Introduction
This chapter of our data journey is focused on RDBMS (Relational Database Management Systems) and SQL (Structured Query Language). In the previous chapter, we stored and read data from a file. In this chapter, we will read structured data, design access to the data, and create query interfaces for databases.
Data has been stored in RDBMS format for years. The reasons behind it are as follows:
RDBMS is one of the safest ways to store, manage, and retrieve data.
They are backed by a solid mathematical foundation (relational algebra and calculus) and they expose an efficient and intuitive declarative language – SQL – for easy interaction.
Almost every language has a rich set of libraries to interact with different RDBMS and the tricks and methods of using them are well tested and well understood.
Scaling an RDBMS is a pretty well-understood task and there are a bunch of well trained, experienced professionals to do this job (DBA or database administrator).
As we can see in the following...