What characterizes a database?

A database is a collection of miscellaneous data that can be easily organized in a variety of ways and have easy and fast data recovery.

Only a simple CSV or XML allows this? I do not think so. A somewhat more sophisticated mechanism may already be considered a database. Probably a bad one, but it would be. A format like this could be used for basic storage, though inefficient and does not suit all scenarios, but it is not because it has a file as it is already a database.

So the database can not be a single data file, but a mechanism that gets organized and quick access in diverse data using a plain text file is already a database. Note that there is not even a requirement for writing to be fast or to be permanent, these can be characteristics of a particular database model.

A database does not need to use SQL, so it does not have to be relational. Being relational is just a model. SQL is just an option for relational data manipulation.

Informally when people talk about database they are almost always talking about something relational with SQL. More recently NoSQL (bad name) started to be used too, although its adoption is greater than the real need .

I will not even refer to Wikipedia because in both Portuguese and English the definition is bad, it hurts, the articles are frankensteins.

Database , as its name implies, is an organized structure, able to retain information, and allow this same information to be recovered, providing specific mechanisms capable of dynamizing the task, making efficient , and secure the storage / retrieval of the data / information contained therein - or simply organized collection of data capable of relating, so as to make them more consistent for certain tasks?

What makes a collection of data called a database is its organizational structure. The database groups the data into specific blocks so that they can have their own characteristics - have you ever imagined what it would be like to try to find someone with no name, face in the middle of a crowd with the same characteristics? em>

A simple text file ( .txt , or any other) may or may not be considered a database, but much depends on how you are sorting / grouping the information that is there, or the purpose for which it is intended the information contained therein.

Databases are usually characterized by having a solid, well-delineated and organized structure, easy access, retrieval and discrimination of the information contained therein, and above all because they are secure, otherwise we would all be using xml files to store passwords.

Some comments / ideas will obviously disagree, and I rightly say, but that's what it is, bank (even financial institutions) are so named because they meet some, if not a large part, of the features here mentioned. If they were not safe, and able to streamline some operations with money, it would be better if we were to use cans to save money, or to walk with millions in the wallet. For this reason when talking about database comes to mind these already well-known storage systems.