Database application

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LibreOffice Base is an example of a database application LibreOffice-5.0.1-Base.png
LibreOffice Base is an example of a database application

A database application is a computer program whose primary purpose is retrieving information from a computerized database. From here, information can be inserted, modified or deleted which is subsequently conveyed back into the database. Early examples of database applications were accounting systems and airline reservations systems, such as SABRE, developed starting in 1957.

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A characteristic of modern database applications is that they facilitate simultaneous updates and queries from multiple users. Systems in the 1970s might have accomplished this by having each user in front of a 3270 terminal to a mainframe computer. By the mid-1980s it was becoming more common to give each user a personal computer and have a program running on that PC that is connected to a database server. Information would be pulled from the database, transmitted over a network, and then arranged, graphed, or otherwise formatted by the program running on the PC. Starting in the mid-1990s it became more common to build database applications with a Web interface. Rather than develop custom software to run on a user's PC, the user would use the same Web browser program for every application. A database application with a Web interface had the advantage that it could be used on devices of different sizes, with different hardware, and with different operating systems. Examples of early database applications with Web interfaces include amazon.com, which used the Oracle relational database management system, the photo.net online community, whose implementation on top of Oracle was described in the book Database-Backed Web Sites (Ziff-Davis Press; May 1997), and eBay, also running Oracle. [1]

Electronic medical records are referred to on emrexperts.com, [2] in December 2010, as "a software database application". A 2005 O'Reilly book uses the term in its title: Database Applications and the Web.

Some of the most complex database applications remain accounting systems, such as SAP, which may contain thousands of tables in only a single module. [3] Many of today's most widely used computer systems are database applications, for example, Facebook, which was built on top of MySQL. [4]

The etymology of the phrase "database application" comes from the practice of dividing computer software into systems programs, such as the operating system, compilers, the file system, and tools such as the database management system, and application programs, such as a payroll check processor. On a standard PC running Microsoft Windows, for example, the Windows operating system contains all of the systems programs while games, word processors, spreadsheet programs, photo editing programs, etc. would be application programs. As "application" is short for "application program", "database application" is short for "database application program".

Not every program that uses a database would typically be considered a "database application". For example, many physics experiments, e.g., the Large Hadron Collider, [5] generate massive data sets that programs subsequently analyze. The data sets constitute a "database", though they are not typically managed with a standard relational database management system. The computer programs that analyze the data are primarily developed to answer hypotheses, not to put information back into the database and therefore the overall program would not be called a "database application".

Examples of database applications

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">MySQL</span> SQL database engine software

MySQL is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database organizes data into one or more data tables in which data may be related to each other; these relations help structure the data. SQL is a language that programmers use to create, modify and extract data from the relational database, as well as control user access to the database. In addition to relational databases and SQL, an RDBMS like MySQL works with an operating system to implement a relational database in a computer's storage system, manages users, allows for network access and facilitates testing database integrity and creation of backups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsoft Access</span> Database manager part of the Microsoft 365 package

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oracle Corporation</span> American multinational computer corporation

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A relational database (RDB) is a database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A database management system used to maintain relational databases is a relational database management system (RDBMS). Many relational database systems are equipped with the option of using SQL for querying and updating the database.

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Oracle Rdb is a relational database management system for the OpenVMS operating system. It was originally released by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1984 as VAX Rdb/VMS.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oracle Designer</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shadow table</span> Abstract object in computer science

Shadow tables are objects in computer science used to improve the way machines, networks and programs handle information. More specifically, a shadow table is an object that is read and written by a processor and contains data similar to its primary table, which is the table it's "shadowing". Shadow tables usually contain data that is relevant to the operation and maintenance of its primary table, but not within the subset of data required for the primary table to exist. Shadow tables are related to the data type "trails" in data storage systems. Trails are very similar to shadow tables but instead of storing identically formatted information that is different, they store a history of modifications and functions operated on a table.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to MySQL:

References

  1. ↑ eBay's Massive Oracle Database
  2. ↑ "EMR Experts". Archived from the original on 2019-02-12. Retrieved 2011-02-06.
  3. ↑ Oracle SAP Administration by Donald Burleson, Chapter 1
  4. ↑ Sobel, Jason (21 December 2007). "Keeping Up". Facebook Blog. Retrieved 2008-10-30.
  5. ↑ Large Hadron Collider as Massive Grid Computer
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