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Fields may be stored in a random access file. [7] A file may be written to or read from in an arbitrary order. To accomplish the arbitrary access, the operating system provides a method to quickly seek around the file. [8] Once the disk head is positioned at the beginning of a record, each file field can be read into its corresponding memory field.
The word 'field' is normally used interchangeably with 'column'. [5] However, database perfectionists tend to favor using 'field' to signify a specific cell of a given row. [citation needed] This is to enable accuracy in communicating with other developers. Columns (really column names) being referred to as field names (common for each row ...
Connolly and Begg define database management system (DBMS) as a "software system that enables users to define, create, maintain and control access to the database". [23] RDBMS is an extension of that initialism that is sometimes used when the underlying database is relational.
Formally, a "database" refers to a set of related data accessed through the use of a "database management system" (DBMS), which is an integrated set of computer software that allows users to interact with one or more databases and provides access to all of the data contained in the database (although restrictions may exist that limit access to particular data).
For example, consider a database of electronic health records. Such a database could contain tables like the following: A doctor table with information about physicians. A patient table for medical subjects undergoing treatment. An appointment table with an entry for each hospital visit. Natural relationships exist between these entities:
The terms data dictionary and data repository indicate a more general software utility than a catalogue. A catalogue is closely coupled with the DBMS software. It provides the information stored in it to the user and the DBA, but it is mainly accessed by the various software modules of the DBMS itself, such as DDL and DML compilers, the query optimiser, the transaction processor, report ...
The database schema is the structure of a database described in a formal language supported typically by a relational database management system (RDBMS). The term " schema " refers to the organization of data as a blueprint of how the database is constructed (divided into database tables in the case of relational databases ).
A hierarchical database model is a data model in which the data is organized into a tree-like structure. The data are stored as records which is a collection of one or more fields . Each field contains a single value, and the collection of fields in a record defines its type .