Databases are widely used. Here are some representative applications:
- Banking: For customer information, accounts, and loans, and banking transactions.
- Airlines: For reservations and schedule information. Airlines were among the first to use databases in a geographically distributed manner terminals situated around the world accessed the central database system through phone lines and other data networks.
- Universities: For student information, course registrations, and grades.
- Credit card transactions: For purchases on credit cards and generation of monthly statements.
- Telecommunication: For keeping records of calls made, generating monthly bills, maintaining balances on prepaid calling cards, and storing information about the communication networks.
- Finance: For storing information about holdings, sales and purchases of financial instruments such as stocks and bonds.
- Sales: For customer, product, and purchase information.
- Manufacturing: For management of supply chain and for tracking product of items in factories, inventories of items in warehouses/stores and, orders for items.
- Human resources: For information about employees, salaries, payroll taxes and benefits, and generation of paychecks.
As the list illustrates, databases form an essential part of almost all enterprises today.