes.
1986	The Object-Oriented Database System Manifesto is published, giving a significant push to the development of object-oriented databases.
1996	PostgreSQL, one of the first open-source relational database management systems is launched.
1998	MySQL, another significant open-source RDMS, is released for Windows 95 and NT.
1998	Microsoft launches SQL Server 7.0, a complete rewrite of their DBMS.
2000	Internet startups embrace XML databases.
2004	The term “NoSQL” gains popularity, leading to a new generation of non-relational, distributed databases.
2006	Google publishes a paper on BigTable, its internal NoSQL database, influencing a new wave of open-source NoSQL databases
2012	Amazon introduces DynamoDB, a proprietary NoSQL database.
2013	FoundationDB, a distributed database designed to handle large volumes of structured data, is released.
2017	Google announces Spanner, a globally distributed database.
2020s	Continued development and innovation in DBMS technology, with focus on cloud-native databases, edge databases and improvements in AI integration for database management. Blockchain databases also become a significant topic of interest.

            Rouse distinguishes between a database and DBMS, sometimes incorrectly used interchangeably. A database is a “structured collection of data. The database management system is the software that developers, end users and applications use to interact with a database.” The DBMS uses programming languages and execution methods specifically designed to run with that program however, the syntax for many programming languages use similar languages, such as TSQL to query and execute code.

            In addition to using similar languages, all database management systems have user policies that are used to “specify permissions, roles, and privileges and govern how users can interact with a database.” (Rouse, 2023)

References

Brown, D. S. (2023, July 6). 7 Reasons Why You Need a Database Management System. Techopedia. Retrieved September 28, 2023, from https://www.techopedia.com/2/31970/it-business/7-reasons-why-you-need-a-database-management-system

Rouse, M. (2023, June 17). DBMS (Database Management System). Techopedia. Retrieved September 28, 2023, from

https://www.techopedia.com/definition/24361/database-management-systems-dbms

Vahid, F., & Lysecky, R. (2019). Computing technology for all. zyBooks.