Basic terms for Database Management System

In this article, we'll see some basic terms for Database, Management System, such as data, metadata, raw data, etc.

Data

This is the main component of DBMS. The DBMS moves around data, weather it is about organising the data or querying the data.

Data is raw, unorganised facts that needs to be processed. For example marks of student, 50, 70, 90, etc.

Information

When raw data is processed and present some useful meaning, then it is called information.

For example, a student have x marks is the data. Based on his marks student could be pass or fail and this is called information.

Metadata

The data about data is called metadata, such as table name, column name, etc are called metadata.

Table : Faculty

Metadata for above data would be:

• Table name - Faculty

• Columns name - Emp_Name, Address, ...

• Data types - Varchar, Int, etc

Data dictionary

Data dictionary is the information repository which contains information about metadata.

Data warehouse

A Data warehouse is the information of repository which stores data. It is the central repositories of integrated data from one or more disparate sources.

Field

A field is a character or a group of characters that have a specific meaning. Ex, the value of employee name, age, etc are the fields of faculty table.

Record/Touple

A record is a collection of logically related fields. E.g, the collection of fields (Emp_Name, Address, Mobile_No, Subject) forms a record for the Faculty.

Database

A database is a named collection of tables. (see table). A database can also contain views, indexes, sequences, data types, operators, and functions. Other relational database products use the term catalog.

Query

A query can either be a request for data results from your database or for action on the data, or for both. A query can give you an answer to a simple question, perform calculations, combine data from different tables, add, change, or delete data from a database.

Table

A table is a collection of related data held in a table format within a database. It consists of columns and rows.

Name	Roll	Branch
Rahul Kumar	17418	CSE
Rakesh Kumar	17310	EEE

Column

A column is a set of data values of a particular type, one value for each row of the database.

Name	Roll	Branch
Rahul Kumar	17418	CSE
Rakesh Kumar	17310	EEE

In the above table Name is a column, Roll is a column and Branch is also a column.

Conclusion

In this article, we saw the most widely used database terminology.