Top databases for developers to learn
What is the best database software? What are the popular databases management system to learn in 2021? What are most widely used database management systems now a days? We will answer all these questions and discuss best databases for developers to learn but first, let answer, ‘what is a database’?
A database consists of a collection of information that is properly organized to manage, quickly access, and update web and organizational computing functions. In simple words, you need a database to organize and store the information (data). This data comes in various forms, such as texts, media, numbers, and more.
A database is required to translate the data into a specific form for efficient processing and movement. Usually, computer databases contain files or data records in aggregation about company interactions with customers and sales transactions.
In databases, data is organized and structured to suit the organization’s needs with the help of the database languages. You can allow specific users to access the database system on a regular basis. Multiple users can operate the system at the same time if given access.
Now that we know ‘what are databases,’ we will move to our topic; why developers should learn databases and the best databases for 2020. But, let’s first find out the purpose of a database.
What is a database used for?
For every business, information is crucial to know about its present performance, making and estimating future operations plans. These tasks become very time-consuming and manual if done without proper management.
A database has more benefits and less expense. Here are a few reasons why are databases important for businesses:
Better Human Resource (H.R.) Management
A company can save a lot of time and money if they manage the staff record using a database for H.R. It can automate routine jobs, streamline many H.R. tasks, and speed up the data processing such as staff hours, payroll, leave, etc. This way, they get more time to focus on their business growth.
Centralized Systems
It’s tricky keeping track of an increasing amount of data (related to staff, customers, demand and supply, and what not), especially when the business is growing. A good database system allows you to manage all the business-related data centrally, securely, safely, and instantly whenever you need it. This boosts up your success chances.
Customer Relationship and Customer Database Management
Big companies always care about customer relationship management (CRM) as clients are the lifeblood of any business. Thus, CRM should be at the heart of the business growth plans. Most CRM database systems help a company run marketing campaigns such as newsletter emails to improve marketing efforts.
Efficient Tracking of Inventory
A well-managed inventory feels like a balancing act. It saves your reputation from damaging and disappointing the customers. If you are manually tracking the inventory, then miscount, misplaced spreadsheets, data entry errors are frequent.
Inventory tracking databases are used alongside barcode scanning and electronic data exchange to avoid such risks and minimize the lost sales while increasing the growth opportunities.
Growth Planning
Many business databases have some kind of report capabilities from input data analysis, product activity to anticipate customer needs and future trends. If you are planning a growth strategy, the most valuable business resource will be the robust database system.
Examples of Databases for developers
Here are some database examples and how they enhance daily life;
Online Television Streaming
Famous online streaming services such as Netflix or Hulu generate movies, and T.V. shows for users to watch using databases. The database tracks the show preference of the user and then provides the recommended viewing list. Highly organized special database technologies are utilized to provide power to analyze the enormous amount of data. Apache Cassandra is the database heavily used by Hulu.
Personal Cloud Storage
If you save your documents and other files to your tablet or smartphone, this means you have saved them in the ‘cloud,’ which is a huge, central storage environment dedicating a small portion just for you. Syncing data across the devices need a powerful database that can call up the data at just a moment’s notice from anywhere you want.
Social Media and Gaming
On all social platforms, reams of user-related information are used to recommend a product, businesses, friends, and trending topics to the users. This cross-referencing of data is extremely complex and requires highly capable and reliable database software. For example, Facebook data centers use the MySQL database.
Gaming played over the social platform is highly data Intensive. High-quality database programming is needed to gather players from across the world and serve it to players on demand. One such example is the famous ‘Game of Thrones Ascent.’ It is a free role-playing online game. They use Percona Server-based database, which helps to remove data jamming during the high-usage time.
Healthcare
Healthcare organizations and doctor’s offices store huge amounts of data to access easily. This data is stored in a secured database. Behind this data collection is large, complex, and protected databases in compliance with the set standards. For example, Healthcare.gov uses a NoSQL database to access and manage their healthcare information.
Different Types of Databases
There are two major types of databases:
- Relational or sequence databases
- Non-relational or non-sequence databases
Organizations use both types of databases individually or combined depending on the functionality required and the data’s nature.
Relational Database
This database management system uses tables (also called entities/schema/templates) to dictate the data structure stored within that database. Many times, data within those tables have dependencies or have a relationship with one another.
‘keys’ are used to link information from multiple tables. The key is a unique identifier and is assigned to the row of data within that table. This unique identifier key is also called ‘primary key,’ which is then included in the record located in another table when this record and primary record has a relationship in the main table.
This primary key becomes a ‘foreign key’ when added to the record in another table. A ‘relationship’ is created between the records across various tables due to the connection between the primary and foreign keys.
Here are some examples of the relational or SQL (Sequential Query Language) databases:
This relational database management system runs on every available platform like Linux, Windows, and UNIX. It is one of the most popular databases and is easy-to-use and a popular database platform. There is a wide variety of tools such as Joomla, Magneto, OsCommerce, and more that take benefit of MySQL. This open source SQL database is a secure, inexpensive, and fast database and manages memory exceedingly well.
Oracle Database System:
It is the product of Oracle Corporation and serves as a multi-modal data management system. Oracle is an ACID-compliant database system as it helps to maintain the reliability and integrity of data. It operates on various hardware on different operating systems like Windows Server, Unix, and various GNU/Linux distributions.
PostgreSQL:
It is also known as Postgre and ranks among top databases as well. This sequential database stresses the standard compliance along with extensibility and function as an object-relational database system. PostgreSQL is an open-source object-relational powerful database system with more than 30 years of active development with a strong reputation for performance, robustness, and reliability.
SQL Server:
It is one of the common databases and a Microsoft product mainly used to store and retrieve data to and from the software application system. This SQL server design is a one-to-many mapping between the database systems, which means several databases can be deployed on a single SQL server.
Non-Relational Database
As compared to relational databases, the non-relational databases are forgiving in their form and structure. They have a collection of different categories; for example, users, orders, and documents exemplify these collections.
Thus, in one collection, there can be multiple documents. These documents can or cannot follow any particular schema or pattern. Different non-relational type databases are discussed below.
Key-Value Stores:
This type of NoSQL only saves and provides simple and quick knowledge regarding the key-value pairs. From simple to compound-complex, objects can be anything in the keys and values. This way, it is easy to access the stored data. Some of these examples include Redis and Amazon DynamoDB.
Wide Column Stores:
This is also known as a multidimensional key-value store. It stores and manages the humongous amounts of data in multiple columns or tables. Each of these columns acts as a record. This database helps in multiple petabytes data scaling. Notable examples of these databases include Cassandra Scylla and HBase. The wide column store is schema-free with document stores.
Document Stores:
It is a modern way to save data in the JSON format and express the data naturally. To have records, it is not necessary to have a uniform structure. They can have a wide array of values and types, and all that can be nested. The data is stored in the JSON document, which resembles wide-column and key-column. Some most famous non-relational databases, such as MongoDB and Couchbase, fall into this category.
Graph Database:
This type of database shows the connections between data points. This database is used when analysis of different data type and their mutual connection is required. These are represented in the form of a node or objects network that is related. It has superior performance and better problem-solving capabilities. It requires data to load into the software and use the APIs or query language to access the data.
These were some popular databases; now, let’s find out why learning databases is important for developers?
Importance of learning databases for developers
Except for certain specialized applications, most applications are created to move in and out of the database’s data. Therefore, the ability of data manipulation increases the software development capabilities of the developer. Here is how learning databases will be beneficial for developers.
A Vantage Point
A developer or database administrator design and create the database of the enterprise. They learn many facets of the business and their interrelation. Learning database allows exploring groundbreaking technologies that organizations adopt.
Though at first, it is frustrating to learn new technology, it keeps the job stimulating. In the end, these challenges make the database developer or administrator (DBA) a good problem solver.
Salaries
Why learn SQL? It is simple, great salaries. Database administrators are well paid. Database development often comes in the top ten jobs ranked by salary. Of course, salaries of DBA vary from country to country and region to region. In the U.S., DBA salaries are usually higher in the West Coast and Northeast as compared to other regions.
Job Security
Learning database means you keep your job even during the layoff season. More database skills mean you can perform more job functions and your worth to the organization becomes valuable. If you have the knowledge and skills to work with database administration and development teams, you are a valuable asset.
Here are some of the career prospects for developers after they learn databases:
Finances
Databases are everywhere all over the financial world, from local banks to stock markets. Tracking an extensive amount of information behind the daily transactions all over the world requires highly powerful databases. This also includes analyzing data to predict future activity using financial models. All this makes learning databases inevitable for developers.
Government Agencies
All over the world, Government Agencies collect data regularly for research, legislation, humanitarian purposes, and defense, just to name a few. This data is collected, stored, and then analyzed using far-reaching and powerful database management systems. All these functions are unimaginable without competent database developers.
E-Commerce
Online companies use databases to sell their services and products. They use a database for pricing information, user purchase history, and products. E-commerce store owners use Woo Commerce to recommend products to their customers.
Sports
In national sports, fan participation uses the power of the database and depend upon it. From March Madness Brackets to fantasy football leagues, they all depend on the big databases with player statistics. These stats include injury reports, game performances, and more to calculate the chances of winning every week.
Weather
It is incredibly complex to predict weather across the globe. There is a myriad of factors on which weather predictions depend. This information is collected, stored, and analyzed within the database. This makes the data to deliver today’s weather to local T.V. stations or mobile apps.
For example, per day, 20 terabytes of data are taken in by the Weather Company. They use many databases, including MySQL, Cassandra, Microsoft SQL Server, and more, to support the gathered data.
In simple words, its business or personal use, databases are the core of every computer, digital, and web-based function; therefore, learning databases for developers is inevitable for enjoying better career security and growth.
Should I learn SQL and databases for developers?
In today’s age of information, only those organizations succeed that best leverage their business data. Now that you know the most popular databases, you should start learning and practicing databases to boost your skills and increase job opportunities.
Summary
Finally, in this article we explored different types of databases and best databases for developers. if you want to learn more about latest technologies and skills, please subscribe to our newsletter and YouTube channel, follow us on twitter or follow us on Facebook.
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