Overview of Databases

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 Outline
• Database
– What, Why, How
• Evolution of Database
– File System
– Data Models
• Hierarchical
• Network
• Relational
• Entity-Relationship
• Object-Oriented
– Web Database

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 Database: What
• Database
– is collection of related data and its metadata organized in a structured format
– for optimized information management

• Database Management System (DBMS)

– is a software that enables easy creation, access, and modification of databases
– for efficient and effective database management

• Database System
– is an integrated system of hardware, software, people, procedures, and data
– that define and regulate the collection, storage, management, and use of data within a
database environment

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Database Management System
- manages interaction between end users and database

Database Systems: Design, Implementation, & Management: Rob & Coronel

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Database System Environment

§ Hardware
§ Software
- OS
- DBMS
- Applications
§ People
§ Procedures
§ Data

Database Systems: Design, Implementation, & Management: Rob & Coronel

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 Database: Why
• Purpose of Database
– Optimizes data management
– Transforms data into information
• Importance of Database Design
– Defines the database’s expected use
• different approach needed for different types of databases
– Avoid data redundancy & ensure data integrity
• data is accurate and verifiable
– Poorly designed database generates errors
• leads to bad decisions
• can lead to failure of organization

• Functions of DBMS/Database System

– Stores data and related data entry forms, report definitions, etc.
– Hides the complexities of relational database model from the user
• facilitates the construction/definition of data elements and their relationships
• enables data transformation and presentation
– Enforces data integrity
– Implements data security management
• access, privacy, backup & restoration

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 Database: How
• Planning & Analysis
– Assess
• Goal of the organization
• Database environment
– existing hardware, software, raw data, data processing procedures
– Identify
• Database needs
– what database can do to further the goal of the organization
• User needs and characteristics
– who the users are, what they want to do, how they envision doing it
• Database system requirements
– what the database system should do to satisfy the database and user needs
• Design
– From conceptual design to a detailed system specification

• Implementation
– Create the database

• Maintenance
– Troubleshoot, update, streamline the database
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 Business Rules
• What
– Brief, precise, and unambiguous descriptions of operations in an organization
• based on policies, procedures, or principles within a specific organization
• help to create and enforce actions within that organization’s environment
• apply to any organization that stores and uses data to generate information

• Why
– Enhance understanding & facilitate communication
• Standardize company’s view of data
• Constitute a communications tool between users and designers
• Allow designer to understand business process as well as the nature, role, and scope of data
– Promote creation of an accurate data model

• How (sources)
– Interviews
• Company managers
• Policy makers
• Department managers
• End users
– Written documentation
• Procedures, Standards, Operations manuals
– Observation
• Business operations

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 Database: User-centered
• Perspective
– The user is always right. If there is a problem with the use of the system, the system is the problem, not the
user.

• Compliance
– The user has the right to a system that performs exactly as promised.

• Instruction
– The user has the right to easy-to-use instructions (user guides, online or contextual help, error messages)
for understanding and utilizing a system to achieve desired goals and recover efficiently and gracefully from
problem situations.

• Usability
– The user should be the master of software and hardware technology, not vice-versa. Products should be
natural and intuitive to use.

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 Database: Data Models
• Importance
– Abstraction of complex real-world data structures in relative simple (graphical) representations
– Facilitate interaction among the designer, the applications programmer, and the end user

• Basic Building Blocks

– Entity
• thing about which data are to be collected and stored
– Attribute
• a characteristic of an entity
– Relationship
• describes an association among entities
– Constraint
• restrictions placed on the data

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 Evolution of Data Models
• Timeline

1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000+

File-based

Hierarchical
Object-oriented
Network

Relational Web-based
Entity-Relationship

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 Database: Historical Roots
• Manual File System
– to keep track of data
– used tagged file folders in a filing cabinet
– organized according to expected use
• e.g. file per customer
– easy to create, but hard to
• locate data
• aggregate/summarize data

• Computerized File System

– to accommodate the data growth and information need
– manual file system structures were duplicated in the computer
– Data Processing (DP) specialists wrote customized programs to
• write, delete, update data (i.e. management)
• extract and present data in various formats (i.e. report)

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File System: Example

Database Systems: Design, Implementation, & Management: Rob & Coronel

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 File System: Weakness
• Weakness
– “Islands of data” in scattered file systems.

• Problems
– Duplication
• same data may be stored in multiple files
– Inconsistency
• same data may be stored by different names in different format
– Rigidity
• requires customized programming to implement any changes
• cannot do ad-hoc queries

• Implications
– Waste of space
– Data inaccuracies
– High overhead of data manipulation and maintenance

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 File System: Problem Case
CUSTOMER file AGENT file SALES file

A_Name (15 char) A_Name (20 char) AGENT (20 char)

Carol Johnson Carol T. Johnson Carol J. Smith

- inconsistent field name, field size

- inconsistent data values
- data duplication

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Database System vs. File System

Database Systems: Design, Implementation, & Management: Rob & Coronel

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 Hierarchical Database
• Background
– Developed to manage large amount of data for complex manufacturing projects
– e.g., Information Management System (IMS)
• IBM-Rockwell joint venture
• clustered related data together
• hierarchically associated data clusters using pointers

• Hierarchical Database Model

– Assumes data relationships are hierarchical
• One-to-Many (1:M) relationships
– Each parent can have many children
– Each child has only one parent
– Logically represented by an upside down tree

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Hierarchical Database: Example

Database Systems: Design, Implementation, & Management: Rob & Coronel

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 Hierarchical Database: Pros & Cons
• Advantages
– Conceptual simplicity
• groups of data could be related to each other
• related data could be viewed together
– Centralization of data
• reduced redundancy and promoted consistency

• Disadvantages
– Limited representation of data relationships
• did not allow Many-to-Many (M:N) relations
– Complex implementation
• required in-depth knowledge of physical data storage
– Structural Dependence
• data access requires physical storage path
– Lack of Standards
• limited portability
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 Network Database
• Objectives
– Represent more complex data relationships
– Improve database performance
– Impose a database standard

• Network Database Model

– Similar to Hierarchical Model
• Records linked by pointers
– Composed of sets
• Each set consists of owner (parent) and member (child)
– Many-to-Many (M:N) relationships representation
• Each owner can have multiple members (1:M)
• A member may have several owners

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Network Database: Example

Database Systems: Design, Implementation, & Management: Rob & Coronel

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 Network Database: Pros & Cons
• Advantages
– More data relationship types
– More efficient and flexible data access
• “network” vs. “tree” path traversal
– Conformance to standards
• enhanced database administration and portability

• Disadvantages
– System complexity
• require familiarity with the internal structure for data access
– Lack of structural independence
• small structural changes require significant program changes

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 Relational Database
• Problems with legacy database systems
– Required excessive effort to maintain
• Data manipulation (programs) too dependent on physical file structure
– Hard to manipulate by end-users
• No capacity for ad-hoc query (must rely on DB programmers).

• Evolution in Data Organization

– E. F. Codd’s Relational Model proposal

• Separated the notion of physical representation (machine-view)
from logical representation (human-view)
• Considered ingenious but computationally impractical in 1970

– Relational Database Model

• Dominant database model of today
• Eliminated pointers and used tables to represent data
• Tables
– flexible logical structure for data representation
– a series of row/column intersections
– related by sharing common entity characteristic(s)
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 Relational Database: Example
n Provides a logical “human-level” view of the data and associations
among groups of data (i.e., tables)

Customer_ID Customer_Account Agent_ID

1224 4556 23
1225 4558 25

Agent_ID Last_Name First_Name Phone

23 Sturm David 334-5678
25 Long Kyle 556-3421

Customer_ID Last_Name First_Name Phone Account_Balance

1224 Vira Dyne 678-9987 1223.95
1225 Davies Tricia 556-3342 234.25

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 Relational Database: Pros & Cons
• Advantages
– Structural independence
• Separation of database design and physical data storage/access
• Easier database design, implementation, management, and use
– Ad hoc query capability with Structured Query Language (SQL)
• SQL translates user queries to codes

• Disadvantages
– Substantial hardware and system software overhead
• more complex system
– Poor design and implementation is made easy
• ease-of-use allows careless use of RDBMS

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 Entity Relationship Model
• Peter Chen’s Landmark Paper in 1976
– “The Relationship Model: Toward a Unified View of Data”
– Graphical representation of entities and their relationships

• Entity Relationship (ER) Model

– Based on Entity, Attributes & Relationships
• Entity is a thing about which data are to be collected and stored
– e.g. EMPLOYEE
• Attributes are characteristics of the entity
– e.g. SSN, last name, first name
• Relationships describe an associations between entities
– i.e. 1:M, M:N, 1:1

– Complements the relational data model concepts

• Helps to visualize structure and content of data groups
– entity is mapped to a relational table
• Tool for conceptual data modeling (higher level representation)

– Represented in an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD)

• Formalizes a way to describe relationships between groups of data
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E-R Diagram: Chen Model
• Entity
– represented by a rectangle with its name
in capital letters.

• Relationships
– represented by an active or passive verb
inside the diamond that connects the
related entities.

• Connectivities
– i.e., types of relationship
– written next to each entity box.

Database Systems: Design, Implementation, & Management: Rob & Coronel

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E-R Diagram: Crow’s Foot Model
• Entity
– represented by a rectangle with its
name in capital letters.

• Relationships
– represented by an active or passive
verb that connects the related
entities.

• Connectivities
– indicated by symbols next to
entities.
• 2 vertical lines for 1
• “crow’s foot” for M

Database Systems: Design, Implementation, & Management: Rob & Coronel

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 E-R Model: Pros & Cons
• Advantages

– Exceptional conceptual simplicity

• easily viewed and understood representation of database
• facilitates database design and management

– Integration with the relational database model

• enables better database design via conceptual modeling

• Disadvantages

– Incomplete model on its own

• Limited representational power
– cannot model data constraints not tied to entity relationships
» e.g. attribute constraints
– cannot represent relationships between attributes within entities
• No data manipulation language (e.g. SQL)

– Loss of information content

• Hard to include attributes in ERD 29
 Object-Oriented Database
• Semantic Data Model (SDM)
– Modeled both data and their relationships in a single structure (object)
• Developed by Hammer & McLeod in 1981

• Object-oriented concepts became popular in 1990s

– Modularity facilitated program reuse and construction of complex structures
– Ability to handle complex data types (e.g. multimedia data)

• Object-Oriented Database Model (OODBM)

– Maintains the advantages of the ER model but adds more features
– Object = entity + relationships (between & within entity)
• consists of attributes & methods
– attributes describe properties of an object
– methods are all relevant operations that can be performed on an object
• self-contained abstraction of real-world entity
– Class = collection of similar objects with shared attributes and methods
• e.g. EMPLOYEE class = (employ1 object, employ2 object, …)
• organized in a class hierarchy
– e.g. PERSON > EMPLOYEE, CUSTOMER
– Incorporates the notion of inheritance
• attributes and methods of a class are inherited by its descendent classes

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OO Database Model vs. E-R Model
OODBM:
- can accommodate relationships within a object
- objects to be used as building blocks for autonomous structures

Database Systems: Design, Implementation, & Management: Rob & Coronel

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 Object-Oriented Database: Pros & Cons
• Advantages
– Semantic representation of data
• fuller and more meaningful description of data via object
– Modularity, reusability, inheritance
– Ability to handle
• complex data
• sophisticated information requirements

• Disadvantages
– Lack of standards
• no standard data access method
– Complex navigational data access
• class hierarchy traversal
– Steep learning curve
• difficult to design and implement properly
– More system-oriented than user-centered
– High system overhead
• slow transactions

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 Web Database
• Internet is emerging as a prime business tool
– Shift away from models (e.g. relational vs. O-O)
– Emphasis on interfacing with the Internet

• Characteristics of “Internet age” databases

– Flexible, efficient, and secure Internet access
– Support for complex data types & relationships
– Seamless interfaces with multiple data sources and structures
– Ease of use for end-user, database architect, and database administrator
• Simplicity of conceptual database model
• Many database design, implementation, and application development tools
• Powerful DBMS GUI

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 NoSQL
• NoSql is not literally “no sql”. They are non relational data stores.
• Next Generation Databases being non-relational, distributed, open-source and horizontally
scalable have become a favorite back end storage for cloud community . High performance
is the driving force.

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 NoSQL
• Pros
– open source (Cassandra, CouchDB, Hbase, MongoDB,
Redis)
– Elastic scaling
– Key-value pairs, easy to use
– Useful for statistical and real-time analysis of growing
lists of elements (tweets, posts, comments)
• Cons
– Security (No ACID: ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation,
Durability)
– No indexing support
– Immature
– Absence of standardization

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