When working with data, you need a way to store it, a way to access it, and maybe even share it. The platforms that allow this are called Database Management Systems (DBMS).
One way to store it is in the form of rows and columns eg. customer table where the rows have customer names, ids, etc. When data is stored in this way, it is called structured data.
Data might also not have rows and columns, eg, images and videos. This means the information is just clustered together, which is often called unstructured data.
You choose the DBMS to use based on the type of data you are storing, whether it is structured or unstructured, and how you need to query and scale it.
One of the DBMS for structured data is Postgres - this is the one I am currently learning.
You can install Postgres and host it yourself, but managing it requires a lot of work. So instead, it is easier to use a cloud hosting platform like Aiven, which hosts this database for you.
Now that you have your database and it is already hosted, you need a way to talk to it (search through it, edit, etc.). And the language you use here is called SQL: Structured Query Language.
You can use terminals to do the querying or write code for it, but one of the most visual ways to do this is with a GUI (Graphical User Interface) platform like DBeaver.
So now you have 3 key things, and you can comfortably build and run your database:
Postgres- your DBMS
Aiven - which hosts the DBMS in the cloud for you
DBeaver - your visual access to the data
In the next post, we will explore how to create your database, host it, and interact with it visually.
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