From the course: Relational Databases Essential Training

What the CRUD?

From the course: Relational Databases Essential Training

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What the CRUD?

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- [Narrator] If you need to create a written document it's likely that you'll turn to a word processor, like Microsoft Word. If you want to create a spreadsheet then you'll likely use a program like Microsoft Excel. And in order to create a relational database, you'll need a specialized application to do so. In order to create and store data in a relational database you need to use a relational database management system or RDBMS for short. There are a number of competing systems on the market today. Some of which I'm sure you've heard of. Microsoft SQL server and the cloud-hosted Azure SQL database are two popular relational database management systems. As are: Oracle, PostgreSQL and IBM's Db2. These systems power some of the world's largest corporations today and typically run on dedicated server hardware. Another RDBMS is MySQL. It's a popular database management system used on web servers. Every website that uses the WordPress publishing platform for example, uses a MySQL database to manage blog posts and comments. For smaller databases that you can run right on your local computer's desktop, you can find Microsoft Access on the PC and the FileMaker on macOS. The RDBMS that you choose to use will largely depend on what you need it to do and the scale at which you need to do it. Regardless of which one you use though, all relational database management systems need to perform two distinct tasks. First, they'll allow you to create and modify the structure for your data. This is where you define what tables will make up the database, what their names are, how many columns there'll be and what kinds of data will be stored in each column. This step also allows you to define what columns will store key values and create the relationships between keys that connect each table together. The second thing that a RDBMS must do is to allow you to work with and manipulate data records. These are the rows that populate your tables. When working with data the RDBMS needs to do four main things known by the wonderful acronym, CRUD. This stands for: create, read, update and delete. Create is the process of writing new records to the table. Read is the process of retrieving data back out of the table when it's requested. Update is process through which existing data is modified. And delete is the removal of records from a table. Beyond working with the structure of the data in the database, the RDBMS can also perform additional tasks. These include protecting the data by performing regularly scheduled backups. And copying data to redundant hard drives. They can also secure information by controlling and monitoring user access and permissions. Some RDMBS's include components to develop reports with graphs or charts that make it easy to understand and share the data that's being stored. Or to create forms that simplify the process of entering new data. Most RDBMS's use a combination of a graphical interface and a coding environment. The graphical user interface will allow you to visualize your tables and connections as you build them. In the code environment, you'll tell the system what you want to do using a language called SQL. SQL stands for structured query language. Each RDBMS vendor uses a slightly different version of the language. But they all allow you to create database objects such as tables and perform CRUD tasks on the data. SQL is also the language that you use to query or ask questions about the data. And have the system retrieve records that match your requests. Now I know that was a lot of acronyms, so lets run through them one more time. The RDBMS, the relational database management system is the application that creates and manages relational databases. When working with data, the RDBMS will perform CRUD tasks to create, read, update, and delete records. And you'll use SQL, structured query language to work with the system, to create objects and manipulate data as well as to retrieve information that's been previously stored.

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