relational database management system (RDBMS)

A relational database management system (RDBMS) is a database management system( DBMS) of relational databases that places contents in relationships and relations to each other. It is an extremely flexible data storage system in which data is stored in simply structured tables and can be combined in various constellations. For this purpose, complex data objects are broken down into many simple data objects and stored in rows and columns of a table.

Access is established via relationships among each other. By the decomposition of the data objects into simply structured tables, schematic changes can be carried out well. Most commercial relational databases use the high-levelSQLlanguage developed for this purpose.

RDBMS systems can execute large transactions from large data sets in a short time, as in Online Transaction Processing( OLTP), or retrieve information according to specific selection criteria, as in Decision Support Systems( DSS). Well-known manufacturers for database management systems are Oracle, Ingres, Informix, Sybase, IBM with DB2 and Microsoft's SQL Server; other well-known SQL databases are MySQL, PostgreSQL and MaxDB. In the PC area, Access, Focpro and Pardox dominate.