What is a DBMS??

A DataBase Management System (DBMS) is a collection of tools that are used to create, maintain and manipulate a database. It is a set of applications  intended to help users and designers:
 

1. Create data. This includes the creation of tables or entity types (files) that will hold records (entity occurrences) each of which can contain any number of fields (attributes) of varying data types. It further allows us to develop relationships between tables (to be explained later).
    
2. Manipulate the data. Users can extract, summarize and/or analyze the contents of the database through the use of query languages available in the DBMS.
    
3. Develop reports through the use of report generators. Built into the DBMS are tools which allow the user to manipulate data in certain ways and to customize the way in the reports appear. These reports may generate periodic reports (i.e., reports that are run periodically (daily, weekly, monthly, etc), on demand reports (i.e., as needed. For example, a user generally might not be concerned with contrasting monthly El Paso sales with Dallas sales, but on demand could do so if they wished), or exception reports (i.e., reports which only report exceptional activities).
    
4. Maintain data. Generally, these roles are reserved for database administrators and designers, but certainly, for user developed databases, this feature is also available in the DBMS. Maintenance of data implies:
   
     Updating. Changing a record's contents
     Adding. Adding new tables/records/fields
     Deleting. Removing tables/records/fields

At least for now, we might view a DBMS as a filter between the User/Designer/DBA and the Database:

We will discuss DBMS in greater detail later.

??? What are the origins of DBMS ???

That is the next topic