• You can reduce the amount of space used to store information with a database.Data image by Oleksiy Ilyashenko from Fotolia.com
  
  Managing modern database software is easier and less expensive than ever before. Using a database with your application will make it more dynamic, responsive, and secure and will make it available to more people, in more places and on more devices than ever before. Using a database is the best way to give your application a powerful platform for future growth.
  
  

Improved Response Time

• By using a database for your application, you make retrieval of the data much more efficient. This will be especially true as the amount of data you have in your application grows. Databases are scalable to extremely large sizes while still maintaining their responsiveness.
  
  

Improved Analysis and Reporting

• By storing your application's data in a database, you will have the ability to use many different analysis and reporting software tools. Most databases come with a set of tools that will give you a range of analysis capabilities based upon your skills and requirements. With database reporting tools, you will have the ability to create professional looking printed reports from your data.
  
  

Multiple Users Can Work with Your Data Simultaneously

• Databases are designed to allow multiple users to work with the data at the same time. This allows you to put your application on your office network and have several people add, update, and delete records at the same time. You could even place your application on the Internet and have hundreds of users online with your application!
  
  

Reducing Errors

• Using a database will reduce errors in your application's data. The database and your application can work together to ensure that only the data that meets your criteria will be allowed. For example, a database application can easily check for duplicates before allowing a new entry to be added.
  
  

Integrate Your Application

• Once your application's information is in a database, the data becomes available to be accessed on almost any device and in almost any way you would like. You could limit it to just one computer or you could expand it to all computers in your office. You could even put it on the World Wide Web and make it available to millions of people. Once you are using a database, you can also take that data and export it to many other software packages, such as spreadsheets or presentations.
  
  

Improved Security

• With a database managing your application's information, you can secure the data at many different levels. For example, you could identify a particular person as the only one who can update a specific type of data. You could also lock a specific part of the database so that no one could update it. Many database packages allow you to encrypt your data as well.