SPEC/4/COMSC/SP2/ENG/TZ0/XX

COMPUTER SCIENCE
STANDARD LEVEL
PAPER 2

1 hour

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES

• Do not open this examination paper until instructed to do so.

• Answer all of the questions from one of the Options.

14 pages
© International Baccalaureate Organization 2011
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Option A — Databases

A1. A company has a division called Technical Services. This division is organized into departments.
The following chart shows how the various staff are organized.

Director of
Technical
Services

Head of
Head of Head of Head of
Environmental
Administration Engineering Planning
Protection

Building Principal Development Policy

Manager Engineer Control Officer Manager

Head of Building Assistant Assistant Personal

Administration Assistant 2 Engineer 1 Engineer 2 Assistant

The Human Resources Department maintains a flat file database to store information about all
the staff members for salary, holiday and promotion purposes. A sample of the stored
information is shown below.

Staff
Surname Forename Job Title Line Manager Salary
Number
948 Kent McKenzie Head of Planning Adrienne Mathis 90875
156 Barker Rae Head of Administration Adrienne Mathis 30465
815 Riddle Kevyn Development Control Officer Kent McKenzie 34768
580 Figueroa Rina Policy Manager Kent McKenzie 45078
871 Mathis Adrienne Director of Technical Services Russell Z. Harrell 45800
457 Neal Paul Head of Environmental Protection Adrienne Mathis 80670
297 Oliver Ralph Principal Engineer Daria Gilmore 50796
51 Gilmore Daria Head of Engineering Adrienne Mathis 90655

(This question continues on the following page)

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(Question A1 continued)

The Human Resources Department is experiencing many errors when compiling reports of
personnel and has been advised that it should change to a relational database.

(a) (i) Define the term database. [1]

(ii) Describe the difference between a flat file database and a relational database. [2]

(b) (i) Identify two problems caused by data redundancy. [2]

(ii) Outline using examples how data redundancy in this database could lead to errors. [2]

(c) The departments usually have many ongoing projects that occupy their team members. The
Human Resources Department needs to produce lists showing who is involved in current
projects.

The following information has been provided:

Project: Project_Ref, Project_Name, Budget
Department: Dept_Ref, Dept_Name
Staff: Staff_Number, Forename, Surname, Job_Title, Salary
The projects are owned by a department.
Each member of staff is a member of a department.

(i) Construct an Entity Relationship Diagram to show how a relational database could
be designed to make this possible with the least chance of producing errors caused
by data redundancy. [4]

(ii) Identify the steps to create a query that could be constructed to produce a list of staff
members whose salary is greater than $50 000 who are involved in a project called
“Relocation_2012”. [4]

Turn over
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A2. A bank wants to transfer money from one account to another. Both accounts are
held in the bank’s database management system (DBMS). The account DBMS
carries out a series of separate operations in order to achieve this transaction.
These include removing of money from one account and adding it to the other.
An error may occur if this process is interrupted, for example due to a power
failure. This could compromise the integrity of the account database.

(a) (i) Identify two characteristics of a transaction in terms of a database. [2]

(ii) Distinguish between a database schema and a database state. [2]

(iii) Explain why the interruption described above could compromise the integrity of the
account database. [2]

(b) Identify the steps that should be taken by the software in order to maintain the integrity of
the account database. [4]

(c) The bank account data is shared between various applications, such as the bank’s
internal accounting systems and the online transaction system. Explain how problems of
concurrency can arise and how they can be avoided. [6]

A3. (a) (i) Identify two functions of a database management system (DBMS). [2]

(ii) List two tools usually provided with a DBMS. [2]

(b) Database management systems allow data sharing and multiple views. Explain why
these features are important to an organization that uses databases. [4]

(c) Explain why it is important for data to be independent of the application software that
manipulates it. [6]