Intended audience of database applications: Judge the statement: "Database applications are seldom intended for use by a single user."
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ACorrect
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BIncorrect
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CTrue only for analytical systems
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DTrue only for web apps
Answer
Correct Answer: Correct
Explanation
Introduction / Context: The question probes whether typical database applications are designed for solitary use or multi-user scenarios. Understanding concurrency, isolation, and scalability starts with recognizing that most practical applications serve many users simultaneously.
Given Data / Assumptions:
- “Seldom” means “infrequently” or “not the norm.”
- Common examples include e-commerce, banking, HR, CRM, and analytics—each inherently multi-user.
- Single-user databases exist (e.g., personal data files), but they are the minority in enterprise contexts.
Concept / Approach: Multi-user requirements drive DBMS features such as transactional isolation, locking/MVCC, privileges, auditing, and connection pooling. If single-user were the dominant case, much of this machinery would be unnecessary or greatly simplified.
Step-by-Step Solution:
Survey common application types: most must support many users concurrently. Link to DBMS features: concurrency control, recovery, and security target multi-user workloads. Therefore, the statement aligns with real-world practice: single-user apps exist but are not typical.Verification / Alternative check: Usage metrics for popular DBMSs (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle) overwhelmingly reflect multi-session, multi-user deployments in production systems.
Why Other Options Are Wrong:
- Incorrect: would imply multi-user scenarios are rare, which contradicts industry reality.
- Conditional variants: multi-user applies broadly across OLTP and OLAP, web and desktop clients connected to shared servers.
Common Pitfalls: Generalizing from personal or classroom projects (often single-user) to professional systems; underestimating concurrency demands as systems scale.
Final Answer: Correct