Database Design Paper

“A database is a structured collection of records or data that is stored in a computer system. In order for a database to be truly functional, it must not only store large amounts of records well, but be accessed easily. In addition, new information and changes should also be fairly easy to input (http://www.tech-faq.com/databases)”. To ensure practical use over a long period of, databases ought to be built with high-level of data integrity and the capability to recover data in the event of hardware failure. Data that has been destroyed or corrupted is useless within a business’s data system structure.

The database architecture is the set of specifications, rules, and processes that dictate how data is stored in a database and how data is accessed by components of the system. Database architecture type S can be fragmented into three general categories, each of which has numerous subcategories: One Tier, Two Tier which is at the client/server level, and the N Tier which is at the client/server level as well. The Tier One architecture is better suited for a single user and a moderately small amount of data. It is run on a user’s local host machine and locates a file that is stored on that workstation’s hard disk, hence using a particular physical source to access and process data. For numerous users and applications of a small scale the Tier Two client/server architecture is a better fit compared to the Tier One architecture. Users interface with the graphical user interface or (GUI) to interact and transfer data to and from the database server through a network via the structured query language or (SQL). For the larger scaled programs, the N Tier client/server architecture needs to be implemented. “A typical n-tier application includes a presentation tier, a middle tier, and a data tier. The easiest way to separate the various tiers in an n-tier application is to create discrete projects for each tier that you want to include in your application.”