Before learning the details of the processing environments, you need to understand the organizational context in which databases exist and learn tools and processes for managing databases. This chapter first discusses an organizational context for databases. You will learn about database support for management decision making, the goals of information resource management, and the responsibilities of data and database administrators. After explaining the organizational context, this chapter presents new tools and processes to manage databases. You will learn SQL statements for security and integrity, management of triggers and stored procedures, and data dictionary manipulation as well as processes for data planning and DBMS selection. This chapter concludes with an introduction to the different processing environments that will be presented in more detail in the other chapters of Part 7.