Data
Data is nothing but facts and statistics stored or free-flowing over a network, generally it's raw and unprocessed. For example: When you visit any website, they might store your IP address, that is data, in return they might add a cookie in your browser, marking you that you visited the website, that is data, your name, its data, your age, it's data.
Data becomes information when processed, turning it into something meaningful. Like, based on the cookie data saved on the user's browser, if a website can analyze that generally, men of age 20-25 visit us more, that is information, derived from the data collected.
Database
A Database is a collection of related data organized so that data can be easily accessed, managed, and updated. Database can be software-based or hardware-based, with one sole purpose, storing data. During the early computer days, data was collected and stored on tapes, which were mostly write-only, which means that once data is stored on tape, it can never be read again. They were slow and bulky, and soon computer scientists realized that they needed a better solution to this problem. Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle was amongst the first few, who realized the need for a software-based Database Management System.
What is DBMS
A DBMS is a software that allows the creation, definition, and manipulation of the database, allowing users to store, process , and analyze data easily. DBMS provides us with an interface or a tool, to perform various operations like creating the database, storing data in it, updating data, creating tables in the database, and a lot more. DBMS also provides protection and security to the databases. It also maintains data consistency in case of multiple users.
Here are some examples of popular DBMS used these days:
- MySQL
- Oracle
- SQL Server
- IBM DB2
- PostgreSQL
- Amazon SimpleDB (cloud based) etc.
