Chapter 1: Introduction

Why Study Database as a Topic?

• A company's database is its biggest asset

• Database processing is the heart of all applications today

• It's important to understand what is stored in a database and
what can be retrieved from it

• So, if we are going to create a database, what is going into the

database?

– Data
 Data vs. Information
• "data" and "information" are often used to mean the same thing
• However, they have different meanings in database terminology:
• What are data?
– Unorganized or unprocessed raw facts
• What is Information?
– Data with special meaning
– The result of sorting, combining, comparing, analyzing or performing
calculations on data (raw facts)
Data versus Information

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 Data vs. Information
Data: Each student's exam score is
one piece of data
Information: The class average for
the exam is individual pieces or
data transformed into information
 Data vs. Information Examples
• Data
– (1) Students test scores
– (2) Weekly sales for each salesperson
– (3) Inventory count for each product at each warehouse
• Information
– (1) Class average
– (2) Bonus as a percent of sales for the week
– (3) The total company inventory for each product
 Data versus Information
• Is your student number data or information?
– When is it data?
– When is it information?

• Is your grade in this course data or information?

– When is it data?
– When is it information?
 Database Management System (DBMS)
• What is a Database Management System (DBMS)?

• A collection of software programs that control the storage,

organization, and retrieval of data in a database

• Gives us the ability to access and manipulate data without

knowledge of the structure of the database
 Relational Database
• What is a Relational Database?

• An organized collection of related tables containing data that

can be manipulated and tables joined to provide information to
users
• Provides facilities for:
– Retrieving, adding, modifying, and deleting data
– Transforming retrieved data into meaningful information
 NULL Value
• Some data stored in a database can contain a NULL value

• What is a NULL value?

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 NULL Value
• NULL means missing, unknown, or unassigned
• It is not zero (numeric) or space (alphanumeric) – it is NULL
• Consider a Customer table:
– Missing – Perhaps a customer, such as Sally, does not divulge her age to
the customer service representative
– Unknown – An employee’s termination date is usually some event in
the unforeseen future
– Unassigned (doesn't apply) – If the customer is a business, then
Gender does not apply and thus is unassigned
• Data that can be NULL, is optional data 12
 Database Development Life Cycle (DDLC)
1. Database Planning
2. Requirements Analysis
3. Database Design
4. Database Build
5. Database Testing
6. Database Deployment
7. Database Maintenance

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 Step 1: Database Planning
• Starts when a customer (user) submits a request for the
development of a database
• Four major activities are performed:
– Review and approve the database project request
– Prioritize the database project request
– Allocate resources such as money, people, and tools
– Assign development team to develop the database project

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 Step 2: Requirements Analysis
• Also known as the systems analysis phase
• Includes investigation and analysis of the request
• Results in a set of requirements that the database must support
• Includes:
– What data is to be stored
– What are the relationships between the data
– What processes are involved
– Business rules

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 Step 3: Database Design
• Process of creating a detailed data model of the proposed
database
• Three common phases in database modeling:
– Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD)
– Normalization
– Relational Data Model
 Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD)
– Graphical representation of the proposed database
– Stays the same regardless of what type of DBMS the system is
eventually built with
 Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD)
• Answers the questions:
– What entities (person, place, or thing) are being represented?
– What attributes (data) are stored about each entity?
– What are the relationships between the entities?
• Basically, what data do we want to capture and what are the
business rules surrounding that data
• Crow's foot notation
– Information Engineering (IE) notation
– Barker notation
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Example ERD

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 Normalization
• A technique used during database design to identify redundancy
within the database

• Objective is to correct un-normalized relations (tables that

contain repeating groups) using a process of normal forms
• Chapter 5

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 Relational Data Modeling
• A data model expressed in terms of a relational database
structure (DB2, Oracle, MS SQL Server, MySQL, and others)
• The ER data model is transformed into a relational data model
based on the DBMS being used for implementation
• The transformation of the ER diagram representing entities,
attributes, and relationships into a relational data model
representing tables, columns, an relationships

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 Step 4: Database Build
• Create the database
– SQL Data Definition Language (DDL) statements
 For the selected DBMS according to the requirements specified in the
physical data model
 DBMS specific – DB2 is used in this course
– Implement integrity constraints from business rules

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 Step 5: Database Testing
• Test all constraints
• Verify that all requirements have been met

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 Step 6: Database Deployment
• Allocate storage requirements
• Place the database into production

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 Step 7: Database Maintenance
• Database Maintenance
– Maintain the database on an on-going basis according to user
requirements

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 Introduction to SQL Statements
• SQL pronounced "S-Q-L" stands for Structured Query Language
• The industry-standard language of relational database
management systems (RDBMS) for manipulating and querying
data in a relational database

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 SQL Statements
• SQL commands are categorized into four categories:
– DDL (Data Definition Language)
– DML (Data Manipulation Language)
– DCL (Data Control Language)
– TCL (Transaction Control Language)

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 DDL (Data Definition Language)
• SQL commands used to create and modify the structure of
database objects:
– CREATE – create the database or its objects (table, index, function,
views, store procedure and triggers)
– DROP – delete objects from the database
– ALTER – alter the structure of the database
– TRUNCATE – remove all rows (records) from a table
– COMMENT – add comments to the data dictionary
– RENAME – Rename an object existing in the database
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 DML (Data Manipulation Language)
• SQL commands that deal with the manipulation of data in a
database:
– SELECT – retrieve data from the a database
– INSERT – insert data into a table
– UPDATE – update existing data within a table
– DELETE – delete rows (records) from a database table

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 DCL (Data Control Language)
• SQL commands that deal with the rights, permissions, and other
controls of the database system:
– GRANT – gives user’s access privileges to database
– REVOKE – withdraw user’s access privileges given by using the GRANT
command

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 TCL (Transaction Control Language)
• SQL commands that deal with the transactions within the
database:
– COMMIT– commits a transaction
– ROLLBACK – rollbacks or reverses a transaction when errors occur
– SAVEPOINT – sets a SAVEPOINT within a transaction
– SET TRANSACTION – specifies characteristics for a transaction

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 Creating a Schema
• A schema must be created before the creation of tables and
other SQL objects
• A schema is an object that serves as a container for database
objects, such as tables, views, indexes, stored procedures, and
other object types
• A schema is created by entering the CREATE SCHEMA
command, followed by the name of the schema, followed by a
semicolon
• CREATE SCHEMA myschema;
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