A computer or special hardware that stores and retrieves data from a dataBase. It is specially designed for dataBase access and is coupled to the main (front-end) computer(s) by a high-speed channel. This contrasts with a dataBase server, which is a computer in a {local area network} that holds a dataBase. The dataBase machine is tightly coupled to the main CPU, whereas the dataBase server is loosely coupled via the network. [Example?] (2004-03-11)