Database Management System: An Evolutionary Approach

A database management system (DBMS) is a collection of programs that enable users to create and maintain a database; it also consists of a collection of interrelated data and a set of programs to access that data. A DBMS is hence a general-purpose software system that facilitates the processes of defining, constructing, and manipulating databases for various applications. The primary goal of a DBMS is to provide an environment that is both convenient and efficient to use in retrieving and storing database information. It is an interface between the user of application programs, on the one hand, and the database, on the other. The objective of the book Database Management System: An Evolutionary Approach is to enable the learner to grasp the basic understanding of a DBMS, its need, and its terminologies, make a difference between the traditional file-based systems and a DBMS, code while learning to grasp theory in a practical way, and obtain plenty of examples and case studies for better understanding. This book is intended to give under and postgraduate students a fundamental background in DBMS. The book follows an evolutionary learning approach that emphasizes more on the basic concepts and builds a strong foundation to learn more advanced topics like normalizations, normal forms, PL/SQL, transactions, concurrency control, etc. This book also gives detailed knowledge with a focus on entity-relationship (ER) diagrams and their reductions into tables, with a sufficient amount of SQL codes for a more practical understanding.