¶ … Databases Analysis and Overview of Database Systems in the Enterprise

The pervasive adoption of databases for aggregating, analyzing, parsing, reporting and storing data continues to exponentially increase over time, as the information needs of companies continued to increase. The foundation fo nearly every enterprise-wide system and computing platform includes integration to databases of many types, from object-oriented to relational (Lungu, Velicanu, Botha, 2009). Every Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system today relies on databases for product, pricing, costing, production scheduling, service coordination and manufacturing execution task coordination as well (Bremer, Carey, 1987). Databases have become an essential component of every enterprise system in use today, from coordinating supply chains, sourcing, production and tracking customer activity and sales through Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems (Madduri, Shi, Baker, Ayachitula, 2007). Object-oriented databases are pervasively used in Computer-Aided Drawing (CAD) applications as well, given their speed and accuracy in managing geographic and graphic primitives (Chu, 1995).

Fundamentals of Database Architecture

All databases share a series of common features, functional areas, and approaches to data modeling. In addition, all have the ability to integrate with other databases...

All databases also support a series of database schema and advanced taxonomy definition, which is entirely dependent on the foundational elements of the underlying architecture. Object-oriented databases use orthogonal objects that carry their own functional definitions and taxonomy definitions (Hansen, 1995). Relational databases (RDBMS) rely on a more schema-based approach to define the data models used for completing analysis, reporting and ensuring a high degree of integration reliability and security (Hansen, 1995). All databases rely on schema, subschema and within these constructs, the ability to define data attributes. Of the two dominant types of databases, OODBMS and RDBMS, the latter performs best for high-volume transaction processing (Hooper, Page, 1996) while OODBMS is best for managing unstructured content and the rapid analysis and classification fo object-based content (Newing, 1997).
Defining Relational Database Architectures

Relational database management (RDBMS) systems are the dominant platform in use by enterprise globally today due to their transaction-based strengths, scalability and enhanced security features in addition to ACID compliance critical to governments globally (Lungu, Velicanu, Botha, 2009). As a result of their transaction-level performance advantages, RDBMS systems are pervasively used…