Database Vs. Database Technology - 6492 Words

Once data are collected and integrated, they are stored in effective formats to facilitate their efficient and easy retrieval. For such purposes, the concept of the database has been utilised. A database is referred to as â€Å"the collection of related data, which are organised so that useful information may be extracted† (Wiederhold, 1980). Databases provide a single and comprehensive place for storing data. A collection of various paper-based files and electronic spreadsheets or files containing similar types of information are also categorised as databases. However, databases are considered effective not only because relevant data can be stored in a comprehensive and single format but also because they can be linked in an effective way to†¦show more content†¦However, within a multidimensional database, the data items are stored within tables called fact and dimension tables (Ponniah, 2001), where dimension tables provide detailed information about each entity and fact tables provide ‘facts’ that can be single or multiple and referred to as important data attributes within dimension tables. These data attributes have numerical or calculated values (Browning and Mundy, 2001). For example, in the DCM data warehouse one fact might concern the wellbeing of people with dementia, which can be explored from various dimensions related to the particular gender, area, care setting, age group and no of mappings (Khalid, 2010). According to their uses, databases are also classified as transactional databases and data warehouses. A transactional database is optimised for capturing and storing data that are transacted into the system on a regular basis (Choudhuri, 2014). A relational database supports these transactions; therefore, transactional databases usually have data organised in a relational format to optimise quick data entry and storage. On the other hand, data warehouses support historic and integrated data storage that is optimised for reporting and analysis purposes. In order to make the data retrieval easy and