Database

Depending on the intended use, there are a number of database architectures in use. Many databases use a combination of strategies. On-line Transaction Processing systems (OLTP) often use a row-oriented data store architecture, while data-warehouse and other retrieval-focused applications like Google's Big Table, or bibliographic database (library catalogue) systems may use a Column-oriented DBMS architecture.

Document-Oriented, XML, Knowledge bases, as well as frame databases and rdf-stores (Triple-Stores), may also use a combination of these architectures in their implementation.

Finally it should be noted that not all database have or need a database ' schema ' (so called schema-less databases).

Over many years the database industry has been dominated by General Purpose database systems, which offer a wide range of functions that are applicable to many, if not most circumstances in modern data processing. These have been enhanced with extensible data types, pioneered in the PostgreSQL project, to allow a very wide range of applications to be developed. A computer database relies upon software to organize the storage of data. This software is known as a database management system (DBMS). Database management systems are categorized according to the database model that they support. The model tends determine the query languages that are available to access the database. A great deal of the internal engineering of a DBMS, however, is independent of the data model, and is concerned with managing factors such as performance, concurrency, integrity, and recovery from hardware failures. In these areas there are large differences between products.

Relational database management systems implements the features of the relational model outlined above. In this context, Date's " Information Principle " states: "the entire information content of the database is represented in one and only one way. Namely as explicit values in column positions (attributes) and rows in relations (tuples). Therefore, there are no explicit pointers between related tables."