Database management is a system for managing the data that supports a company’s business operations. It involves storing data, distributing it to users and applications, editing it as needed as well as monitoring changes in data and protecting against data corruption due to unexpected failure. It’s a component of a company’s total informational infrastructure which aids in decision making, corporate growth and compliance with laws such as the GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act.

In the 1960s, Charles Bachman and IBM along with others created the first database systems. They developed into information management systems (IMS), which allowed huge amounts of data to be stored and retrieved for a variety of purposes. From calculating inventory, to supporting complicated financial accounting functions, and human resource functions.

A database consists of a set of tables that organize data according to a certain arrangement, like one-to-many relationships. It uses primary key to identify records elementr.be and permits cross-references between tables. Each table contains a set of attributes or fields that represent facts about data entities. The most well-known type of database that is currently in use is a relational model developed by E. F. “Ted” Codd at IBM in the 1970s. This model is based on normalizing data to make it simpler to use. It is also simpler to update data since it doesn’t require changing several databases.

The majority of DBMSs support a variety of databases, offering internal and external levels of organization. The internal level deals with costs, scalability, and other operational concerns like the layout of the database’s physical storage. The external level is the representation of the database in user interfaces and applications. It could include a mix of different external views (based on the different data models) and can also include virtual tables that are computed from generic data in order to improve performance.