Page 10 - DCAP402_DCAO204_DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM_MANAGING DATABASE

Unit 1: Database Fundamentals

1.2 Database System Applications Notes

Databases are widely used. Here are some representative applications:
1. Banking: For customer information, accounts, and loans, and banking transactions.

2. Airlines: For reservations and schedule information. Airlines were among the first to use
databases in a geographically distributed manner - terminals situated around the world
accessed the central database system through phone lines and other data networks.

3. Universities: For student information, course registrations, and grades.
4. Credit card transactions: For purchases on credit cards and generation of monthly
statements.

5. Telecommunication: For keeping records of calls made, generating monthly bills,
maintaining balances on prepaid calling cards, and storing information about the
communication networks.
6. Finance: For storing information about holdings, sales, and purchases of financial
instruments such as stocks and bonds.
7. Sales: For customer, product, and purchase information.
8. Manufacturing: For management of supply chain and for tracking production of items in
factories, inventories of items in warehouses / stores, and orders for items.
9. Human resources: For information about employees, salaries, payroll taxes and benefits,
and for generation of paychecks.

1.3 Characteristics of the Database Approach

A shared collection of logically related data along with the description of the data that suits to
the needs of large enterprises.

Figure 1.1: File System Approach

Program-1

data description-1
File -1

Program-2
data description-2 File - 2

Program-3 File - 3
data description-3

This unit describes the basic differences between the traditional way of processing, also called as
file processing, and the database method of processing the data. Every operating system provides
users to open, save, and close a file. The users can store appropriate information in these files.
Take a look at the Figure 1.1 which shows the traditional file processing system that stores the
program and data description in a file. The related information of a particular application is
stored in various files named as File1, File2, etc., and these files are manipulated using Program1,
Program2, etc. This is the method that was used in early days.

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