Relational Database Systems Briefing

You will learn:

  • Basic elements of database systems
  • Making databases fit your needs
  • Estimating Database costs
  • Choosing the right DBMS
  

Database User Expectations

  • Scale from small to large datasets
  • Flexibly store all needed data types
  • Reliable transactions & replication
  • Standard data & query language
 

Standards to the Rescue

  • RDBMS & SQL – the Enterprise choice
    • Standard
    • General
    • Flexible
    • Secure
  • Pure relational model awkward for
    • Unstructured text
    • Hierarchical trees & objects
  

Open Source Free Databases

  • MySQL – the most popular
    • Fast for small, simple situations
    • Not scalable; inflexible; not standards compliant
  • PostgreSQL – the most powerful
    • Good performance
    • Flexible, extensible data model
    • Standards compliant
    • Enterprise-class features