Chapter 1: Introduction
Purpose of Database Systems
View of Data
Data Models
Data Definition Language
Data Manipulation Language
Transaction Management
Storage Management
Database Administrator
Database Users
Overall System Structure
Database Management System (DBMS)
Collection of interrelated data
Set of programs to access the data
DBMS contains information about a particular enterprise
DBMS provides an environment that is both convenient and efficient to use.
Database Applications:
Banking: all transactions
Airlines: reservations, schedules
Universities: registration, grades
Sales: customers, products, purchases
Manufacturing: production, inventory, orders, supply chain
Human resources: employee records, salaries, tax deductions
Databases touch all aspects of our lives
Purpose of Database System
In the early days, database applications were built on top of file
systems
Drawbacks of using file systems to store data:
Data redundancy and inconsistency
Multiple file formats, duplication of information in different files
Difficulty in accessing data
Need to write a new program to carry out each new task
Data isolation — multiple files and formats, writing new application
programs to retrieve the appropriate data is difficult.
Integrity problems
Integrity constraints (e.g. account balance > 0) become part of program code
Hard to add new constraints or change existing ones
Purpose of Database Systems (Cont.)
Drawbacks of using file systems (cont.)
Atomicity of updates
Failures may leave database in an inconsistent state with partial updates
carried out
E.g. transfer of funds from one account to another should either complete or
not happen at all
Concurrent access by multiple users
Concurrent access needed for performance
Uncontrolled concurrent accesses can lead to inconsistencies
E.g. two people reading a balance and updating it at the same time
Security problems
Database systems offer solutions to all the above problems
Levels of Abstraction
Physical level describes how a record (e.g., customer) is stored.
Logical level: describes data stored in database, and the relationships
among the data.
type customer = record
name : string;
street : string;
city : integer;
end;
View level: application programs hide details of data types. Views can also
hide information (e.g., salary) for security purposes.
View of Data
An architecture for a database system
Instances and Schemas
Like types and variables in programming languages
Schema – the logical structure of the database
e.g., the database consists of information about a set of customers and
accounts and the relationship between them)
Analogous to type information of a variable in a program
Physical schema: database design at the physical level
Logical schema: database design at the logical level
Instance – the actual content of the database at a particular point in
time
Analogous to the value of a variable
Physical Data Independence – the ability to modify the physical schema
without changing the logical schema
Applications depend on the logical schema
In general, the interfaces between the various levels and components should
be well defined so that changes in some parts do not seriously influence others.
Data Models
A collection of tools for describing
data
data relationships
data semantics
data constraints
Entity-Relationship model
Relational model
Other models:
object-oriented model
semi-structured data models
Older models: network model and hierarchical model
Entity-Relationship Model
Example of schema in the entity-relationship model
Entity Relationship Model (Cont.)
E-R model of real world
Entities (objects)
E.g. customers, accounts, bank branch
Relationships between entities
E.g. Account A-101 is held by customer Johnson
Relationship set depositor associates customers with accounts
Widely used for database design
Database design in E-R model usually converted to design in the relational
model (coming up next) which is used for storage and processing
Relational Model Attributes
Example of tabular data in the relational model
customer- customer- customer- account-
Customer
name street city number
-id
192-83-7465 Johnson Alma Palo Alto A-101
019-28-3746 Smith North Rye A-215
192-83-7465 Johnson Alma Palo Alto A-201
321-12-3123 Jones Main Harrison A-217
019-28-3746 Smith North Rye A-201
A Sample Relational Database
Data Definition Language (DDL)
Specification notation for defining the database schema
E.g.
create table account (
account-number char(10),
balance integer)
DDL compiler generates a set of tables stored in a data dictionary
Data dictionary contains metadata (i.e., data about data)
database schema
Data storage and definition language
language in which the storage structure and access methods used by the
database system are specified
Usually an extension of the data definition language
Data Manipulation Language (DML)
Language for accessing and manipulating the data organized by the
appropriate data model
DML also known as query language
Two classes of languages
Procedural – user specifies what data is required and how to get those data
Nonprocedural – user specifies what data is required without specifying how to
get those data
SQL is the most widely used query language
SQL
SQL: widely used non-procedural language
E.g. find the name of the customer with customer-id 192-83-7465
select customer.customer-name
from customer
where customer.customer-id = ‘192-83-7465’
E.g. find the balances of all accounts held by the customer with customer-
id 192-83-7465
select account.balance
from depositor, account
where depositor.customer-id = ‘192-83-7465’ and
depositor.account-number = account.account-number
Application programs generally access databases through one of
Language extensions to allow embedded SQL
Application program interface (e.g. ODBC/JDBC) which allow SQL queries
to be sent to a database
Database Users
Users are differentiated by the way they expect to interact with the system
Application programmers – interact with system through DML calls
Sophisticated users – form requests in a database query language. Sophisticated users
can be engineers, scientists, business analyst, who are familiar with the database. They can
develop their own database applications according to their requirement. They don’t write the
program code but they interact the database by writing SQL queries directly through the query
processor.
Specialized users – write specialized database applications that do not fit into the
traditional data processing framework
Naïve users – invoke one of the permanent application programs that have been written
previously. Parametric End Users are the unsophisticated who don’t have any DBMS
knowledge but they frequently use the database applications in their daily life to get the desired
results.
For examples, Railway’s ticket booking users are naive users. Clerks in any bank is a naive user
because they don’t have any DBMS knowledge but they still use the database and perform their given
task.
Database Administrator
Coordinates all the activities of the database system; the database administrator
has a good understanding of the enterprise’s information resources and needs.
Database administrator's duties include:
Schema definition
Storage structure and access method definition
Schema and physical organization modification
Granting user authority to access the database
Specifying integrity constraints
Acting as liaison with users
Monitoring performance and responding to changes in requirements
Transaction Management
A transaction is a collection of operations that performs a single logical
function in a database application
Transaction-management component ensures that the database remains
in a consistent (correct) state despite system failures (e.g., power failures
and operating system crashes) and transaction failures.
Concurrency-control manager controls the interaction among the
concurrent transactions, to ensure the consistency of the database.
Storage Management
Storage manager is a program module that provides the interface between the low-
level data stored in the database and the application programs and queries submitted
to the system.
The storage manager is responsible to the following tasks:
interaction with the file manager
efficient storing, retrieving and updating of data
Overall
System
Structure
Application Architectures
▪Two-tier architecture: the application
resides at the client machine and invokes
database system functionality at the server
machine through query language
statements.
▪ E.g. client programs using ODBC/JDBC to
communicate with a database
▪Three-tier architecture: client machine
acts as merely a front end and does not
contain any direct database calls. Front
end communicates with the application
server and application server in turn
communicates with the database system to
access data.
▪Business logic of the application is
embedded in the application server instead
of distributing across multiple clients.
▪Provides better security and performance
▪E.g. web-based applications, and
applications built using “middleware”
