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choosing the right database

How To Choose A Database For Your Business?

It is not always easy to choose the right database, but getting it worthy may be important for the success of your business in the future.

In case you are unfamiliar with databases, it is always better to get things appropriate from the start, because it not easy or profitable to skip to another database later. At the same time if you already have a database that requires to be updated, it is better to be bold and upgrade to a fast, secure and resilient system.

If you take a look at any successful business today you will come across a business that works aptly and has an idea to organise and deal with the information. As a matter of fact, businesses are more and more relying on data-driven decision-making; the databases are steadily associated and there is an increasing complexity in the systems themselves.

So, here’s your quick guide to choosing the right database for your business:

Define your goals

Do you want to run your business by tracking sales and inventory? Are you planning to do marketing research? Are you looking to increasing your customer supremacy and engagement?

  • Knowing what type of information you plan to collect, how to organize and store it will help in determining the goals you think of achieving using the database software.
  • Considering what you want to do with your information will characterize your new database system – and tapering the perfect choice for the job.

Rather than a custom-built solution you can obtain everything you want from a ready to be used software. Still you might not have an idea of this until you have set your goals and observed the features you need from your new system.

Make sure that you compare your money with a reliable solution because COTS systems (commercial off-the-shelf) can be expensive and you will have to survive the existing costs.

Know your databases

Usually, Microsoft’s approach is a benchmark for some database systems or smaller companies and working groups as well as for smaller systems. By placing the database file (an MDB) on a shared drive all users can access it through Access forms and login reports.

Since many people will have access to your database server-based systems like SQL Server and Oracle. They are the most apt, coordinating huge amounts of data that can be updated and shared at the same time. To maintain the database these systems use a dedicated server. This makes the whole system faster and provides adequate protection against data corruption as it enables easy archiving of data.

Comparing database systems

The three main reasons why server-based database systems are better than accessing shared files:

Data integrity

Microsoft Access provides relatively little protection for data corruption. For instance, if one of the programs that has been typed into the Access database is turned off or disabled at an inappropriate time the Access files will be tampered with.

To differentiate, data based systems have included protection against this type of corruption.

Performance

Since each user is directly reading the entire data file on a Local Area Network, shared-file databases are much slower than server-based systems,

Using a server-based system, the user’s program sends a question to the server, which then calculates and gives the answer instead of stuffing large pieces of data over the network

Ease of maintenance

The maintenance of Microsoft Access databases may take a long time since they are not designed for large projects As more specifications are added to the system, the database will find it difficult to solve the query. This complication becomes difficult to follow and maintain. Additionally, if a developer has implemented his own programming solution, instead of a standardized solution, it makes it hard for newcomers to understand any peculiarity derived from the customized access code.

Whereas, server-based systems like SQL have typical solutions,that means new developers have to only know the design of the database to maintain the system.

Database security

Certainly, make sure your potential data base is protected from intervention, especially the theft of profound property or personal data. Make sure you use data encryption, and follow the adequate guidelines approved for database configuration and security settings in the industry.

Do not ever forget that we live in a complicated situation of malware, spyware, disappointed employees and combative international hackers! In spite of you doing as much as you can, you can’t be 100% sure that you are safe, yet there is a disaster recovery plan in place if you have ever manipulated your database.