An overview of databases
Databases provide efficient means of storing large amounts of data in a structured manner. There are many types of databases, commonly broken into two categories: SQL or NoSQL. SQL stands for Structured Query Language and is designed to be a simple language that allows users to manipulate large datasets stored in a database. This includes common databases, such as MySQL, SQLite, and PostgreSQL. NoSQL databases are also useful and generally use JSON or XML to store data, both of which were discussed as common serialized data types in Chapter 4, Working with Serialized Data Structures.