Join hosts Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham, along with Hope Fisher, Oracle’s Product Manager for Database Technologies, as they break down the basics of databases, explore different database management systems, and delve into database development. Whether you're a newcomer or just need a refresher, this quick, informative episode is sure to offer you some valuable insights. Oracle MyLearn: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/database-essentials/133032/Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-communityLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/X: https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, Radhika Banka, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we’ll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let’s get started! 00:26 Nikita: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast. I’m Nikita Abraham, Principal Technical Editor with Oracle University, and with me is Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs. Lois: Hi there! For the last seven weeks, we’ve been exploring the world of OCI Container Engine for Kubernetes with our senior instructor Mahendra Mehra. We covered key aspects of OKE to help you create, manage, and optimize Kubernetes clusters in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. So, be sure you check out those episodes if you’re interested in Kubernetes. 01:00 Nikita: Today, we’re doing something a little different. We’ve had a lot of episodes on different aspects of Oracle Database, but what if you’re just getting started in this world? We wanted you to have something that you could listen to as well. And so we have Hope Fisher with us today. Hope is a Product Manager for Database Technologies at Oracle, and we’re going to ask her to take us through the basics of database, the different database management systems, and database development. Lois: Hi Hope! Thanks for joining us for this episode. Before we dive straight into terminologies and concepts, I want to take a step back and really get down to the basics. We sometimes use the terms data and information interchangeably, but they’re not the same, right? 01:43 Hope: Data is raw material or a set of facts and observations. Information is the meaning derived from the facts. The difference between data and information can be explained by using an example, such as test scores. In one class, if every student receives a numbered score and the scores can be calculated to determine a class average, the class average can be calculated to determine the school average. So in this scenario, each student's test score is one piece of data. And information is the class’s average score or the school's average score. There is no value in data until you actually do something with it. 02:24 Nikita: Right, so then how do we make all this data useful? Do we create a database system? Hope: A database system provides a simple function—treat data as a collection of information, organize it, and make the data usable by providing easy access to it and giving you a place where that data can be stored. Every organization needs to collect and maintain data to meet its requirements. Most organizations today use a database to automate their information systems. An information system can be defined as a formal system for storing and processing data. A database is an organized collection of data put together as a unit. The rationale of a database is to collect, store, and retrieve related data for use by database applications. A database application is a software program that interacts with the database to access and manipulate data. A database is usually managed by a Database Administrator, also known as a DBA. 03:25 Nikita: Hope, give us some examples of database systems. Hope: Popular examples of database systems include Oracle Database, MySQL, which is also owned by Oracle, Microsoft SQL server, Postgres, and others. There are relational database management systems. The acronym is DBMS. Some of the strengths of a DBMS include flexibility and scalability. Given the huge amounts of information that modern businesses need to handle, these are important factors to consider when surveying different types of databases. 03:59 Lois: This may seem a little bit silly, but why not just use spreadsheets, Hope? Why use databases? Hope: The easy answer is that spreadsheets are designed for specific problems, relatively small amounts of data and individual users. Databases are designed for lots of data, shared information use, and complex data analysis. Spreadsheets are typically used for specific problems or small amounts of data. Individual users generally use spreadsheets. In a database, cells contain ...
