Page 55 - DLIS408_INFORMATION_TECHNOLOGY-APPLICATIONSL SCIENCES

Information Technology and Application

Notes 4. Sharing of data: In database systems, the data is centrally controlled and can be shared by all
authorized users. The sharing of data means not only the existing applications programs
can also share the data in the database but new application programs can be developed to
operate on the existing data. Furthermore, the requirements of the new application pro-
grams may be satisfied ‘without creating any new file.
5. Enforcement of standards: In database systems, data being stored at one central place, stan-
dards can easily be enforced, by the DBA. This ensures standardised data formats to facili-
tate data transfers between systems. Applicable standards might include any or all of the
following—departmental, installation, organizational, industry, corporate, national or
international.
6. Improved data integrity: Data integrity means that the data contained in the database is both
accurate and consistent. The centralized control property allow adequate checks can be
incorporated to provide data integrity. One integrity check that should be incorporated in
the database is to ensure that if there is a reference to certain object, that object must exist.
7. Improved security: Database security means protecting the data contained in the database
from unauthorised users. The DBA ensures that proper access procedures are followed,
including proper authentical schemes for access to the DBMS and additional checks before
permitting access to sensitive data. The level of security could be different for various
types of data and operations.
8. Data access is efficient: The database system utilizes different sophisticated techniques to
access the stored data very efficiently.
9. Conflicting requirements can be balanced: The DBA resolves the conflicting requirements of vari-
ous users and applications by knowing the overall requirements of the organization. The DBA
can structure the .system to provide an overall service that is best for the organization.
10. Improved backup and recovery facility: Through its backup and recovery subsystem, the data-
base system provides the facilities for recovering from hardware or software failures. The
recovery subsystem of the database system ensures that the database is restored to the state
it was in before the program started executing, in case of system crash.
11. Minimal program maintenance: In a traditional file system, the application programs with the
description of data and the logic for accessing the data are built individually. Thus, changes
to the data formats or access methods results in the need to modify the application pro-
grams. Therefore, high maintenance effort are required. These are reduced to minimal in
database systems due to independence of data and application programs.
12. Data quality is high: The quality of data in database systems are very high as compared to
traditional file systems. This is possible due to the presence of tools and processes in the
database system.
13. Good data accessibility and responsiveness: The database systems provide query languages or
report writers that allow the users to ask ad hoc queries to obtain the needed information
immediately, without the requirement to write application programs (as in case of file
system), that access the information from the database. This is possible due to integration
in database systems.
14. Concurrency control: The database systems are designed to manage simultaneous (concur-
rent) access of the database by many users. They also prevents any loss of information or
loss of integrity due to these concurrent accesses.
15. Economical to scale: In database systems, the operational data of an organization is stored in
a central database. The application programs that work on this data can be built with very
less cost as compared to traditional file system. This reduces overall costs of operation and
management of the database that leads to an economical scaling.
16. Increased programmer productivity: The database system provides many standard functions
that the programmer would generally have to write in file system, The availability of these
functions allow the programmers to concentrate on the specific functionality required by the
users without worrying about the implementation details. This increases the overall produc-
tivity of the programmer and also reduces the development time and cost.
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