The Evolution of Database systems

• File Management System
• Hierarchical database System 
• Network Database System 
• Relational Database System

File Management System: The file management system also called as FMS in short is one in which all data is stored on a single large file. The main disadvantage in this system is searching a record or data takes a long time. This lead to the introduction of the concept,of indexing in this system. Then also the FMS system had lot of drawbacks to name a few like updating or modifications to the data cannot be handled easily, sorting the records took long time and so on. All these drawbacks led to the introduction of the Hierarchical Database System.

Hierarchical Database System: The previous system FMS drawback of accessing records and sorting records which took a long time was removed in this by the introduction of parent-child relationship between records in database. The origin of the data is called the root from which several branches have data at different levels and the last level is called the leaf. The main drawback in this was if there is any modification or addition made to the structure then the whole structure needed alteration which made the task a tedious one. In order to avoid this next system took its origin which is called as the Network Database System.

Network Database System: In this the main concept of many-many relationships got introduced. But this also followed the same technology of pointers to define relationships with a difference in this made in the introduction if grouping of data items as sets.

Relational Database System: In order to overcome all the drawbacks of the previous systems the Relational Database System got introduced in which data get organized as tables and each record forms a row with many fields or attributes in it. Relationships between tables are also formed in this system.