Let’s discuss some advantages of using the professional database system and also will discuss in detail what were the disadvantages of using some file processing systems such as MS Excel and others.
Data redundancy
When the same data is stored in various files that are referred to as data redundancy. Data redundancy can always occur in the file processing system. When we talk about data redundancy we are not referring to some side project that a student made with some sample tables but it refers to huge amounts of data daily. For example, let’s take an example of a shop where there’s a huge amount of data that is generated daily, the data may include the information of the customer and their purchases or the items that are present in the shop and there is a lot of data that has to be maintained. When this huge data is maintained in several files there is a great chance that employees may forget to update some files or whenever one employee leaves the company responsible for file management there’s a chance that everyone will not be able to find which information was stored in which place.
Data inconsistency
Data inconsistency is what results from data redundancy. The data redundancy is when the same information is stored in various files but the data inconsistency is when the same data that is present in a different while does not match. For example, the value of an apple is five in three ms excel files and the employee is asked to update the value of apple from five to ten then the employee updates the two files and when he reached to the third file there was a computer failure that resulted in not updated of the third file and after some time the employee completely forgot about that small change that has to be done in the third file. Now, this is called the data inconsistency where the data present on different files do not match due to some failure. And this can create great havoc for the functioning of the entire work.
Difficulty in accessing the data
The professional DBMS system software such as SQL is made for making the query from the database and also for defining the data. The same facilities are not offered by the MS Excel file processing system. Let’s say for example a small bank decides to start its firm and they decided to store the data in the format of MS Excel than when they will have to find whether which customer of the bank has money more than 10000 rupees in his accounts along with whether he is 24 yrs above then they will have two choices in hand either they will have to select by handpicking or they will have to create a new program in MS Excel. But in the database management system such as SQL which is a query language, you do not have to create a complete program for the same purpose but have to write small simple queries that anyone can understand.
Data isolation
Many languages have come up in the market such as before C language Fortran and Pascal were used and after C language Java and Python are trending languages in the industry. The professional DBMS system is independent of these specialized languages because they have their queries to function with and thus it has its environment for working. But the same is not true with the file processing system they are highly platformed dependent. For example, the MS excel can not be used in the Mac Os and the excel sheet cannot be used in supporting web-based applications because there is no way that we can communicate to MS Excel. Therefore, the file processing system suffers from data isolation.
Data Security
The level of the security that is offered by the professional database system cannot be compared to the file processing system. In the file processing system, there may be an option that it may offer for locking the data that no one will be able to use and edit the data even the creator that will offer the security but remove the chances for the future update of the file. But in the database systems, the security is maintained by granting various permission rights to the user that which user can edit read update delete for even control the rights of the other user’s many such facilities are given in the database management system that provides the safety of the data and not allowing it to be tempered by anyone and also the data updates are flexible.
Aayush Kumar Gupta is the founder and creator of ExploringBits, a website dedicated to providing useful content for people passionate about Engineering and Technology. Aayush has completed his Bachelor of Technology (Computer Science & Engineering) from 2018-2022. From July 2022, Aayush has been working as a full-time Devops Engineer.
