I am very curious as to how databases are used in the real world, whether you’re using MySQL and what not, how does it all come together in a real world business? Banking and gaming I know, but is it something that gets stored on data centres and then put into a VM?
I might be overcomplexing this but I understand the good use cases with VMs and containers etc just not with databases.
I’d google, but I’d like a ELI5 due to my smooth brain with these concepts, thank you.
ELI5 due to my smooth brain with these concepts
Database is a broad term, nearly any computer system that stores structured data like lists of names or transactions has a database of some kind. Dedicated database platforms like MySQL just make it more efficient / faster / easier to query and store data.
Yeah, even the file system is a hierarchical database, same with Windows registry, Internet domain registry too, not every database has to be SQL or relations based. There also are time based databases like influxdb for storing time based data, like metrics, logs
Computing without databases is like going into a grocery store and all of the items are in one great pile. Sure, given enough time (CPU) and resources (RAM) you could find what you’re looking for, but it’s horribly inefficient.
Instead, things which are similar are grouped together, like the baking aisle (tables) and if you have to get most of the items for a cake, you know it’s on a specific shelf.
This is nice explanation
I don’t think many businesses use MySQL when they can use PostgreSQL. Oracle is used very often. MSSQL in stupid cases.
You obviously need databases to, eh, store data, index it, process it, access it.
Also, as others say, it’s a wide concept. A file system is a database. In some sense BitTorrent DHT is a database.