Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Geographical information systems (GISs). GISs manage geographi-
cal/spatial data (e.g., maps) for environmental and military research,
city planning, and so on.
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Textual information. Textual information management was executed
by special software (information retrieval systems), but the integra-
tion of structured and textual data is now in demand.
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Scientific applications. Both in the microcosmos (e.g., Genome proj-
ect) and in the macrocosmos (e.g., NASAs earth-observing sys-
tems), new kinds of information must be managed. In addition, a
larger quantity of information (petabytes) must be stored.
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Medical systems. Health personnel need different types of informa-
tion about their patients. Such information could be distributed to
different medical centers. Security concerns are also high in this type
of IS.
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Digital publication. The publishing sector is going through big
changes due to the development of electronic topic, which combine
text with audio, video, and images.
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Education and training. In distance learning processes, multimedia
courses require data in real time and in an Internet or intranet
environment.
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Statistical systems. Statistical systems have to deal with considerable
data volumes with expensive cleaning and aggregation processes,
handling time, and spatial dimensions. These systems are also a
grave security concern.
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Electronic commerce. The Internet Society estimates that more than
200 million people will use the Internet in 2000. The applications
linked to the Internet (video on demand, electronic shopping, etc.)
are increasing every day. The tendency is to put all the information
into cyberspace, thus making it accessible to more and more people.
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Enterprise resource planning packages. These packages, such as SAP,
Baan, Peoplesoft, and Oracle, demand support for thousands of
concurrent
·
users
and
have
high
scalability
and
availability
requirements.
On-line analytical processing (OLAP) and data warehousing (DW).
DW is generally accepted as a good approach to providing the
framework for accessing the sources of data needed for decision
making in business. Even though vendors now offer many DW serv-
ers and OLAP tools, the very large multidimensional DBs required
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