Actors on the scene in DBMS

In this topic we identify the people whose jobs involve the day-to-day use of a large database which are called as the actors on the scene. In large organisations, many people are involved in the design, use and maintenance of a large database with hundred of users.

1. Database Administrators:  In an organization where many people use the same resources, there is a need of chief administrator to oversee and manage these resources. In database environment, the primary resource is the database itself and the secondary resource is the DBMS and related software. The DBA is responsible for authorizing acess to the database, coordinating and monitoring its use and acquiring software and hardware resources as needed.
2. Database Designers:  These are responsible for identifying the data to be stored in the database and for choosing appropriate structures to represent and store this data. It is the responsibility of database designers to communicate with all prospective database users in order to understand their requirements and to create a design that meet these requirements.
3. End Users: These are the people whose jobs require access to the database for querying, updating, and generating reports, the database primarily exist for their use. Various categories of end users are:

•  Casual End users: Occasionaly access the database, but they may need different information each time.
• Sophisticated End Users: Include engineers, scientists, business analyst and others who thoroughly familarize themselves with the facilities of DBMS inorder to implement their applications to meet complex requirements.

   4. System analyst and Application Programmers: System Analyst determine the requirements of end users and specially maive and parametric end users and develop specifications for canned transactions that meet these requirements. Application Programmers, document a implement these specifications as programs: then they test, debugnd maintain these canned transactions.