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What's a Database?
Databases are a huge topic. And if you've never used them before- it may feel intimidating. But the core idea behind a database is very very simple. You want to store some value somewhere and later retrieve that value.
- Databases provide a structured way to store and organize large amounts of data. They allow you to define tables with specific columns and data types, ensuring data integrity and consistency.
- Databases support complex querying and data retrieval operations, making it easy to search, filter, and retrieve specific subsets of data based on various criteria.
- Databases offer built-in mechanisms for data backup, recovery, and transaction management, ensuring data reliability and preventing data loss.
Why Use a Database?
Now that you know what a database is, let's see why we would want to use a database in our applications, and what problems a database solves for us!
Storing Data Safely
- Databases store your data on special storage devices like hard drives or SSDs.
- These storage devices can be on your own computer or on a database company's servers. Even if your program or computer is turned off, the data stays safe in the database.
Calculating and Summarizing Data
- Databases are really good at doing calculations and summaries on big amounts of data.
- They can quickly give you useful information from a large dataset
For example: A database can quickly tell us the average value across all of our entries, or the largest / smallest value. These are called values.
Fast Data Access
- Databases are designed to handle a lot of data very quickly.
- They use special techniques called "indexing" to find and get the data you need super fast.
Essentially, a database will organize, or , the data you give it so it can be retrieved as quickly as possible.
Sharing Data Between Apps
- Databases are like a central storage place for your data.
- Many different applications (like websites or mobile apps) can connect to the same database. These applications can be written in different programming languages, but they can all use the same database.
- Databases make sure that everything works smoothly when multiple applications or people access the data at the same time.
For example: if multiple people are modifying some data at the same time- a database will handle each of those changes, or , in order. Making sure no errors occur.
Organizing Related Data
- Databases let you create connections between different tables of data. This helps you organize complex data and show how different pieces of information are related.
- By organizing data into related tables, databases help remove duplicate data and keep your data accurate and consistent.
In this course, we'll start from the very beginning and work our way through all of the advanced topics. We'll begin with a simple testing environment and eventually build and integrate databases and ORMs into real projects.
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