Databases

In the previous section, we saw how we can use PHP to manipulate and store data in files. But when an application relies on structured data, it gets pretty complicated using the filesystem, especially when the application grows, and so does your data. Imagine a social media website, with tons of relationships between the data, including post comments, interests, friendships, groups, and a plethora of other linked data. Also, as your application grows, scalability is an important factor. This is when you want to use a database, to be able to query the data in different ways – ordered, filtered, partial data, combined data (joined), and, at the same time, in a very performant way. A database management system (DBMS) is used for performing operations on database data (create, read, update, and delete). Also, since different types of data are related to other data types in a database, you may want accuracy, consistency, and reliability for your data storage. In this case...