Skip to Content
Beginning Programming ALL-IN-ONE DESK REFERENCE FOR DUMMIES®
book

Beginning Programming ALL-IN-ONE DESK REFERENCE FOR DUMMIES®

by Wallace Wang
June 2008
Beginner
695 pages
14h 9m
English
For Dummies
Content preview from Beginning Programming ALL-IN-ONE DESK REFERENCE FOR DUMMIES®

Chapter VII.1. Database Management

D atabase management is all about storing organized information and knowing how to retrieve it again. Although the idea of storing and retrieving data is simple in theory, managing databases can get complicated in a hurry. Not only can data be critical, such as bank records, but data retrieval may be time-sensitive as well. After all, retrieving a person's medical history in a hospital emergency room is useless if that information doesn't arrive fast enough to tell doctors that the patient has an allergic reaction to a specific antibiotic.

Because storing and retrieving information is so important, one of the most common and lucrative fields of computer programming is database management. Database management involves designing and programming ways to store and retrieve data. Because nearly every business from agriculture to banking to engineering requires storing and retrieving information, database management is used throughout the world.

The Basics of Databases

A database acts like a big bucket where you can dump in information. The two most important parts of any database is storing information and yanking it back out again. Ideally, storing information should be just as easy as retrieving it no matter how much data you may need to store or retrieve.

To store and retrieve data, computer scientists have created three types of database designs:

  • Free-form

  • Flat-file

  • Relational

Free-form databases

Free-form databases are designed to make it easy to store ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Designing Data-Intensive Applications, 2nd Edition

Designing Data-Intensive Applications, 2nd Edition

Martin Kleppmann, Chris Riccomini

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780470108543Purchase book