7.6. The concept and structure of the data bank

A data bank is a form of organizing storage and access to information and is a system of specially organized data, software, technical, linguistic, organizational and methodological tools that are designed to ensure centralized accumulation and collective multi-purpose use of data.

The data bank must meet the following requirements:

• meet the information needs of external users, provide the ability to store and modify large amounts of various information;

• comply with a given level of reliability of stored information and its consistency;

• make access to data only to users who have the appropriate authority;

• provide the ability to search for information on any group of signs;

• meet the necessary performance requirements for processing requests;

• be able to reorganize and expand when changing software boundaries;

• provide users with the issuance of information in various forms;

• to guarantee the simplicity and convenience of external users seeking information;

• implement the ability to simultaneously service a large number of external users.

The data bank consists of two main components: a database and a database management system.

The core of the data bank is the database, which is a set of interrelated data stored together with minimal redundancy, which allows their use in an optimal way for one or several applications. In this case, the data is stored so that they are independent of the programs using them; to add new or convert existing data, as well as to search for data in the database uses a common controlled method.

The following requirements are placed on the organization of databases:

1) easy, fast and cheap implementation of database application development;

2) the possibility of multiple use of data;

3) the preservation of mental labor costs, expressed in the existence of the program and logical data structures that are not altered when making changes to the database;

4) simplicity;

5) ease of use;

6) flexibility of use;

7) high speed of processing unplanned requests for data;

8) ease of making changes;

9) small costs; low cost of storing and using data and minimizing the cost of making changes;

10) low data redundancy;

11) performance;

12) data reliability and compliance with the same update level; need to apply control over the accuracy of data; the system prevents the availability of different versions of the same data elements available to users at different stages of the update;

13) secrecy; unauthorized access to data is not possible; restricting access to the same data for different types of their use can be done in different ways;

14) protection against distortion and destruction; data must be protected from failures;

15) readiness; the user quickly receives data whenever he needs it.

In the process of creating and operating a data bank , users of different categories are involved, with the main category being end-users, that is, those for whose needs the data bank is being created.