Database administrator

Blockchain will definitely have an impact on database technologies as it replaces the trusted third party that normally mediates any data transactions. Instead of a centralized database that records transactions, and authenticates and authorizes each user, blockchain allows transactions and identities to be validated by any of the nodes in the network, which can exist at different physical locations. Each transaction needs to be confirmed by multiple nodes before being committed to the database. Rather than having a centralized database, blockchains arguably represent a new sort of shared distributed database. Yes, there are database systems that use the dynamo model (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamo_(storage_system)) to distribute data redundantly between multiple database locations. Blockchain, however, represents a paradigm shift in how we manage permissions within the database.

In traditional databases, the database owner has absolute control over the data stored in the database, but in a blockchain system, the ownership of the data is maintained by its creator. This allows companies to switch to using a blockchain database because of certain out-of-the-box capabilities:

• It can be run on commodity hardware
• It enables fast data distribution
• It supports shared consensus and permission models
• It offers no single points of failure or data corruption

Beyond these capabilities, the blockchain has the potential to disrupt a wide range of business models, such as the management of global identities (passports, ID cards, and birth/death certificates), financial services (transfer of money), health and patient data, voting, and many more transactional data applications. It is likely that databases that maintain records of these types of transactions may soon become obsolete.