Who Are The Database Users? What Do You Know About Application Programmers & Database Administrator?

The users are the people who manage the databases and perform different operations on the databases in the database system.

There are three kinds of people who play different roles in database system. These are:

(i)        Application Programmers (ii)       Database Administrators (iii)      End-Users (i)      Application Programmers

The people who write application programs in programming languages (such as Visual Basic, Java, or C++) to interact with databases are called Application Programmers. The end-users use the application program written by- application programmer. The software used in libraries, shopping stores, medical stores and search engine (on Internet) are examples of application database programs. The application programmer designs a user-friendly interface of the program so that the end-users can use the application program very easily.
(ii)     Database Administrator
A person who is responsible for managing the overall database management system is called database administrator or simply DBA. A database administrator performs the following major responsibilities.
*   Installing and managing the DBMS.
*   Authorizing access to the database.
*   Coordinating and monitoring DBMS.
*   Acquiring software and hardware resources as needed.
*   Security and integrity control.
*   Maintenance of the operational system.
*   Creating backup of data regularly so that if a database is lost or corrupted due to hardware failure (or any reason), a copy of data is available to restore the database to its previous state.

There are several categories of database users.
(1) Casual Database Users:  these users do not access database on regular basis but they access the database occasionally. There is the possibility that they need different information each time or you can say they access different data each time. Casual users do not learn much because every time they learn few facilities.

(2) Naïve or Parametric Database Users:  These users constantly query and update the database using canned transactions. These users perform different types of task. For example, clerk of a bank check account balances, clerk of an airline reservation company make reservations on requests. These users do not need to learn much about the facilities provided by DBMS. They just have to understand user interfaces.

(3) Sophisticated Database Users: Scientists, engineers, and others who are familiar with the services of DBMS to implement their applications are included in this category.
(4) Standalone Database users: Job of these users is to maintain database by using ready-made programs and tools.

Application programmers and DBA: Programmers who develop applications are known as application programmers. Database administrator is a person who has complete control over database. His job is to install database server and other necessary programs for database. He also manages user accounts. He provides different facilities to users and can also restrict a user from certain operations. For example there are two types of users who access database. There is a group of users who only access read only file and on the other end there is a group of those users who access the database not only for reading but for writing as well. So it is up to the DBA to restrict a user from performing modifications.