In addition, the elaborate bureaucracy built up by the programme every household gets a debit card and the ministry of social protection runs a giant database with every transaction should make it easier to be more precise in targeting the needy.

ECONOMIST: Brazil's Bolsa Fam��lia

Database software mainly consists of two segments: online transaction processing and data warehousing.

FORBES: Oracle Can Milk Exadata Servers And Software For Spurt Above $40

The combination of the finger-scan and the search code are then looked up in a central database, to ensure that they tally, before the transaction is approved.

ECONOMIST: Security

Since smart cards retain transaction records, they could be accessed if even a well-protected database is destroyed.

CNN: ASIANOW - Asiaweek

That transaction itself happens to be fairly heavyweight, because it makes an extensive query of the database, and that might take one second, whereas normal transactions take one hundredth of a second.

FORBES: DDoS Defense: Preventing business disruption