page_title: Database
section_title: Models
hierarchical_section_title: Database / Design and modeling / Models
caption_attribution_description: English: Collage of five database models File:Flat File Model.jpg File:Hierarchical Model.jpg File:Relational Model 2.jpg File:Object-Oriented Model.jpg File:Network Model.jpg
context_page_description: A database is an organized collection of data, generally stored and accessed electronically from a computer system. Where databases are more complex they are often developed using formal design and modeling techniques.
  The database management system is the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and analyze the data. The DBMS software additionally encompasses the core facilities provided to administer the database. The sum total of the database, the DBMS and the associated applications can be referred to as a "database system". Often the term "database" is also used to loosely refer to any of the DBMS, the database system or an application associated with the database.
  Computer scientists may classify database-management systems according to the database models that they support. Relational databases became dominant in the 1980s. These model data as rows and columns in a series of tables, and the vast majority use SQL for writing and querying data. In the 2000s, non-relational databases became popular, referred to as NoSQL because they use different query languages.
context_section_description: A database model is a type of data model that determines the logical structure of a database and fundamentally determines in which manner data can be stored, organized, and manipulated. The most popular example of a database model is the relational model (or the SQL approximation of relational), which uses a table-based format.
  Common logical data models for databases include:
  Navigational databases
  Hierarchical database model
  Network model
  Graph database
  Relational model
  Entity–relationship model
  Enhanced entity–relationship model
  Object model
  Document model
  Entity–attribute–value model
  Star schema
  An object-relational database combines the two related structures.
  Physical data models include:
  Inverted index
  Flat file
  Other models include:
  Associative model
  Multidimensional model
  Array model
  Multivalue model
  Specialized models are optimized for particular types of data:
  XML database
  Semantic model
  Content store
  Event store
  Time series model
caption: Collage of five types of database models
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