A survey on the development of Chinese database industry
Since the first DBMS system—IMS was developed by IBM Company in 1969, more than thirty years have elapsed in researching and developing the database. China’s construction on database was commenced in 1980s. The databases established initially were mainly the types of abstract and index ones in science and technology. From the end of last century, accompanying the rapid development of network and wide utilization of digital technologies in libraries, the database has broke the model of single-computer retrieval and began to rely on the local area network and afterwards, the internet to offer online retrieval and information delivery service for even more users at home and abroad. Under this circumstance, secondary literature databases such as bibliographical, abstract, and index ones have far from meeting the needs of users. Thus the databases have transformed themselves to the digitalized full-text ones and their number have also increased sharply. According to the “2003 Investigation Report on the Number of China’s Internet Information Resources”, 2 upon to February 2004, the total of national online databases is reached to 169,867, 81.9 percent increase compare with 82,929 in 2002. Following is a table on number of databases in various types and their percentage:
Table 1: the number of online databases and their percentage 3
The result of investigation in the report shows that there are 108,986 websites that contains online databases, accounting for 18.3 percent of the whole website. The percentage of websites including database is illustrated as follows:
Table 2: percentage of websites including databases 4
Table 3: percentage of websites possessing online databases 5
Table 4: number of items contained in online databases 6
Analyzing from the object to which the online databases serves, catering to individuals constitutes the majority. Following is a chart illustrating the serving object of databases.
Table 5: serving object of databases 7
