Chapter 1: Introduction

Database System Concepts, 7th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use
 Outline

● Database-System Applications
● Purpose of Database Systems
● View of Data
● Database Languages
● Database Design
● Database Engine
● Database Architecture
● Database Users and Administrators
● History of Database Systems

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 Database-System Applications
● 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 systems are used to manage collections of data that are:
● Highly valuable
● Relatively large
● Accessed by multiple users and applications, often at the same
● time.
● A modern database system is a complex software system whose task is to
manage a large, complex collection of data.
● Databases touch all aspects of our lives

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 Database Applications Examples
● Enterprise Information
● Sales: customers, products, purchases
● Accounting: payments, receipts, assets
● Human Resources: Information about employees, salaries,
payroll taxes.
● Manufacturing: management of production, inventory, orders,
supply chain.
● Banking and finance
● customer information, accounts, loans, and banking
transactions.
● Credit card transactions
● Finance: sales and purchases of financial instruments (e.g.,
stocks and bonds; storing real-time market data
● Universities: registration, grades

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 Database Applications Examples (Cont.)
● Airlines: reservations, schedules
● Telecommunication: records of calls, texts, and data usage, generating
monthly bills, maintaining balances on prepaid calling cards
● Web-based services
● Online retailers: order tracking, customized recommendations
● Online advertisements
● Document databases
● Navigation systems: For maintaining the locations of varies places of
interest along with the exact routes of roads, train systems, buses, etc.

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 Purpose of Database Systems
In the early days, database applications were built directly on top of file systems, which
leads to:
● Data redundancy and inconsistency: data is stored in multiple file
formats resulting induplication 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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 Purpose of Database Systems (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
4 Ex: 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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 University Database Example
● In this text we will be using a university database to illustrate all the
concepts
● Data consists of information about:
● Students
● Instructors
● Classes
● 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

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 View of Data
● A database system is a collection of interrelated data and a set of programs that
allow users to access and modify these data.
● A major purpose of a database system is to provide users with an abstract view
of the data.
● Data models
4 A collection of conceptual tools for describing data, data relationships,
data semantics, and consistency constraints.
● Data abstraction
4 Hide the complexity of data structures to represent data in the database
from users through several levels of data abstraction.

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 Data Models
● A collection of tools for describing
● Data
● Data relationships
● Data semantics
● Data constraints
● Relational model
● Entity-Relationship data model (mainly for database design)
● Object-based data models (Object-oriented and Object-relational)
● Semi-structured data model (XML)
● Other older models:
● Network model
● Hierarchical model

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 Relational Model
● All the data is stored in various tables.
● Example of tabular data in the relational model Ted Codd
Turing Award 1981
Columns

Rows

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 A Sample Relational Database

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 Levels of Abstraction
● Physical level: describes how a record (e.g., instructor) 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 employee’s 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
● Logical Schema – the overall logical structure of the database
● Example: The database consists of information about a set of customers and
accounts in a bank and the relationship between them
4 Analogous to type information of a variable in a program
● Physical schema– the overall physical structure of the database
● 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 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
4 Primary key (ID uniquely identifies instructors)
● Authorization
4 Who can access what

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 Data Manipulation Language (DML)
● Language for accessing and updating the data organized by the
appropriate data model
● DML also known as query language
● Two classes of languages
● Pure – used for proving properties about computational power
and for optimization
4 Relational Algebra
4 Tuple relational calculus
4 Domain relational calculus
● Commercial – used in commercial systems
4 SQL is the most widely used commercial language

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 Data Manipulation Language (Cont.)
● There are basically two types of data-manipulation language
● Procedural DML -- require a user to specify what data are
needed and how to get those data.
● Declarative DML -- require a user to specify what data are
needed without specifying how to get those data.
● Declarative DMLs are usually easier to learn and use than are
procedural DMLs.
● Declarative DMLs are also referred to as non-procedural DMLs
● The portion of a DML that involves information retrieval is called
a query language.

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 SQL Query Language

● SQL query language is nonprocedural. A query takes as input

several tables (possibly only one) and always returns a single
table.
● Example to find all instructors in Comp. Sci. dept
select name
from instructor
where dept_name = ‘Comp. Sci.'
● SQL is NOT a Turing machine equivalent language
● To be able to compute complex functions SQL is usually
embedded in some higher-level language
● 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

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 Database Access from Application Program

● Non-procedural query languages such as SQL are not as powerful

as a universal Turing machine.
● SQL does not support actions such as input from users, output to
displays, or communication over the network.
● Such computations and actions must be written in a host
language, such as C/C++, Java or Python, with embedded SQL
queries that access the data in the database.
● Application programs -- are programs that are used to interact
with the database in this fashion.

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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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 Database Engine
● A database system is partitioned into modules that deal with
each of the responsibilities of the overall system.
● The functional components of a database system can be divided
into
● The storage manager,
● The query processor component,
● The transaction management component.

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 Storage Manager
● A program module that provides the interface between the low-level
data stored in the database and the application programs and queries
submitted to the system.
● The storage manager is responsible to the following tasks:
● Interaction with the OS file manager
● Efficient storing, retrieving and updating of data\
● The storage manager components include:
● Authorization and integrity manager
● Transaction manager
● File manager
● Buffer manager

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 Storage Manager (Cont.)
● The storage manager implements several data structures as part
of the physical system implementation:
● Data files -- store the database itself
● Data dictionary -- stores metadata about the structure of the
database, in particular the schema of the database.
● Indices -- can provide fast access to data items. A database
index provides pointers to those data items that hold a
particular value.

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 Query Processor
● The query processor components include:
● DDL interpreter -- interprets DDL statements and records the
definitions in the data dictionary.
● DML compiler -- translates DML statements in a query language
into an evaluation plan consisting of low-level instructions that
the query evaluation engine understands.
4 The DML compiler performs query optimization; that is, it
picks the lowest cost evaluation plan from among the various
alternatives.
● Query evaluation engine -- executes low-level instructions
generated by the DML compiler.

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 Query Processing
1. Parsing and translation
2. Optimization
3. Evaluation

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 Transaction Management
● A transaction is a collection of operations that performs a single
logical function in a database application
● Transaction-management component ensures that the database
remains in a consistent (correct) state despite system failures (e.g.,
power failures and operating system crashes) and transaction
failures.
● Concurrency-control manager controls the interaction among the
concurrent transactions, to ensure the consistency of the database.

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 Database Architecture

● Database systems structure

● Centralized databases
4 One to a few cores, shared memory
● Client-server,
4 One server machine executes work on behalf of multiple client
machines.
● Parallel databases
4 Many core shared memory
4 Shared disk
4 Shared nothing
● Distributed databases
4 Geographical distribution
4 Schema/data heterogeneity

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 Database Applications
● Database applications are usually partitioned into two or three parts.
● Two-tier architecture -- the application resides at the client
machine, where it invokes database system functionality at the
server machine
● Three-tier architecture -- the client machine acts as a front end and
does not contain any direct database calls.
4 The client end communicates with an application server,
usually through a forms interface.
4 The application server in turn communicates with a database
system to access data.

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 Two-tier and three-tier architectures

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 Database Users

There are four different types of database-system users

● Naive users -- unsophisticated users who interact with the system

by invoking one of the application programs that have been written
previously.
● Application programmers -- are computer professionals who write
application programs.
● Sophisticated users -- interact with the system without writing
programs
● using a database query language or by
● using tools such as data analysis software.
● Specialized users --write specialized database applications that do
not fit into the traditional data-processing framework. For
example, CAD, graphic data, audio, video.

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 Database Administrator
A person who has central control over the system is called a database
administrator DBA, whose functions are:

● Schema definition
● Storage structure and access-method definition
● Schema and physical-organization modification
● Granting of authorization for data access
● Routine maintenance
● Periodically backing up the database
● Ensuring that enough free disk space is available for normal
operations, and upgrading disk space as required
● Monitoring jobs running on the database and ensuring that
performance is not degraded by very expensive tasks submitted
by some users

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 History of Database Systems
● 1950s and early 1960s:
● Data processing using magnetic tapes for storage
4 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
4 Would win the ACM Turing Award for this work
4 IBM Research begins System R prototype
4 UC Berkeley (Michael Stonebraker) begins Ingres prototype
4 Oracle releases first commercial relational database
● High-performance (for the era) transaction processing

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 History of Database Systems (cont.)
● 1980s:
● Research relational prototypes evolve into commercial systems
4 SQL becomes industrial standard
● Parallel and distributed database systems
4 Wisconsin, IBM, Teradata
● Object-oriented database systems
● 1990s:
● Large decision support and data-mining applications
● Large multi-terabyte data warehouses
● Emergence of Web commerce

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 History of Database Systems (cont.)
● 2000s
● Big data storage systems
4 Google BigTable, Yahoo PNuts, Amazon,
4 “NoSQL” systems.
● Big data analysis: beyond SQL
4 Map reduce and friends
● 2010s
● SQL reloaded
4 SQL front end to Map Reduce systems
4 Massively parallel database systems
4 Multi-core main-memory databases

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 1.35 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 End of Chapter 1

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 1.36 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan