Database Systems
Goals
- Identify the reasons for aligning IT goals to the business mission and goals
- Identify data requirements
- Identify different data types and their uses
- Define business intelligence
- Differentiate between different types of databases
- Explain how data is organized in a database
- Identify common database administration and maintenance tasks
- Describe different types of information processing
- Explain the interaction of other applications with databases to create and retrieve data, including drivers
- Identify the relationships between applications and databases
- Identify basic structured query language (SQL) commands
Database systems integrate the information stored and maintained by an organization
Database management system converts large amounts of data into a usable format to help users make business decisions.
Database Structure
A database application has two major layers:
- application layer
- communicates with the end user and can be fairly complex
- does not directly manipulate the data
- the application layer consists of programs and services within a server that queries the database on behalf of the client
- uses the database management system (DBMS) as a tool to obtain the results
- database management layer
- DBMS alters the database after receiving the request through the application layer
Elements of a database:
- database table, also known as a datasheet, is composed of records and fields that hold data
- records are represented as rows in a table with related information
- field contains a single piece of data about the subject of a record
Database Models
Structured Query Language
Database Management and Administration
Database management and administration refers to the whole set of activities that ensure all databases are highly available, secure, and scalable.
Business Intelligence (BI) refers to the translation of raw data into something useful.
- According to the Data Pyramid, this is considered Knowledge
DBA Responsibilities
A majority of the database administration (DBA) responsibilities fall into these categories:
- Database security—ensuring that only authorized users have access to the database and fortifying it against unauthorized access
- Database tuning—optimizing performance of database systems
- High availability—making replicas (copies) of databases available from various locations; if one copy is unavailable due to outage, the alternate location can continue database services
- Business continuity—continuing core business operations effectively, even with the disruption of some auxiliary services
- Backup and recovery—planning for and executing adequate backup and recovery procedures
- Reporting—writing complex queries and generating reports for users
- Designing and developing database applications—writing code to interact with the database resources