A database is a collection of organized information that can be easily accessed, managed, and updated. There are several types of databases including document-oriented, graph, hypertext, embedded, operational, distributed, and flat-file databases. A document-oriented database stores, retrieves, and manages semi-structured data while a graph database uses graph structures of nodes, edges and properties to represent data. An embedded database contains user-generated data like documents and files, an operational database stores organizational operations data, and a distributed database may be located across multiple interconnected computers.