Database Management System is quite useful compared to the file based management system. However, it does have some disadvantages. Some of those are as follows −
Creating and managing a database is quite costly. High cost software and hardware is required for the database. Also highly trained staff is required to handle the database and it also needs continuous maintenance. All of these ends up making a database quite a costly venture.
A Database Management System is quite complex as it involves creating, modifying and editing a database. Consequently, the people who handle a database or work with it need to be quite skilled or valuable data can be lost.
As discussed in the previous point, database and DBMS are quite complex. Hence, skilled personnel are required to handle the database so that it works in optimum condition. This is a costly venture as these professionals need to be very well paid.
All the relevant data for any company is stored in a database. So it is imperative that the database works in optimal condition and there are no failures. A database failure can be catastrophic and can lead to loss or corruption of very important data.
A database contains vast amount of data. So a large disk storage is required to store all this data. Sometimes extra storage may even be needed. All this increases hardware costs by a lot and makes a database quite expensive.
A database contains a large amount of data, especially for bigger organisations. This data may even increase as more data is updated into the database. All of these leads to a large size of the database.
The bigger the database is, it is more difficult to handle and maintain. It is also more complex to ensure data consistency and user authentication across big databases.
Often new functionalities are added to the database.This leads to database upgradations. All of these upgradations cost a lot of money. Moreover it is also quite expensive to train the database managers and users to handle these new upgradations.
If the database is changed or modified in some manner, all the data needs to be converted to the new form. This cost may even exceed the database creation and management costs sometimes. This is the reason most organisations prefer to work on their old databases rather than upgrade to new ones.