Rich Society, Database Management Is an Ever-Expanding

¶ … rich society, database management is an ever-expanding and increasingly important field. This paper discusses databases, database management systems (DBMSs), and their importance in today's society. Additional topics include the need for security, concurrency, and control within database management, as well as the role of the database administrator.

A database can be defined as "a structure that can house information about multiple types of entities, the attributes of these entities, and the relationships among the entities" (St. Edward's University). Databases can contain a wide variety of information. For example, a university database may include information about students, courses and classrooms. Further, this university database may contain significant amounts of information about the relationships between these entities, such as student course enrollment, and the use of classrooms for courses (Ramakrishnan).

A database management system (DBMS) is "a software product through which users interact with a database" (St. Edward's University). These systems allow for the maintenance and management of large amounts of information. DBMSs are becoming widely used, and the need for such systems to continue to increase (Ramakrishnan). Users interact with the database through the DBMS, either directly or indirectly through programs that interact with the database (St. Edward's University).

The need for databases and database management systems stems from the incredible amount of information that exists in today's society. Proper management, maintenance and manipulation of this information is often essential to a business's bottom line. As Raghu Ramakrishnan notes, "the value of data as an organizational asset is widely recognized" (p. 4). As such, a number of tools are needed in order to manage and simplify managing and manipulating useful information. If this is not accomplished, "data can become a liability, with the cost of acquiring it and managing it far exceeding the value derived from it" (Ramakrishnan, 4).

There are many different kinds of database management systems. The most popular, however, is the relational database. Each relation is table, made up of rows and columns, with the database made up of one or more relations. This database model allows complex queries to be made relatively easily, and is understandable to even novice users. SQL is the standard language for manipulating, creating, and querying data within a relational database (Ramakrishnan). Other databases include intelligence databases, text or multimedia databases, reference databases, and knowledge databases. Databases often exist as combinations of several types (Mattilla).

Security is an especially important concern for databases that are networked within an organization. Access through the company intranet or potential access through the Internet can compromise important data. This data can include customer information, transaction records, and financial data about the company itself. Unauthorized access to such data can damage a company's image, potentially create havoc with company finances, and result in the breach of sensitive information that belongs either to the company itself or to its customer base (RSA Security, Inc.).

Importantly, breach of database security can do great damage to customer relationships and the credibility of a company. A breach can result in either the loss of information, or the release of information to unknown parties. Understandably, the loss of personal information like "financial records, healthcare histories, order histories, credit card and Social Security numbers" (RSA Security, Inc.) is disturbing to consumers. This is a real risk, as attacks on databases are rising (RSA Security, Inc.).

There are a number of security measures that can be taken to protect information stored in a company database. Encryption of data either as it moves across the network or while it is in storage is crucial to maintaining database security. Further, strong user identification and access control, as well as event logging and security auditing are also important for security (RSA Security, Inc.).

The control of data is also an important step in ensuring database security. Today, more people than ever can have access to sensitive information in a database, as companies become more interdependent. Control of data certainly means using firewalls and other measures to prevent external attacks. However, control also means regulating the access to sensitive database information by internal employees and contractors (RSA Security, Inc.). Notes RSA Security, Inc., "attacks by employees who have access to sensitive information are often even more devastating (than attacks by hackers) - and cannot be prevented by perimeter defenses like firewalls" (p. 1).

Concurrency refers to the ability of numerous users to access data concurrently. A poorly designed DBMS will not allow multiple users to access data at the same time. In contrast, an effective DBMS will be robust enough to allow for multiple users. However, problems can arise when more than one user tries to access or update the same row at the same time. Concurrency checking help protect against the loss of updates, and can be achieved either by locking rows during updates, or by checking rows for consistency during each update. Further, write-ahead logging (WAL) acts to undo aborted transactions, and can recover database integrity after a crash. The control of concurrency and recovery are some of the most important functions of database management (Ramakrishnan).

The role of a database administrator, in the simplest sense, is to technically maintain and have responsibility for the operation of a single database or multiple databases in an organization. Under this simple definition, however, are a wide variety of individual responsibilities and tasks (Mattila).