Database basics

Databases are everywhere. But why?

Few reasons to use databases:
1. Many users are using same data
Data can't be in a shared file, because changes made by one user can erase changes made by another. Also many computer programs don't allow same file to be edited by more than one person.

2. Data is used in different tasks
Same information is used in many places, like price of a product is used in invoicing, inventory control and so on. When data is stored in one place in database, possibility to make errors when entering data is minimized.

3. Access to data must be controlled
Some users have more rights to access data in companies. Laborer in a factory does not need to have access to financial data and vice versa CEO is not normally interested in work tasks needed in daily basis to run machinery.

4. Data amount
In companies data amount is increasing. It has been estimated that this year there will be 4 exabytes (= 4 and 19 zeros) of unique data generated. But data in database should be also used, otherwise it's shouldn't be saved to database in first place.

These are just few examples.

Why does your company collect data?

Data In Use

Lot of data is generated every day, hour, minute, second, millisecond...
Data is generated using: enterprise resource planning system (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM).

To use data, you need to filter, modify and present data in uderstandable form. Then it transforms to information.
There are many names for this process: super crunching, number crunching, datamining, reporting, filtering, querying, business intelligence, analytics, modeling.

It also involves many systems: database, datawarehouse, dw, reporting server, datamart, olap, cube, dimension, sql, table, field, record, replication, Crystal Reports, Qlikview, SAP, SQL Server.

This blog will help you to put Data In Use.