Databases are popular for many applications, especially for use with web applications or customer-oriented programs. Databases are good when discrete structures are to be operated on, such as a customer list that has phone numbers, addresses, past orders, and so on. A database can store a lump of data and allow the user or developer to pull the necessary information, without regard to how the data is stored. Additionally, databases can be used to retrieve data randomly, rather than sequentially. For pure sequential processing, a standard file is better.
A database (DB) is simply a collection of data, placed into an arbitrary structured format. The most common DB is a relational database; tables are used to store the data and relationships can be defined between different tables. Structured Query Language (SQL) is the language used to work with most DBs. (SQL...