Data bank

In telecommunications, computing, and information architecture, a data bank or databank is a repository of information on one or more subjects – a database – that is organized in a way that facilitates local or remote information retrieval and is able to process many continual queries over a long period of time. A data bank may be either centralized or decentralized, though most usage of this term refers to centralized storage and retrieval of information, by way of analogy to a monetary bank. The data in a data bank can be anything from scientific information like global temperature readings, and governmental information like census statistics, to financial-system records like credit card transactions, or the inventory available from various suppliers.

Data bank may also refer to an organization primarily concerned with the construction and maintenance of such a database. The term databank is also obsolete (1960s through 1970s) computer jargon for database itself, and is frequently used in that sense in materials written in that period.

See also

• Star Wars Databank
• Protein Data Bank
• National Trauma Data Bank
• Memory bank
• International Tree-Ring Data Bank
• Hazardous Substances Data Bank
• Electron microscopy data bank
• Dortmund Data Bank
• Casio Databank
• Conformational dynamics data bank
• Databank Systems Limited a former New Zealand banking agency

Sources

•  This article incorporates public domain material from Federal Standard 1037C. General Services Administration. Archived from the original on 2022-01-22. (in support of MIL-STD-188).
• The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin, 2000.