database world

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database world

D A T A B A S E W O R L D

Mission: Introduce the current database technology to all IT participants.

Database technology is one of the cornerstones of today’s IT industry. Some technology will come and go like ‘Pet Rock’, but Database technology will always be one of the underpinning building block. The interesting fact is that Database technology is not as visible as other technology peers are. Database does not have as much fan faire as the Operating Systems, nor the Programming languages like Java, C++ or Visual Basic.  Database remains as the silent background hero for numerous IT revolutions, starting from the Centralized application, to the Client/Server application and now the Internet-based application.
     Database is at the heart of many successful IT application. Do you ever wonder where are your emails being stored at Yahoo or Hotmail? Do you know what keep tracks of your Stock Quotes?
Enough said about the importance of database. Let’s see where we can start acquainting this key piece of technology from a newbie’s perspective.
     Firstly, Database knowledge tends to differ among vendors. Each vendor has its own storage approach, access interface and terminology. Therefore, the knowledge or know-how of one Database vendor may not be as transitive to other vendor. It is relative important for a new comer to pick one specific database vendor as a learning target and concentrate on that subject matter.
     According to the Gartner’s group, due to sever competition, there will only be 3 major database vendors in the future. They are IBM (DB2 UDB), Oracle and Microsoft (SQL Server). Each database has its own merits and supporters and is most likely to split up the market evenly.
     For a novice user, I will recommend to start off with Microsoft SQL Server because it runs on the Windows Operating System which are likely to be available from any household desktop. Also, the User Interface from SQL Server is top notch making it very easy for a new user to navigate the database without much database understanding. User should try to use the Enterprise Manager interface to examine the different components of a database such as ‘Table’, ‘Views’, and ‘Privilege'.
     Taking the tutorial provided by SQL Server and walk through the sample databases is a definitely a pragmatic method to get your feet moving. One of the important elements to mastering Database Technology is to understand its native dialect. All database can be interacted with SQL (Structured Query Language). SQL is the universal database language that a user / administrator can manipulate a database. Having a good understanding of SQL will enable you to pick a new Database from a different vendor relatively easily.
     Equally important for a database application developer to master is the “universal programming language” for the Database.  ODBC is the prefer database programming interface. However,  with the strong focus on the internet, I will recommend JDBC as an alternative.
     To sum it up, Database Technology is the core technology to the IT industry. Having strong database knowledge will be benefit to one’s career. Just looks at the phenomenal success of Oracle will give you a good idea how lucrative the Database industry is.

To learn more about SQL Server (or any others), you can visit Informit.com and there are many good books for you to spend many hours on. In order to encourage more users to adopt a particular database, specific vendor usually provide a free-copy to new comers. For example, you can receive a free-copy of IBM UDB (Standalone version) from IBM’s web site at IBM Data. Oracle has similar offer for its Developer 2000 suite as well, details can be found at Oracle.com.

Database Information provided by Christopher Che, DB2 Developer

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