Relational Database Management Systems and their Alternatives - Literature review Example

Relational Database Management Systems and their Alternatives Relational Database Management Systems and their Alternatives Affiliation Date Introduction This paper presents a literature study on relational database management systems and their alternatives. The basic objective of this paper is to discuss some of the basic aspects of a relational database management system. In the past few years, there have been massive developments in database industry and new and innovative technologies have been emerged in order to help companies manage their data in an appropriate way. In this scenario, relational database management systems provide an excellent support to companies for the management of their complex data in an effective and efficient manner (Jingmin & Wang, 2001). This paper starts with a brief overview of relational database management systems and moves towards some of the associated concepts. Literature Review A relational database allows its users to store all the data and information in tables. All the tables have the identical arrangement duplicated in each row (similar to a MS Excel spreadsheet) and the relations between the tables that make them a "relational" table. The collection of relations or tables is known as a relational database. Additionally, the rows of a table in a relational database are acknowledged as tuples and each column of a table is known as an attribute. In this scenario, a relation turns into a group of tuples with the identical attributes. In addition, different functions such as select, project and join can be performed on these relations. In this scenario, the Join function is used to unite relations, the project operation is performed to identify attributes and the select queries are performed for accessing data. However, like other database models, a relational database also supports several other functions such as insert, update and delete (Oloke & Edwards, 2008; Couchbase, 2013; Monash, 2008). In relational databases, normalization plays a very important role. Basically, the relational activities, facilitated by the relational databases work in an excellent way with normalized tables. Additionally, relational databases support dynamic views, which is an important concept of databases. Though, in a relational database, a view is not acknowledged as an element of the physical design, since it is dynamic. In addition, views can divide data, combine and shorten several unnecessary relations, which reduce the data storage requirements. Another important advantage of relational database is that it uses SQL that is a simple and human-readable language (Monash, 2008). Moreover, relational databases offer an excellent security because they support access permissions, which facilitate the database administrator to apply need-based permissions in order to get access to the data stored in database tables. Furthermore, relational databases offer high level performance, power, and facilities to latest hardware technologies as well as a capability to deal with all types of data and users requirements (Jingmin & Wang, 2001; Balasubramaniam, 2012). The emergence of new generation of relational database management systems has offered a number of advantages to clients. These advantages comprise unplanned query, self-governing data from logical application, and a variety of front-end GUI (graphical user interface) systems. In addition, it has also offered many business applications, as well as the business sector has expended to over $4B yearly, comprising tools. However, database developers and business sector always remain in search of better solutions for the database problems, which are not addressed by relational databases more effectively. In reality, the majority of systems and applications have never made use of RDBMSs, and a number of applications that have utilized RDMBS are now searching for other options, like that object oriented database management systems (Thuraisingham, 1987) (Objectivity, Inc., 2005). Without a doubt, relational database management systems have been offering excellent services and benefits to their users; however this achievement is incomplete as well as limited to only some kinds of applications. In view of the fact that the business clients adopt latest versions of systems, as well as develop to previous ones, their efforts to make use of RDBMS come across the "Relational Wall," where RDBMS technology is no longer capable to offer the functionality and services required by the users. Additionally, users face this barrier when they try to enlarge information models to sustain associations among data, novel data types, extensible data types, and straight support of data objects. In the same way, the barrier can take place when implementing database in distributed environments through complicated processes. On the other hand, attempts to resolve these issues with relational technology cause an explosion of tables, a lot of joins, deprived performance, unfortunate scalability as well as loss of integrity. Thus, ODBMSs present a path further than the wall (Baroudi Bloor International Inc., , 2004; Butuner, 2012; Stajano, 1998). In addition, the relational databases have offered a high-quality service in a number of customary database systems. Despite the fact that, in many scenarios for instance when it is complicated to deal with information, or when superior efficiency is needed (i.e. objects having anonymous identifiers, or objects going from one type to another, etc.), or when we need to manage non-conventional data (such as images, long texts, etc.), additional techniques need to be implemented. Normally, these techniques include object-oriented or semantic databases. Additionally, the semantic database models are object oriented database models. Moreover, they present, a variety of levels, a lot of characteristics of semantic models, in the form of conceptual information, as well as, purify a number of behavioral characteristics of the data (Baroudi Bloor International Inc., , 2004; Butuner, 2012; Stajano, 1998). Moreover, relational database management systems work very efficiently and effectively for various kinds of systems, mainly in the customary information technology field. On the other hand, the objective of object oriented databases is to deal with a narrow variety of systems; consequently the possible market share is small. Generally, object oriented databases are able to serve all the systems that a RDBMS could be utilized for; however it is not true in case of RDBMS, in any case not with something like the same efficiency or easiness (Baroudi Bloor International Inc., , 2004; Butuner, 2012; Stajano, 1998). There are many other alternatives of relational database management systems and one has already been discussed above. However, some other alternatives such as network and hierarchical database models are less effective than relational database management systems. In fact, in many cases relational database models are preferred over network and hierarchical database models (Oloke & Edwards, 2008). Basically, hierarchical database model is a database model in which data is represented in hierarchy according to their structural relationship, for instance a child must have one parent (Tsichritzis & Lochovsky, 1976; Wang, 2014). As compared to relational database management system, a hierarchical database model stores data in hierarchy by defining set of rules and standards. In fact, this data model follows a structure of tree in order to store data in the database. In this model, data is stored on the basis of relationships between entities, and also between the entity attributes. In this scenario, the relationship between entities is like a relationship between husband and wife and the relationship between attributes of an entity is like parent child relationship. The relationship between entities and relationship between attributes of an entity sometimes is either one to many relationship or many to many relationship. For instance, a parent can have many children so it is called one to many relationship and many children can have one parent so this relationship is called many to one relationship. This hierarchy model looks like tree so when this kind of structure is drawn it appears like a tree in which top node is called root. In addition, higher level node is called parent and lower level is called child (Stonebraker & Held, 2008; Tsichritzis & Lochovsky, 1976). There is another alternative of relational database management systems that is known as network database model, which is similar to a hierarchical model. But the difference is that child can have more than one parent’ nodes (Stonebraker & Held, 2008). In addition, a network model is more flexible way for representing object and their relationship than hierarchical model. In this model a child can have more than one parents. In other words, there can exist many to many relationship between parent and child. In this scenario, a child node is represented with an arrow. It is more flexible than hierarchical because it allows database developers to delete a parent node without deleting a child node. This model can be used to represent complex databases very effectively and can be easily understood. There are some languages that are used to retrieve data from the network database model. These languages are known as procedural network languages. These language consist of condition structure, loops, hence it makes the network model different from hierarchal and relational data model (Stonebraker & Held, 2008; Tsichritzis & Lochovsky, 1976). In conclusion, a relational database management system is an excellent way for storing and retrieving data. This model has been in used for a long time and the majority of business organizations undoubtedly make use of this approach for dealing with their important data. However, there are certain problems that cannot be effectively addressed by this model. In order to deal with these problems database developers and business organizations need other forms of database models. This paper has discussed some of the important aspects of relational database management systems. This paper has also discussed some alternatives of relational database. However, relational database management systems will remain significant data model in database technology. References Balasubramaniam, R. (2012). Data Security In Relational Database Management System. International Journal of Computer Science and Security (IJCSS), Volume 6 Issue 4, 203-210. Baroudi Bloor International Inc., . (2004). The Failure of Relational Database, The Rise of Object Technology and the Need for the Hybrid Database. Arlington , M A: Baroudi Bloor International Inc., . Butuner, H. (2012). ADVANTAGES OF OBJECT-ORIENTED OVER RELATIONAL DATABASES ON REAL-LIFE APPLICATIONS. Istanbul, Turkey: Industrial Management and Engineering. Couchbase. (2013). 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Computers & Security, Volume 6 Issue 1987, 479-492. Tsichritzis, D. C., & Lochovsky, F. H. (1976). Hierarchical Data-Base Management: A Survey. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), Volume 8 Issue 1, 105-123. Wang, L. T. (2014). CS4221: Database Schema Design: A Brief Introduction on Hierarchical and Network Data Models. National University of Singapore. Read More