Final answer:
Databases offer advantages such as improved data integrity, enhanced security, reduced redundancy, better data management, and scalability compared to flat file systems.
Step-by-step explanation:
The advantages of a database over a flat file system include improved data integrity, enhanced security, reduction of data redundancy, better data management, and scalability. With a database, multiple users can access and manipulate data simultaneously without conflicts, which is a significant limitation in a flat file system. Data integrity is ensured through constraints and relationships that databases enforce, thus eliminating inconsistencies.
Users are granted specific access rights in databases, enhancing data security and preventing unauthorized access, which is harder to manage in flat files. Reduction of data redundancy is achieved since databases can store data in related tables rather than duplicating information across multiple files. Finally, databases offer sophisticated querying capabilities that flat files lack, allowing users to extract and analyze data more efficiently.