Why we needed Database:

Sunday 08 July 2012

Why we needed Database?

We are using MS SQL Server as Database for our application. So what is the actual need to use Database? That is the actual essence of this article.

Many people have a good habit to write daily dairy of every in and outs of the day. So dairy is an entity of storage to store or manage something or some information of our daily life.

If we think in broad perspective, Database provides a systematic and organized way of storing, managing and retrieving from collection of logically related information.

Secondly the information has to be persistent, that means even after the application is closed the information should be persisted.

Finally it should provide an independent way of accessing data and should not be dependent on the application to access the information.

Now explaining the third aspect with an example.

Figure of a text file containing some information as:

The first column of the information is Name, Second Address and third the Mobile number. This is simple text file which is designed by a programmer for a specific application.

It works fine in the boundary of the application. Now some years down the line a third party application has to be  integrated with this file, so in order the third party application integrates properly it has the following options:-

v  Use interface of the original application

v  Understand the complete detail of how the text file is organized, example the first column is Name, then Address and finally Mobile number. After analyzing write a code which can read the file, parse it etc.

That’s what the main difference between a simple file and database. Database has independent way of accessing information while simple files do not. File meets the storing, managing and retrieving part of a database but not the independent way of accessing data.