1. Normally and strictly, a body of information held within a computer system using the facilities of a database management system. All accessing and updating of the information will be via the facilities provided by this software as will be the recording of information on the log file, database recovery, and multiaccess control.
2. Occasionally and colloquially, a collection of data on some subject however defined, accessed, and stored within a computer system. (This nontechnical use of the term can cause confusion to the nonspecialist as in: ‘We don’t use a database management system for our database, just straightforward VSAM files’.)