Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 1
Introduction to Database
Systems and Cloud Computing
Objectives
Become familiar with major database components
Understand database functions
Be introduced to cloud computing
1.1 Introduction
Today's e-commerce has brought many new challenges for data storage and management. he
number of new data generated by e-commerce has grown exponentially. Recently, over 65,000
petabytes of new data have been processed by various businesses each year. One petabyte is equal
to one thousand terabytes. Web-based businesses can generate mega-scale datasets in a very short
time, such as those on sale events around holidays. he data storage is required to quickly respond
to these events. For the applications scaled out all over the world, the traditional databases inevita-
bly face the diiculty of scalability. With the growth of datasets, the cost to store and manage the
data increases accordingly. Facing the challenges in data storage and management, cloud comput-
ing has emerged as an eicient solution. By taking advantage of the cloud computing technology,
companies are able to overcome diiculties in scalability and cost. Built on highly scalable infra-
structure, the cloud can take care of the sudden increase of the data volume.
As cloud computing provides an ideal environment for processing data generated by today's
online businesses, introducing the development of databases in a cloud environment is therefore
the goal of this chapter, which discusses the components of a database, the tasks that can be accom-
plished by a database, and database management systems (DBMSs). It also provides an overview
of cloud computing and cloud services such as Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a
Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and the personal cloud.
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