Overview
In this tutorial, we will learn about database characteristics. DBMS characteristics are as follows:
- Real-world Entity
- Relations
- Isolation
- Consistency
- ACID
- Less Redundancy
- Query Language
- Concurrent Access
- Data Security
Real-world Entity
The database uses real-world entities to design its architecture. It uses behavior and attributes to model the entities. For example, a university database may use courses as an entity and course_name as an attribute.
Relation-based Tables
The database allows entities and relations among them to form tables. A user can understand the architecture of a database by looking at the ER diagram and the relationship among the tables in the database.
Isolation
A database system is entirely different than its data. A database is an active entity, whereas data is said to be passive, on which the database works and organizes. Databases also store metadata, which is data about data, to ease their own process.
Less redundancy
The database follows the rules of normalization to reduce redundancy. Normalization is a process that reduces data redundancy. The normalization process splits a relation into multiple tables when any of its attributes is having redundancy in values.
Consistency
Consistency is a state where every relation in a database remains consistent. There exist methods and techniques, which can detect attempts of leaving the database in an inconsistent state. A DBMS can provide greater consistency as compared to earlier forms of data-storing applications like file-processing systems.
ACID
ACID stands for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability. DBMS follows the concepts of ACID. These concepts are applied to transactions, which manipulate data in a database. ACID properties help the database stay healthy in multi-transactional environments and in case of failures.
Query Language
DBMS is equipped with query language, which makes it more efficient to retrieve and manipulate data. A user can apply as many and as different filtering options as required to retrieve a set of data.
Concurrent Access
DBMS supports multi-user environments and allows them to access and manipulate data concurrently. Though there are restrictions on transactions when users attempt to handle the same data item, users are always unaware of them.
Data Security
Features like multiple views offer security to some extent where users are unable to access the data of other users and departments. DBMS offers methods to impose constraints while entering data into the database and retrieving the same at a later stage. DBMS offers many different levels of security features, which enables multiple users to have different views with different features.
Multiple views
The database offers multiple views for different users. This feature enables the users to have a concentrated view of the database according to their requirements. For example, consider an organization database; an employee who is in the sales department will have a different view of the database than an employee working in the production department.