When anyone buys web hosting, the hosting provider will include an option called “Databases” in his package details. But many people don't know about databases and need of them while setting up a website. This will help to explain the use of databases.
A user usually gets database systems with web hosting accounts are all relational database systems or RDBMS. If anybody uses Windows hosting server then MS SQL database is used and in Unix based system MySQL database is used. For fast and easy retrieval both systems put website data into tabular layouts.
Databases are an aggregation of rows and columns in which each row or column is connected to each other in some cases. Information can be retrieved quickly and efficiently from this database due to this relation in comparison to those data stored in an unstructured format. Consider a database which is a collection of multiple spreadsheets related to each other in some way.
Security
A major advantage of having stored data in a database is its ability to assist database from unauthorized access. A simple example will be login credentials storage. In another way, login credentials will be stored in a simple text file and can be read by a script in which authentication is done. Although password will be stored in plain text by file makes it vulnerable to anyone accessing it. For encryption of entries, databases are used and use a hashing algorithm to hide them. Anybody has to specify login details to read or write database, which cannot be possible with a spreadsheet.
Efficiency
The way of storing data in a database, storage and retrieval are most important. The type of information stored in each row or column is restricted by SQL, unlike spreadsheet in which everything can be stored in any cell. Validation inbuilt in SQL properties is an advantage for developer and programmer. Many inbuilt mechanisms are present in RDBMS systems, which is a most important method of storage and data retrieval.
During a reading of text file, the problem is large to open and scan contents of a file according to need. If anybody wants to see all sales related to a particular customer, entire file have to be read and a name of customer would be saved in temporary place. If anyone saved spreadsheet instead of a text file, he would have inbuilt Sort feature. Therefore, anybody will be able to find all sales in reference to a particular customer and again if a file will be large to open a spreadsheet.
Administrative Control
Database systems have different control mechanisms allow easy administration of database and tables. Most important part is user management. To the database, each user has given particular rights and allows limited access to secure data from being modified or altered. Many settings of a database can be pinched by Database Administrator. This is to restrict data flow, connection speeds, a server has a maximum number of connections and adjust hardware resources allocated to perform a task.
