You turn off your car alarm which includes similar systems to your house alarm. You start your car and turn on your stereo to your favorite preset station. The preset, of course, is managed by an embedded system. You get the idea. Embedded databases are an important subset of embedded systems.
Databases essentially are tools that allow the storage and retrieval of information.
This could be addresses in a mailing list, available IP addresses in a wired or wireless network, raw data from scientific experiments, or names and statistics for baseball records. Embedded databases are databases that are contained within other computer applications, so that the database is invisible to the end user. For example, your cell phone may allow you to store a list of telephone numbers that you use frequently and then allow you to speed dial any of those numbers. As the end user, however, you will never have to interact, and in fact may not be capable of interacting directly, with the database. You will not type in computer code or write a small scripting program in order to retrieve the information.