DBMS

1. OVERVIEW

Database is a collection of related data and data is a collection of facts and

figures that can be processed to produce information.

Mostly data represents recordable facts. Data aids in producing information,

which is based on facts. For example, if we have data about marks obtained by
all students, we can then conclude about toppers and average marks.

A database management system stores data in such a way that it becomes

easier to retrieve, manipulate, and produce information.

Characteristics
Traditionally, data was organized in file formats. DBMS was a new concept then,
and all the research was done to make it overcome the deficiencies in traditional
style of data management. A modern DBMS has the following characteristics:

 Real-world entity: A modern DBMS is more realistic and uses real-world

entities to design its architecture. It uses the behavior and attributes too.
For example, a school database may use students as an entity and their
age as an attribute.

 Relation-based tables: DBMS allows entities and relations among them

to form tables. A user can understand the architecture of a database just
by looking at the table names.

 Isolation of data and application: A database system is entirely

different than its data. A database is an active entity, whereas data is said
to be passive, on which the database works and organizes. DBMS also
stores metadata, which is data about data, to ease its own process.

 Less redundancy: DBMS follows the rules of normalization, which splits

a relation when any of its attributes is having redundancy in values.
Normalization is a mathematically rich and scientific process that reduces
data redundancy.

 Consistency: Consistency is a state where every relation in a database

remains consistent. There exist methods and techniques, which can detect
attempt of leaving database in inconsistent state. A DBMS can provide
greater consistency as compared to earlier forms of data storing
applications like file-processing systems.

 Query Language: DBMS is equipped with query language, which makes

it more efficient to retrieve and manipulate data. A user can apply as
many and as different filtering options as required to retrieve a set of
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data. Traditionally it was not possible where file-processing system was

used.

 ACID Properties: DBMS follows the concepts of Atomicity, Consistency,

Isolation, and Durability (normally shortened as ACID). These concepts
are applied on transactions, which manipulate data in a database. ACID
properties help the database stay healthy in multi-transactional
environments and in case of failure.

 Multiuser and Concurrent Access: DBMS supports multi-user

environment and allows them to access and manipulate data in parallel.
Though there are restrictions on transactions when users attempt to
handle the same data item, but users are always unaware of them.

 Multiple views: DBMS offers multiple views for different users. A user
who is in the Sales department will have a different view of database than
a person working in the Production department. This feature enables the
users to have a concentrate view of the database according to their
requirements.

 Security: Features like multiple views offer security to some extent

where users are unable to access data of other users and departments.
DBMS offers methods to impose constraints while entering data into the
database and retrieving the same at a later stage. DBMS offers many
different levels of security features, which enables multiple users to have
different views with different features. For example, a user in the Sales
department cannot see the data that belongs to the Purchase department.
Additionally, it can also be managed how much data of the Sales
department should be displayed to the user. Since a DBMS is not saved on
the disk as traditional file systems, it is very hard for miscreants to break
the code.

Users
A typical DBMS has users with different rights and permissions who use it for
different purposes. Some users retrieve data and some back it up. The users of
a DBMS can be broadly categorized as follows:

[Image: DBMS Users]

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 Administrators: Administrators maintain the DBMS and are responsible

for administrating the database. They are responsible to look after its
usage and by whom it should be used. They create access profiles for
users and apply limitations to maintain isolation and force security.
Administrators also look after DBMS resources like system license,
required tools, and other software and hardware related maintenance.

 Designers: Designers are the group of people who actually work on the
designing part of the database. They keep a close watch on what data
should be kept and in what format. They identify and design the whole set
of entities, relations, constraints, and views.

 End Users: End users are those who actually reap the benefits of having
a DBMS. End users can range from simple viewers who pay attention to
the logs or market rates to sophisticated users such as business analysts.
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2. ARCHITECTURE

The design of a DBMS depends on its architecture. It can be centralized or

decentralized or hierarchical. The architecture of a DBMS can be seen as either
single tier or multi-tier. An n-tier architecture divides the whole system into
related but independent n modules, which can be independently modified,
altered, changed, or replaced.

In 1-tier architecture, the DBMS is the only entity where the user directly sits on
the DBMS and uses it. Any changes done here will directly be done on the DBMS
itself. It does not provide handy tools for end-users. Database designers and
programmers normally prefer to use single-tier architecture.

If the architecture of DBMS is 2-tier, then it must have an application through

which the DBMS can be accessed. Programmers use 2-tier architecture where
they access the DBMS by means of an application. Here the application tier is
entirely independent of the database in terms of operation, design, and
programming.

3- tier Architecture
A 3-tier architecture separates its tiers from each other based on the complexity
of the users and how they use the data present in the database. It is the most
widely used architecture to design a DBMS.

[Image: 3-tier DBMS architecture]

 Database (Data) Tier: At this tier, the database resides along with its
query processing languages. We also have the relations that define the
data and their constraints at this level.

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 Application (Middle) Tier: At this tier reside the application server and
the programs that access the database. For a user, this application tier
presents an abstracted view of the database. End-users are unaware of
any existence of the database beyond the application. At the other end,
the database tier is not aware of any other user beyond the application
tier. Hence, the application layer sits in the middle and acts as a mediator
between the end-user and the database.

 User (Presentation) Tier: End-users operate on this tier and they know
nothing about any existence of the database beyond this layer. At this
layer, multiple views of the database can be provided by the application.
All views are generated by applications that reside in the application tier.

Multiple-tier database architecture is highly modifiable, as almost all its

components are independent and can be changed independently.

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3. DATA MODELS

Data models define how the logical structure of a database is modeled. Data
Models are fundamental entities to introduce abstraction in a DBMS. Data
models define how data is connected to each other and how they are processed
and stored inside the system.

The very first data model could be flat data-models, where all the data used are
to be kept in the same plane. Earlier data models were not so scientific, hence
they were prone to introduce lots of duplication and update anomalies.

Entity-Relationship Model
Entity-Relationship (ER) Model is based on the notion of real-world entities and
relationships among them. While formulating real-world scenario into the
database model, the ER Model creates entity set, relationship set, general
attributes, and constraints.

ER Model is best used for the conceptual design of a database.

ER Model is based on:

 Entities and their attributes.

 Relationships among entities.

These concepts are explained below.

[Image: ER Model]

 Entity

An entity in an ER Model is a real-world entity having properties called

attributes. Every attribute is defined by its set of values called domain.

For example, in a school database, a student is considered as an entity.

Student has various attributes like name, age, class, etc.

 Relationship
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The logical association among entities is called relationship. Relationships are mapped with
entities in various ways. Mapping cardinalities define the number of association between two
entities.

Mapping cardinalities:

o one to one
o one to many
o many to one
o many to many

Relational Model
The most popular data model in DBMS is the Relational Model. It is more
scientific a model than others. This model is based on first-order predicate logic
and defines a table as an n-ary relation.

[Image: Table in relational Model]

The main highlights of this model are:

 Data is stored in tables called relations.

 Relations can be normalized.

 In normalized relations, values saved are atomic values.

 Each row in a relation contains a unique value.

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 Each column in a relation contains values from a same domain.

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4. DATA SCHEMAS

Database Schema
A database schema is the skeleton structure that represents the logical view of
the entire database. It defines how the data is organized and how the relations
among them are associated. It formulates all the constraints that are to be
applied on the data.

A database schema defines its entities and the relationship among them. It
contains a descriptive detail of the database, which can be depicted by means of
schema diagrams. It’s the database designers who design the schema to help
programmers understand the database and make it useful.

[Image: Database Schemas]

A database schema can be divided broadly into two categories:

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 Physical Database Schema: This schema pertains to the actual storage

of data and its form of storage like files, indices, etc. It defines how the
data will be stored in a secondary storage.

 Logical Database Schema: This schema defines all the logical

constraints that need to be applied on the data stored. It defines tables,
views, and integrity constraints.

Database Instance
It is important that we distinguish these two terms individually. Database
schema is the skeleton of database. It is designed when the database doesn't
exist at all. Once the database is operational, it is very difficult to make any
changes to it. A database schema does not contain any data or information.

A database instance is a state of operational database with data at any given

time. It contains a snapshot of the database. Database instances tend to change
with time. A DBMS ensures that its every instance (state) is in a valid state, by
diligently following all the validations, constraints, and conditions that the
database designers have imposed.

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5. DATA INDEPENDENCE

If a database system is not multi-layered, then it becomes difficult to make any

changes in the database system. Database systems are designed in multi-layers
as we learnt earlier.

Data Independence
A database system normally contains a lot of data in addition to users’ data. For
example, it stores data about data, known as metadata, to locate and retrieve
data easily. It is rather difficult to modify or update a set of metadata once it is
stored in the database. But as a DBMS expands, it needs to change over time to
satisfy the requirements of the users. If the entire data is dependent, it would
become a tedious and highly complex job.

[Image: Data independence]

Metadata itself follows a layered architecture, so that when we change data at

one layer, it does not affect the data at another level. This data is independent
but mapped to each other.

Logical DataIndependence
Logical data is data about database, that is, it stores information about how data
is managed inside. For example, a table (relation) stored in the database and all
its constraints applied on that relation.

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Logical data independence is a kind of mechanism, which liberalizes itself from

actual data stored on the disk. If we do some changes on table format, it should
not change the data residing on the disk.

Physical Data Independence

All the schemas are logical, and the actual data is stored in bit format on the
disk. Physical data independence is the power to change the physical data
without impacting the schema or logical data.

For example, in case we want to change or upgrade the storage system itself —
suppose we want to replace hard-disks with SSD — it should not have any
impact on the logical data or schemas.

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6. ER MODEL – BASIC CONCEPTS

The ER model defines the conceptual view of a database. It works around real-
world entities and the associations among them. At view level, the ER model is
considered a good option for designing databases.

Entity
An entity can be a real-world object, either animate or inanimate, that can be
easily identifiable. For example, in a school database, students, teachers,
classes, and courses offered can be considered as entities. All these entities
have some attributes or properties that give them their identity.

An entity set is a collection of similar types of entities. An entity set may contain
entities with attribute sharing similar values. For example, a Students set may
contain all the students of a school; likewise a Teachers set may contain all the
teachers of a school from all faculties. Entity sets need not be disjoint.

Attributes
Entities are represented by means of their properties called attributes. All
attributes have values. For example, a student entity may have name, class, and
age as attributes.

There exists a domain or range of values that can be assigned to attributes. For
example, a student's name cannot be a numeric value. It has to be alphabetic. A
student's age cannot be negative, etc.

Types of Attributes
 Simple attribute: Simple attributes are atomic values, which cannot be
divided further. For example, a student's phone number is an atomic
value of 10 digits.

 Composite attribute: Composite attributes are made of more than one

simple attribute. For example, a student's complete name may have
first_name and last_name.

 Derived attribute: Derived attributes are the attributes that do not exist
in the physical database, but their values are derived from other
attributes present in the database. For example, average_salary in a
department should not be saved directly in the database, instead it can be
derived. For another example, age can be derived from data_of_birth.
  Single-value attribute: Single-value attributes contain single value. For
example: Social_Security_Number.

 Multi-value attribute: Multi-value attributes may contain more than one

values. For example, a person can have more than one phone number,
email_address, etc.

These attribute types can come together in a way like:

 simple single-valued attributes

 simple multi-valued attributes

 composite single-valued attributes

 composite multi-valued attributes

Entity-Set andKeys
Key is an attribute or collection of attributes that uniquely identifies an entity
among entity set.

For example, the roll_number of a student makes him/her identifiable among

students.

 Super Key: A set of attributes (one or more) that collectively identifies

an entity in an entity set.

 Candidate Key: A minimal super key is called a candidate key. An entity

set may have more than one candidate key.

 Primary Key: A primary key is one of the candidate keys chosen by the
database designer to uniquely identify the entity set.

Relationship
The association among entities is called a relationship. For example, an
employee works_at a department, a student enrolls in a course. Here,
Works_at and Enrolls are called relationships.

Relationship Set
A set of relationships of similar type is called a relationship set. Like entities, a
relationship too can have attributes. These attributes are called descriptive
attributes.

Degree of Relationship
The number of participating entities in a relationship defines the degree of the
relationship.
  Binary = degree 2

 Ternary = degree 3

 n-ary = degree

Mapping Cardinalities
Cardinality defines the number of entities in one entity set, which can be
associated with the number of entities of other set via relationship set.

 One-to-one: One entity from entity set A can be associated with at most
one entity of entity set B and vice versa.

[Image: One-to-one relation]

 One-to-many: One entity from entity set A can be associated with more
than one entities of entity set B, however an entity from entity set B can
be associated with at most one entity.

[Image: One-to-many relation]

 Many-to-one: More than one entities from entity set A can be associated
with at most one entity of entity set B, however an entity from entity set
B can be associated with more than one entity from entity set A.
 [Image: Many-to-one relation]

 Many-to-many: One entity from A can be associated with more than one
entity from B and vice versa.

[Image: Many-to-many relation]

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7. ER DIAGRAM REPRESENTATION

Let us now learn how the ER Model is represented by means of an ER diagram.

Any object, for example, entities, attributes of an entity, relationship sets, and
attributes of relationship sets, can be represented with the help of an ER
diagram.

Entity
Entities are represented by means of rectangles. Rectangles are named with the
entity set they represent.

[Image: Entities in a school database]

Attributes
Attributes are the properties of entities. Attributes are represented by means of
ellipses. Every ellipse represents one attribute and is directly connected to its
entity (rectangle).

[Image: Simple Attributes]

If the attributes are composite, they are further divided in a tree like structure.
Every node is then connected to its attribute. That is, composite attributes are
represented by ellipses that are connected with an ellipse.
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[Image: Composite Attributes]

Multivalued attributes are depicted by double ellipse.

[Image: Multivalued Attributes]

Derived attributes are depicted by dashed ellipse.

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[Image: Derived Attributes]

Relationship
Relationships are represented by diamond-shaped box. Name of the relationship
is written inside the diamond-box. All the entities (rectangles) participating in a
relationship are connected to it by a line.

BinaryRelationship and Cardinality

A relationship where two entities are participating is called a binary
relationship. Cardinality is the number of instance of an entity from a relation
that can be associated with the relation.

 One-to-one: When only one instance of an entity is associated with the

relationship, it is marked as '1:1'. The following image reflects that only
one instance of each entity should be associated with the relationship. It
depicts one-to-one relationship.

[Image: One-to-one]
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 One-to-many: When more than one instance of an entity is associated

with a relationship, it is marked as '1:N'. The following image reflects that
only one instance of entity on the left and more than one instance of an
entity on the right can be associated with the relationship. It depicts one-
to-many relationship.

[Image: One-to-many]
 Many-to-one: When more than one instance of entity is associated with
the relationship, it is marked as 'N:1'. The following image reflects that
more than one instance of an entity on the left and only one instance of
an entity on the right can be associated with the relationship. It depicts
many-to-one relationship.

[Image: Many-to-one]
 Many-to-many: The following image reflects that more than one instance
of an entity on the left and more than one instance of an entity on the
right can be associated with the relationship. It depicts many-to-many
relationship.

[Image: Many-to-many]
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Participation Constraints
 Total Participation: Each entity is involved in the relationship. Total
participation is represented by double lines.

 Partial participation: Not all entities are involved in the relationship.

Partial participation is represented by single lines.

[Image: Participation Constraints]

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8. GENERALIZATION &
SPECIALIZATION
The ER Model has the power of expressing database entities in a conceptual
hierarchical manner. As the hierarchy goes up, it generalizes the view of entities,
and as we go deep in the hierarchy, it gives us the detail of every entity
included.

Going up in this structure is called generalization, where entities are clubbed

together to represent a more generalized view. For example, a particular student
named Mira can be generalized along with all the students. The entity shall be a
student, and further, the student is a person. The reverse is called
specialization where a person is a student, and that student is Mira.

Generalization
As mentioned above, the process of generalizing entities, where the generalized
entities contain the properties of all the generalized entities, is called
generalization. In generalization, a number of entities are brought together into
one generalized entity based on their similar characteristics. For example,
pigeon, house sparrow, crow, and dove can all be generalized as Birds.

[Image: Generalization]

Specialization
Specialization is the opposite of generalization. In specialization, a group of
entities is divided into sub-groups based on their characteristics. Take a group
‘Person’ for example. A person has name, date of birth, gender, etc. These
properties are common in all persons, human beings. But in a company, persons
can be identified as employee, employer, customer, or vendor, based on what
role the y play in the company.
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[Image: Specialization]

Similarly, in a school database, persons can be specialized as teacher, student,

or a staff, based on what role they play in school as entities.

Inheritance
We use all the above features of ER-Model in order to create classes of objects in
object-oriented programming. The details of entities are generally hidden from
the user; this process known as abstraction.

Inheritance is an important feature of Generalization and Specialization. It allows

lower-level entities to inherit the attributes of higher-level entities.
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[Image: Inheritance]

For example, the attributes of a Person class such as name, age, and gender can
be inherited by lower-level entities such as Student or Teacher.
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9. CODD’S 12 RULES

Dr Edgar F. Codd, after his extensive research on the Relational Model of

database systems, came up with twelve rules of his own, which according to
him, a database must obey in order to be regarded as a true relational database.

These rules can be applied on any database system that manages stored data
using only its relational capabilities. This is a foundation rule, which acts as a
base for all the other rules.

Rule 1: Information Rule

The data stored in a database, may it be user data or metadata, must be a value
of some table cell. Everything in a database must be stored in a table format.

Rule 2: Guaranteed Access Rule

Every single data element (value) is guaranteed to be accessible logically with a
combination of table-name, primary-key (row value), and attribute-name
(column value). No other means, such as pointers, can be used to access data.

Rule 3: Systematic Treatment of NULL Values

The NULL values in a database must be given a systematic and uniform
treatment. This is a very important rule because a NULL can be interpreted as
one the following: data is missing, data is not known, or data is not applicable.

Rule 4: Active Online Catalog

The structure description of the entire database must be stored in an online
catalog, known as data dictionary, which can be accessed by authorized users.
Users can use the same query language to access the catalog which they use to
access the database itself.

Rule 5: Comprehensive Data Sub-Language Rule

A database can only be accessed using a language having linear syntax that
supports data definition, data manipulation, and transaction management
operations. This language can be used directly or by means of some application.
If the database allows access to data without any help of this language, then it is
considered as a violation.

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Rule 6: View Updating Rule

All the views of a database, which can theoretically be updated, must also be
updatable by the system.

Rule 7: High-Level Insert, Update, and Delete Rule

A database must support high-level insertion, updation, and deletion. This must
not be limited to a single row, that is, it must also support union, intersection
and minus operations to yield sets of data records.

Rule 8: Physical Data Independence

The data stored in a database must be independent of the applications that
access the database. Any change in the physical structure of a database must
not have any impact on how the data is being accessed by external applications.

Rule 9: Logical Data Independence

The logical data in a database must be independent of its user’s view
(application). Any change in logical data must not affect the applications using it.
For example, if two tables are merged or one is split into two different tables,
there should be no impact or change on the user application. This is one of the
most difficult rule to apply.

Rule 10: Integrity Independence

A database must be independent of the application that uses it. All its integrity
constraints can be independently modified without the need of any change in the
application. This rule makes a database independent of the front-end application
and its interface.

Rule 11: Distribution Independence

The end-user must not be able to see that the data is distributed over various
locations. Users should always get the impression that the data is located at one
site only. This rule has been regarded as the foundation of distributed database
systems.

Rule 12: Non-Subversion Rule

If a system has an interface that provides access to low-level records, then the
interface must not be able to subvert the system and bypass security and
integrity constraints.

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10. RELATIONAL DATA MODEL

Relational data model is the primary data model, which is used widely around
the world for data storage and processing. This model is simple and it has all the
properties and capabilities required to process data with storage efficiency.

Concepts
Tables: In relational data model, relations are saved in the format of Tables.
This format stores the relation among entities. A table has rows and columns,
where rows represent records and columns represent the attributes.

Tuple: A single row of a table, which contains a single record for that relation is
called a tuple.

Relation instance: A finite set of tuples in the relational database system

represents relation instance. Relation instances do not have duplicate tuples.

Relation schema: A relation schema describes the relation name (table name),
attributes, and their names.

Relation key: Each row has one or more attributes, known as relation key,
which can identify the row in the relation (table) uniquely.

Attribute domain: Every attribute has some predefined value scope, known as
attribute domain.

Constraints
Every relation has some conditions that must hold for it to be a valid relation.
These conditions are called Relational Integrity Constraints. There are three
main integrity constraints:

 Key constraints

 Domain constraints

 Referential integrity constraints

Key Constraints
There must be at least one minimal subset of attributes in the relation, which
can identify a tuple uniquely. This minimal subset of attributes is called key for
that relation. If there are more than one such minimal subsets, these are
called candidate keys.

Key constraints force that:

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 in a relation with a key attribute, no two tuples can have identical values
for key attributes.

 a key attribute cannot have NULL values.

Key constraints are also referred to as Entity Constraints.

Domain Constraints
Attributes have specific values in real-world scenario. For example, age can only
be a positive integer. The same constraints have been tried to employ on the
attributes of a relation. Every attribute is bound to have a specific range of
values. For example, age cannot be less than zero and telephone numbers
cannot contain a digit outside 0-9.

Referential Integrity Constraints

Referential integrity constraints work on the concept of Foreign Keys. A foreign
key is a key attribute of a relation that can be referred in other relation.

Referential integrity constraint states that if a relation refers to a key attribute of

a different or same relation, then that key element must exist.
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