Question

A brief history of database application

Answer 1

Early Database Applications Using Hierarchical and Network Systems: Many early database applications maintained records in large organzations, such as corporations, universities, hospitals, and banks. In many of these applications, there were large numbers of records of similar structure. One of the main problems with early database systems was the intermixing of conceptual relationships with the physical storage and placement of records on disk. Another shortcoming of early systems was that they provided only programming language interfaces. This made it time-consuming and expensive to implement new queries and transactions, since new programs had to be written, tested, and debugged.

Providing Application Flexibility with Relational Databases : Relational databases were originally proposed to separate the physical storage of data from its conceptual representation and to provide a mathematical foundation for databases. The relational data model also introduced high-level query languages that provided an alternative to programming language interfaces; hence, it was a lot quicker to write new queries. Eventually, relational databases became the dominant type of database systems for traditional database applications. Relational databases now exist on almost all types of computers, from small personal computers to large servers.

Object-Oriented Applications and the Need for More Complex Databases : The emergence of object-oriented programming languages in the 1980s and the need to store and share complex-structured objects led to the development of object-oriented databases. Initially, they were considered a competitor to relational databases, since they provided more general data structures. They also incorporated many of the useful object oriented paradigms, such as abstract data types, encapsulation of operations, inheritance, and object identity. However, the complexity of the model and the lack of an early standard contributed to their limited usc. They are now mainly used in specialized applications, such as engineering design, multimedia publishing, and manufacturing systems.