A collection of information organized in a way that a software
program can rapidly find wanted pieces of data—an electronic filing system.
Databases are organized by fields (defined as one information piece), records
(defined as a complete set of fields), and files or tables (defined as a
collection of records).
A database is analogous to a telephone book. It is a large
electronic file containing a list of records each having three fields: name of
telephone owner, address of telephone owner, and telephone number of telephone
owner.
An alternative concept in database design is called
hypertext—a database in which any object (such as a picture or a file) can be
linked to any other object, thus serving as a useful means of organizing vast
amounts of unrelated information.
In recent years, information systems experts have discussed database management systems (DBMS), a
collection of programs allowing users to not only enter information located in
a database but to select particular information of interest. Thus,
increasingly, the term database has come to stand for DBMS.
See Also:
Database (DB).
Jupitermedia Corporation database. [Online, June 27, 2003.] Jupitermedia
Corporation Website. http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/D/database.html.
