Database Management Systems (DBMSs)

 

A Database Management System (DBMS) is a software system with the following properties:

• Data definition and manipulation in a formal data model,
• safe storage of large amounts of data,
• application independent storage of data,
• controlled access to the data.

In the past, many spoken language (SL) corpora have been stored in the file management system provided by the operating system. Data is accessed via shell scripts, custom programs, and application packages, e.g. spread-sheets, statistics programs, etc.

However, there are many disadvantages to this approach:

• Data is organised in an ad-hoc way.
• Data structures reflect the underlying physical data structures and the file system organisation.
• No automatic protection against data corruption.
• No access control to the data.

Clearly, this approach should not be followed.

 
• Data model
• Safe storage of data
• Application-independent storage of data
• Summary
• References