7 Database Concepts You Should Know About

There’s a lot to know about databases, so let's start with the basics

Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash.

There’s a lot to know about databases. They’re complex mission-critical applications that sometimes require specialized subject matter experts to maintain them, but that doesn’t mean that they’re some kind of magic black box either. Databases are the backbone of our applications, and the more you learn about how they work, the better you will be at using them, writing applications against them, and troubleshooting problems when things inevitably go wrong.

So let's dive into seven things you should (probably) know about databases.

Note: Unless stated, I’m typically going to be talking about relational databases like PostgreSQL or MySQL and not NoSQL databases.

1. Databases Store Transactions — Not State (Kind Of)

Databases, or rather their internal architecture, aren’t very intuitive. You might think that a database is simply a data file or two and some code that manages connections and modifications to that data file. And you would be right to a certain extent. But really, at its core, a database is just a log file. This log file is a list of transactions that have been submitted to the database kept in the order in which…