Introduction: What is a DB? In the modern digital landscape, the term DB (short for Database) is as fundamental as electricity or the internet protocol. Every time you log into a social media account, make an online purchase, or even scroll through your TV guide, you are interacting with a DB.
Edgar F. Codd, a British computer scientist working for IBM, proposed the relational model. Instead of trees or networks, data was stored in tables (relations) with rows and columns. This gave birth to the RDBMS (Relational Database Management System). Oracle, founded in 1979, became the first commercial RDBMS. Introduction: What is a DB
The first databases were navigational, using hierarchical structures (like a family tree) or network structures. IBM’s IMS (Information Management System) is a classic example. While revolutionary, these systems were rigid; if you wanted to view the data differently, you often had to rebuild the entire DB. Edgar F
The holy grail of database reliability. ACID ensures that transactions are processed reliably. For example, when you transfer $100 from Account A to B, the DB ensures that the money leaves A and arrives at B. It never allows the money to vanish into thin air. This gave birth to the RDBMS (Relational Database
A database is an organized collection of structured information, or data, typically stored electronically in a computer system. A database is usually controlled by a . Together, the data and the DBMS, along with the applications associated with them, are referred to as a database system.
Structured Query Language (SQL) became the standard for interacting with relational DBs. During the client-server era, databases like Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL became the backbone of everything from banking to logistics.
With the rise of Generative AI and LLMs like ChatGPT, Vector DBs (like Pinecone, Weaviate, and pgvector) are exploding. They store mathematical vector embeddings to power semantic search and long-term memory for AI agents.