A database is a collection of related data organized into tables. Data is any raw fact or statistic that can be processed to derive meaningful information. Databases are important because every decision depends on underlying data. Problems with traditional file-based data storage include inconsistency, redundancy, integrity issues, and security problems. A database management system (DBMS) addresses these problems by providing a centralized and organized system to store and access data. A database consists mainly of tables, which contain records organized into attributes that can be uniquely identified by keys.