A database-management system (DBMS) is a computer-software application that interacts with end-users, other applications, and the database itself to capture and analyze data. A general-purpose DBMS allows the definition, creation, querying, update, and administration of databases.

A database is not generally portable across different DBMSs, but different DBMSs can interoperate by using standards such as SQL and ODBC or JDBC to allow a single application to work with more than one DBMS. Computer scientists may classify database-management systems according to the database models that they support; the most popular database systems since the 1980s have all supported the relational model - generally associated with the SQL language.[disputed – discuss] Sometimes a DBMS is loosely referred to as a "database".