Chapter 1: Introduction

Database System Concepts, 6th Ed.

Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use
 Database Management System (DBMS)

DBMS contains information about a particular enterprise

Collection of interrelated data
Set of programs to access the data
An environment that is both convenient and efficient to use
Database Applications:
Banking: transactions
Airlines: reservations, schedules
Universities: registration, grades
Sales: customers, products, purchases
Online retailers: order tracking, customized recommendations
Manufacturing: production, inventory, orders, supply chain
Human resources: employee records, salaries, tax deductions
Databases can be very large.
Databases touch all aspects of our lives

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 University Database Example
Application program examples
Add new students, instructors, and courses
Register students for courses, and generate class rosters
Assign grades to students, compute grade point averages (GPA)
and generate transcripts
In the early days, database applications were built directly on top of
file systems

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 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
Integrity problems
Integrity constraints (e.g., account balance > 0) become
buried in program code rather than being stated explicitly
Hard to add new constraints or change existing ones

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 Drawbacks of using file systems to store data (Cont.)

Atomicity of updates
Failures may leave database in an inconsistent state with partial updates
carried out
Example: 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
Example: Two people reading a balance (say 100) and updating it by
withdrawing money (say 50 each) at the same time
Security problems
Hard to provide user access to some, but not all, data

Database systems offer solutions to all the above problems

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 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 instructor = record
ID : string;
name : string;
dept_name : string;
salary : integer;
end;
View level: application programs hide details of data types. Views can
also hide information (such as an employees salary) for security
purposes.

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 View of Data

An architecture for a database system

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 Instances and Schemas
Similar to types and variables in programming languages
Schema the logical structure of the database
Example: 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.

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 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
Declarative (nonprocedural) user specifies what data is
required without specifying how to get those data
SQL is the most widely used query language

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 Data Definition Language (DDL)
Specification notation for defining the database schema
Example: create table instructor (
ID char(5),
name varchar(20),
dept_name varchar(20),
salary numeric(8,2))
DDL compiler generates a set of table templates stored in a data dictionary
Data dictionary contains metadata (i.e., data about data)
Database schema
Integrity constraints
Primary key (ID uniquely identifies instructors)
Referential integrity (references constraint in SQL)
e.g. dept_name value in any instructor tuple must appear in
department relation
Authorization

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 SQL

SQL: widely used non-procedural language

Example: Find the name of the instructor with ID 22222
select name
from instructor
where instructor.ID = 22222
Example: Find the ID and building of instructors in the Physics dept.
select instructor.ID, department.building
from instructor, department
where instructor.dept name = physics

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
Chapters 3, 4 and 5

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 Database Design
The process of designing the general structure of the database:

Logical Design Deciding on the database schema. Database design

requires that we find a good collection of relation schemas.
Business decision What attributes should we record in the
database?
Computer Science decision What relation schemas should we
have and how should the attributes be distributed among the various
relation schemas?

Physical Design Deciding on the physical layout of the database

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 History of Database Systems
1950s and early 1960s:
Data processing using magnetic tapes for storage
Tapes provided only sequential access
Punched cards for input
Late 1960s and 1970s:
Hard disks allowed direct access to data
Network and hierarchical data models in widespread use
Ted Codd defines the relational data model
Would win the ACM Turing Award for this work
IBM Research begins System R prototype
UC Berkeley begins Ingres prototype
High-performance (for the era) transaction processing

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 History (cont.)
1980s:
Research relational prototypes evolve into commercial systems
SQL becomes industrial standard
Parallel and distributed database systems
Object-oriented database systems
1990s:

Large decision support and data-mining applications
Large multi-terabyte data warehouses
Emergence of Web commerce
Early 2000s:
XML and XQuery standards
Automated database administration
Later 2000s:
Giant data storage systems
Google BigTable, Yahoo PNuts, Amazon, ..

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 End of Chapter 1

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