Importance of the Databases

 

Databases are important; why? Traditionally computer applications are divided into
commercial and scientific (or engineering) ones. Scientific applications involve more
computations, that is, different type of calculations that vary from simple to very complex.
Today such applications exist, like in the fields of space, nuclear, medicine that take
hours or days of computations on even computers of the modern age. On the other hand,
the applications that are termed as commercial or business applications do not involve
much computations, rather minor computation but mainly they perform the input/output
operations. That is, these applications mainly store the data in the computer storage, then
access and present it to the users in different formats (also termed as data processing) for
example, banks, shopping, production, utilities billing, customer services and many
others. As is clear from the example systems mentioned, the commercial applications
exist in the day to day life and are related directly with the lives of common people. In
order to manage the commercial applications more efficiently databases are the ultimate
choice because efficient management of data is the sole objective of the databases. So
such applications are being managed by databases even in a developing country like
Pakistan, yet to talk about the developed countries. This way databases are related
directly or indirectly almost every person in society.
Databases are not only being used in the commercial applications rather today many of
the scientific/engineering application are also using databases less or more. Databases are
concerned of effectively latter form of applications which are more Commercialapplications. The goal of this course is to present an in-depth introduction to databases, with
an emphasis on how to organize information in the database and to maintain it and
retrieve it efficiently, that is, how to design a database and use it effectively.