Database Management Systems for ERP

There are different types of Database Management Systems (DBMS) that are used in commerce, trade, industry, government, services, aerospace and defense, transport, logistics, medical, etc., etc. Types like relational, hierarchical, object oriented and network DBMS systems.

For industry in general using ERP systems to process their daily data of all kinds, relational DBMS systems are the most widely used systems because of their abilities and nature. Relational DBMS system are developed to deal with large amounts of data. That is data of data types like text, numerical data, date and time expressing data, recalculated and computed data, Boolean data or Yes/No or On/Off expressions, Integer fields (no decimals), fields for storage of large amount of data in binary format, fields for storage of pictures and images, etc.  Depending on what DBMS system is used, there is nowadays a wide range of types of data fields for almost any thinkable situation for the storage of all kinds of ERP data.

It is important for the ERP using industrial organization that their DBMS system has a number of abilities where every industrial organization needs to work with to guarantee its existence in the long run:

• Easy access and data retrieval
• Integrity of data
• Security and secure data storage
• Easy and balanced backup functions
• Easy and standardized way of creating new tables, fields, key field, primary and secundairy relations between tables.
• Sharing the same tables, fields, etc. and through that sharing the same data throughout all various and different applications within the ERP system within the whole of the industrial organization independent from Site, Location, Time Zone, etc.

In that respect a DBMS system should work out for the industrial organization as the central communicator for all its participants.

For the industrial organization and the users of the ERP system, not only the IT supporting people but also the wide range of users and user groups it is relevant to understand that the functionality in the ERP system in IT terms is something different from the functionality in the underlying DBMS system. For example; a necessary change or modification in the logic of the ERP functionality should not automatically lead to a change in the logic and structure of the underlying DBMS system. The two, the ERP system and its logic and programs on the one side and the DBMS system with its structure of tables and fields etc. on the other side are two different and separate layers of logic which could be developed and modified independent from each other. Although the one cannot work without the other. But structure will always come first. That means when an ERP system is developed and/or modified the DBMS system and its structure in terms of tables, fields, etc should be there first for the ERP system to let its additional or modified functionality process and work in a proper manner. If you have designed a screen program to populate an order with header and order lines, in the DBMS the underlying structure in terms of the order table and order line table should be there to be able to store that order in the database.