Before the Advent of Databases

Before the advent of database systems

The way computers manage data has come a long way over the last few decades. Today’s users take for granted the many benefits found in a database system. However, it wasn’t that long ago that computers relied on a much less elegant and costly approach to data management called the file-based system.

The File-based system

One way to keep information on a computer is to store it in permanent files. A company system has several application programs; each of them is designed to manipulate data files. These application programs have been written at the request of the users in the organization. The system just described is called the file-based system.

Consider the example of a university management system that uses the file-based system to manage the organization’s data shown in the figure below: