Original subtitles

‫What is a database hold on a second.

‫Maybe you are a smarty pants and you know what a database is, but trust me, in this section you may

‫learn a thing or two that will surprise you.

‫So no matter what level of experience, just hang in there, promise we'll get to some really fun stuff.

‫You see.

‫I remember when I first learned about databases and Eskil, I couldn't understand how it was all connected

‫with other fields.

‫I would learn about web development or python or machine learning and had no idea how this school or

‫databases really related to those fields.

‫So I want us to always understand the big picture and connect the dots so that the things you learn

‫in this course, you understand why it is useful and how we can use what we learn to do.

‫Some really interesting things in the world of tech.

‫So what is a database?

‫A database is a collection of data and also a method for us to access and manipulate that data.

‫So let's think about the statement.

‫Data is everywhere, right?

‫Data is now the most valuable commodity in the world.

‫Companies that control data, companies that have a lot of data like Uber, like Alibaba, like Amazon,

‫like Facebook, like Google, are some of the most valuable companies in the world because they have

‫this data.

‫And every day in our world, we produce data.

‫Right.

‫Whether it's drones with footages or location data, mobile phone apps, maybe website and web pages,

‫even security cameras.

‫We even have autonomous cars.

‫All those things collect data.

‫And the crazy part is that it's estimated we produce 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every year.

‫And by the way, quintillion means this many zeros.

‫It's a lot of zeros.

‫More data is collected in the past two years than the entire human history.

‫So where does all this data go?

‫Does it just get stored in a notebook?

‫Does somebody with pen and paper write it down?

‫No.

‫Right.

‫And how can you really have that statement that more data has been generated in the last two years than

‫all of human history combined?

‫I mean, sure, there's more humans on Earth, but there's always been the same number of atoms in the

‫universe.

‫You can just create something out of nothing.

‫When we say that data is being created more and more, the idea is that we're capturing this data.

‫We're saving this data somewhere to be used in some way.

‫Data is something that we as humans create.

‫But without capturing that data or using it, it's completely useless.

‫We use oil to power cars, but if we don't extract that oil, if we don't use that oil, it's completely

‫useless.

‫So we need a way to capture this data.

‫And that's what databases do.

‫They capture this data for us so that we can use it.

‫And here's another crazy number, 40 for the digital universe.

‫That is, the data that we store is estimated to be about 44 zettabytes of data.

‫How many zeros?

‫Once again, lots and lots of zeros.

‫So all this data is being captured.

‫In a database without a database, we wouldn't be able to store this massive amount of data and more

‫importantly, we can do some useful things with this data.

‫All those things we saw like autonomous cars, Instagram, Facebook, Google, without data, none of

‫it would work.

‫So without a database, the ability to query a database, that is to ask database information about

‫its data, it would be impossible for us to do a lot of things.

‫But here is a secret.

‫We mentioned that a database is a collection of data, in a way, for us to access and manipulate that

‫data.

‫But the secret is that databases aren't anything special, they're just hardware and software, there's

‫just computers.

‫So a database, even though we always see this scary looking cylinders are just computers.

‫We see images like this all the time representing databases, but they're just computers, it's hardware

‫with software.

‫So that is hardware is the mechanical part and the software is the actual code on top that allows us

‫to collect and use the data really useful.

‫So in this course, what you'll see is that we do the first step, which is one, we install software

‫to turn our computer into a database so that we can all practice.

‫And two, we add data to this database that we create with this software, and then we're going to start

‫using it and analyzing it, because at the end of the day, a database is exactly this just a disk drive,

‫a way for us to store ones and zeros on a computer?

‫And the beautiful thing is that as long as we can install something, we have a computer, something

‫with memory that we can store memory in, and we have a machine, a computer, we can create a database

‫that is we can create a database, even on a mobile phone, on our desktops or on our laptops.

‫And that's what we're going to do in the course.

‫But when you see somebody having a database, that's all it means.

‫They have a computer somewhere in the world with software installed for it to store and manipulate that

‫data.

‫Let's take a break and I'll see you in the next video.