Examples of DBMSs include MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, and Microsoft Access.

The DBMS acronym is sometimes extended to indicate the underlying database model, with RDBMS for the relational, OODBMS for the object-oriented, and ORDBMS for the object-relational model. Other extensions can indicate some other characteristics, such as DDBMS for a distributed database management system.

The functionality provided by a DBMS can vary enormously. The core functionality is the storage, retrieval, and update of data. Codd proposed the following functions and services a fully-fledged general-purpose DBMS should provide.

• Data storage, retrieval, and update.
• User-accessible catalog or data dictionary describing the metadata.
• Support for transactions and concurrency.
• Facilities for recovering the database should it become damaged.
• Support for authorization of access and update of data.
• Access support from remote locations.
• Enforcing constraints to ensure data in the database abides by certain rules.

It is also generally to be expected that DBMS will provide a set of utilities for such purposes as may be necessary to administer the database effectively, including import, export, monitoring, defragmentation, and analysis utilities. The core part of the DBMS interacts between the database and the application interface sometimes referred to as the database engine.

Often DBMSs will have configuration parameters that can be statically and dynamically tuned, for example, the maximum amount of main memory on a server the database can use. The trend is to minimize the amount of manual configuration, and for cases such as embedded databases, the need to target zero administration is paramount.

The large major enterprise DBMSs have tended to increase in size and functionality and have involved up to thousands of human years of development effort throughout their lifetime.

Early multi-user DBMS typically only allowed for the application to reside on the same computer with access via terminals or terminal emulation software. The client-server architecture was a development where the application resided on a client desktop and the database on a server allowing the processing to be distributed. This evolved into a multitier architecture incorporating application servers and web servers with the end user interface via a web browser with the database only directly connected to the adjacent tier.

A general-purpose DBMS will provide public application programming interfaces (API) and optionally a processor for database languages such as SQL to allow applications to be written to interact with and manipulate the database. A special purpose DBMS may use a private API and be specifically customized and linked to a single application. For example, an email system performs many of the functions of a general-purpose DBMS such as message insertion, message deletion, attachment handling, blocklist lookup, associating messages an email address and so forth however these functions are limited to what is required to handle email.