Structures of a Database

1. Hierarchical Database

1.1. Allows one-to-one and one-to-many relationships.

1.2. Offer lightning quick searches.

1.3. Utilize a minimum amount of disk space for storage.

2. Networked Database

2.1. Uses a mesh-like structure to offer the additional capacity to define many-to-many relationships.

2.2. Rarely used today for business, consumer, and other mainstream database applications.

2.3. Remain in use only for specialized applications.

3. Relational Database

3.1. Stores data in a collection of related tables.

3.2. Each table is a sequence of records similar to a flat file.

3.3. All the records in a table are of the same record type.

4. Flat File

4.1. The simplest model for storing data.

4.2. Consists of a single, two-dimensional table of data elements.

4.3. Each row in the table is a record and each column of the table is a field.

5. Dimensional Database

5.1. Organizes relationships over three or more dimensions.

5.2. Sometimes referred to as a multidimensional database.

5.3. Each field is contained within a cell that can be accessed directly from a query or from following a relationship.