“DATA IS THE NEW OIL.” — CLIVE HUMBY (part 2)

Do you know where all of the data is kept? Data is currently kept in databases. But it all started with file in the beginning. Yes, file. The location where we save all of our papers.  Data was managed in a file management environment in the early days when computer programmes were barely being invented. As organisations began to automate their functions one application at a time, the application developed. As a result, the applications are independent of one another and each requires its own data, which is organised in a data file. Many issues arise as a result of this approach, including data redundancy, data isolation, and data inconsistency.

Then, databases are developed to address those challenges, and to administer the databases, we require a database management system, abbreviated as DBMS. In order for an organisation to access data in a database, query and reporting capabilities provided by DBMS are used. Aside from managing data, DBMS also assists in maintaining data integrity, managing data security and user access, and recovering information if a failure occurs.

Almost every semester in our course, we learn about databases, demonstrating how crucial they are in this day and age. If we learn about this, it will not only help us acquire a job, but it will also help us survive in life. I'm kidding, of course. However, in this day and age where new technology is always being produced, it is not a terrible thing to at least be familiar with the basics of it because I am confident it will be beneficial someday. Okay, enough about my story; let's go back to writing.

There are many other types of databases, but we focused on relational databases in our study. Excel, Microsoft Access, and Oracle are examples of applications that use relational databases. Data in a relational database is stored in the form of row columns to build a two-dimensional table. Tables are organised according to business entities such as customers, employees, products, and suppliers. It is quite beneficial to split the entity table in order to avoid problems such as data anomaly.

Big data is something I'm sure everyone has heard of. Big data is a collection of vast and complicated data sets that are challenging to manage with conventional database management systems alone. Big data is about making predictions by evaluating all of the complicated and numerous data sets. You can learn more about big data by visiting this website.

“Hiding within those mounds of data is knowledge that could change the life of a patient, or change the world.” (Atul Butte, Stanford)