DBMS vs RDBMS: Difference between DBMS and RDBMS

In this guide, you will learn the difference between DBMS (Database Management System) and RDBMS (Relational Database Management System).

What is a DBMS (Database Management System)?

Database management system is nothing but a software that maintains the data on a system. It allows the user to perform various operations on the data such as read, write, update etc. DBMS typically maintains the data on the system in a form of file.

What is a RDBMS (Relational Database Management System)?

RDBMS stores the data in form of tables, these tables are interconnected to each other which helps in identifying the relation between the data stored in different tables. It stores the data efficiently and the operations on the data stored in RDBMS are faster compared to the traditional file based data management system.

Difference between DBMS vs RDBMS

DBMS	RDBMS
Data is stored in a files.	Data is stored in a tables.
DBMS doesn’t support Normalization.	RDBMS supports normalization of tables, which reduces the data redundancy and avoid the database from multiple anomalies.
DBMS doesn’t have a proper security of the database.	RDBMS allows to set permissions on tables, which prevents unauthorised access. It also allows constraints to be set which make sure which data can be entered into the table.
In DBMS, data is stored in files so the data stored in different file is isolated and there is no relation between the data stored in different files.	In RDBMS, data is stored in tables and tables can have a relationship with other tables. This helps in identifying the relationship between data stored in different tables.
DBMS doesn’t support distributed database.	RDBMS supports distributed database.
Data redundancy is an issue in DBMS.	RDBMS removes data redundancy using normalization.
DBMS is suitable for small organization where data size is small and there is no need to scale the data in future.	RDBMS is suitable for large organisations where the size of the data is huge.
It support single user.	It supports multiple users.
Software and hardware requirements are low.	Software and hardware requirements are high since the size of the data is big.
DBMS examples are: XML, MS Access etc.	RDBMS examples are: IBM Db2, Oracle, MySQL etc.