DBMS Viva questions

1. What is data?
Data is a collection of facts which can be recorded and stored

2. What is database?
Collection of related data

3. What is database management system (DBMS)?

It is a software package used to build and maintain database eg: SQL, MySQL, Oracle.

4. What is SQL?
Structured Query Language is a software package with DDL, DML, TCL, VDL and
SDL. It used to build and maintain database

5. What is DDL ?
Data Definition language used to create database eg: CREATE, ALTER and DROP

6. What is DML?
Data manipulation language used to maintain database eg: INSERT, DELETE and
UPDATE

7. What is TCL?
Transaction control language used to control database eg: COMMIT, SAVEPOINT and
ROLLBACK

8. What is VDL (View Definition Language)?

It specifies user views and their mappings to the conceptual schema.

9. What is SDL (Storage Definition Language)?

This language is to specify the physical schema. Eg: how the data is stored
(random or sequence or in linked structure)

10. Advantages of DBMS?

Redundancy is
controlled.
Unauthorized access is
restricted. Providing
multiple user interfaces.
Enforcing integrity
constraints.
Providing backup and recovery.

11. Disadvantage in File Processing System?

Data redundancy & inconsistency.
Difficult in accessing data.
 Data isolation.
Data integrity.
Concurrent access is not
possible. Security
Problems.
12. Describe the three levels of data abstraction?

There are three levels of abstraction:

o Physical level: The lowest level of abstraction describes how data are stored.
o Logical level: The next higher level of abstraction, describes
what data are stored in database and what relationship among
those data.
o View level: The highest level of abstraction describes only part of entire
database.
13. Define the "Integrity Constraint/rule"
There are two Integrity rules.
Entity Integrity: States that ―Primary key cannot have NULL value‖
Referential Integrity: States that ―Foreign Key can be either a NULL value or
should be Primary Key value of other relation.
14. What is domain constraint?
It is the acceptable values for an attribute. Eg: dom(name) = [A-Z], dom(sem) =
[1-6] etc.
15. What is Cardinality ratio in a relationship?
It is the ratio which defines how many instances of one entity set is associated
with how many instances of another entity set.
3 types
1:1 one instances of an entity set is associated with another entity set’s one
instance. Example: emp manages Dept (one dept has one manager)
M:1 Example: emp-> works for Dept ( one dept has Many employee)
M:N Example: emp works on Project ( one employee works on many
projects and many employee works on a same project)

16. What is extension and intension?

Intension (Schema) - structure of a table. Eg: student table have attributes

regno,name, sem, address etc.
Extension (Instance or State) - It is the number of tuples present in a table at any
instance. This is time dependent. Eg: Student table first record, second record etc

17. What is Data Independence?

Data independence means that ― The ability to modify the schema definition in
one level should not affect the schema definition in the next higher level.
Two types of Data Independence:
 Physical Data Independence: Modification in physical level should not affect the
logical level.
 Logical Data Independence: Modification in logical level should affect the
view level.
18. What is a view?
A view is a virtual table, it is not physically exist/stored.

19. What is Data Model?

A collection of conceptual tools for describing data, data relationships, data
semantics and constraints.

20. What is E-R model?

This data model is based on real world that consists of basic objects called entities
and of relationship among these objects. Entities are described in a database by a
set of attributes.

21. What is an Entity?

It is real world object.

22. What is an Entity type?

It is a collection (set) of entities that have same attributes.

23. What is an Entity set?

It is a collection of all entities of particular entity type in the database.

24. What is an Extension of entity type?

The collections of entities of a particular entity type are grouped together into an entity
set.

25. What is an attribute?

It is a particular property, which describes the entity.
Types:
 simple/atomic: the value can not be further sub divided eg: regno
 Composite: can be sub divided eg: name can be divided in to firstname, middlename and lastname
 Multivalued: an attributes with more than one value eg: phone (employee can have
more than one phone number),
 Single: an attributes with one value eg: salary
 Stored: attribute value which is used to derive something. Eg: Date_Of_Birth used to
derive Age
 Derived:Value derived from stored attribute. Eg : Age can be derived from
Date_Of_Birth
 Null: unknown or missing attribute value. Eg: Address can be null if it is unknown
26. What is a Relation Schema and a Relation?
A relation Schema denoted by R(A1, A2, …, An) is made up of the relation name
R and the list of attributes Ai that it contains. A relation is defined as a set of
tuples. Let r be the relation which contains set tuples (t1, t2, t3, ...,tn). Each tuple is
an ordered list of n-values t=(v1,v2, ..., vn).

27. What is degree of a Relation?

It is the number of attribute of its relation schema.

28. What is Relationship?

It is an association among two or more entities.

29. What is Relationship set?

The collection (or set) of similar relationships.

30. What is Relationship type?

Relationship type defines a set of associations or a relationship set among a given
set of entity types.

31. What is degree of Relationship type?

It is the number of entity type participating.

32. What is normalization?

It is a process of analyzing the given relation schemas based on their Functional
Dependencies (FDs) and primary key to achieve the properties
Minimizing redundancy
Minimizing insertion, deletion and update anomalies.
33. What is Functional Dependency?
A Functional dependency is denoted by XY .This means the value of X
component of a tuple uniquely determines the value of component Y.

34. What is 1 NF (Normal Form)?

The domain of attribute must include only atomic (simple, indivisible) values.
.
35. What is 2NF?
A relation schema R is in 2NF if it is in 1NF and every non-prime attribute A in R
is fully functionally dependent on primary key.

36. What is 3NF?

A relation schema R is in 3NF if it is in 2NF
every non prime attribute is non-transitively dependent on primary key.

37. What is PL/SQL ?

Procedural Language/SQL is a language which uses programming concepts like control
statements, loop statement, expressions embedded inside SQL

38. Difference between primary key and unique key?

Primary key can be referenced by some other attributes using foreign key. Unique cannot
b referenced. A table can have only one primary key but zero or many unique keys