OCR Computer Science

Comp 1 – TOPIC
Computer Systems

Parvinder Kaur
Recap according to A level spec
 Learning Objectives
In this lesson, you will be learning about the
Databases. You will cover:
1. Understand the structures of Databases
2. Show an understanding by using real life
scenarios
3. Able to link tables together
H406 01 - Spec 1.3.1
Databases

Databases

• Relational database, flat file,

primary key, foreign key,
secondary key, entity
relationship modelling
• Methods of capturing,
selecting, managing and
exchanging data.
 A simple database

• The simplest kind of database is a flat file,

consisting of information about a single entity
• An entity is a category of object, person, event
or thing of interest about which data needs to
be recorded
• For example you might hold data about club
members or concert venues
 Database design

• Most databases hold data about several

entities
• Suppose you are going to design a new system
for a company selling subscriptions for online
revision guides
• What entities are there in a system that will
keep records of subscriptions for revision
guides?
 Entities
• You may have thought of these entities:
– Customer
– Guide or Product
– Subscription
• Other entities that could be considered include
customer order, subject, author (of a revision guide)
• We will keep it simple and just consider Customer,
Product and Subscription
• What data would you keep about each of these
entities?
 Attributes
• This will be a database system

• Each entity in the database has attributes

• The entity descriptions can be written in this
format:
– Customer (custID, title, firstname, surname, email)
– Product (productID, title, subject, level, price)
– Subscription (subID, startDate, endDate)
 Primary Key
• Each entity needs an identifier which uniquely
identifies a particular record
• In a relational database, the identifier is known as
the primary key
• It is underlined in the entity description:
– Customer (custID, title, firstname, surname, email)
– Product (productID, title, subject, level, price)
– Subscription (subID, startDate, endDate)
• If there is no natural attribute for a primary key, one
should be introduced
 Composite key
• Sometimes two or even more attributes are needed
to uniquely define a record
• For example, in a customer order consisting of
many different order lines, each order line may be
uniquely identified by the two attributes
orderNumber and orderLine
• OrderLine (OrderNumber, OrderLine, ProductID, …)
• OrderNumber, OrderLine is a composite primary
key
 Entity Relationship Diagram
• The three entities are linked, or related
• There are three possible ways in which two
entities may be related:
– One-to-one e.g. Husband and Wife
– One-to-many e.g. Mother and Child, School and Pupil
– Many-to-many e.g. Actor and Film, Recipe and
Ingredient
 The diagram
• An entity relationship (E-R) diagram is a
graphical way of representing the
relationships between entities
One-to-One

One-to-Many

Many-to-Many

• We can say, for example, that one school has

many pupils, or many pupils attend one school
 Database Structure
• Each entity is represented by a table
• Tables in a relational database are commonly
referred to as relations
• A database contains one or more relations
• A relation has rows, each row containing one
record
• The columns in the relation each contain one
field (i.e. attribute) belonging to the records
 Creating a relationship
• To create a relationship between Customer and
Subscription, we need to include custID in the entity
description of Subscription
– Subscription (subID, startDate, endDate, custID )
• ProductId also needs to be included in the entity
description of Subscription
– Subscription (subID, startDate, endDate, custID, productID)
• custID and productID are foreign keys in Subscription,
shown in italics
– A foreign key always goes on the “many” side of a
relationship
 Foreign key: definition

• A foreign key is an attribute that creates a join

between two tables (relations)
• It is the primary key in the first relation

• Draw an entity relationship diagram to show the

relationships between the three entities
 Referential integrity

• Referential integrity means that no foreign key

in one table can reference a non-existent
record in a related table
• For example, it should not be possible to add a
subscription for a customer with custID C100 if
there is no record for customer C100
 The RevisionSubs database

• The tables (relations) represent the three

entities described, each with its own
attributes
• We will use the convention of giving each
table name the prefix tbl
– Each table contains some sample data
 RevisionSubs tables

tblCustomer custID title firstname surname email

C111 Mr Fred Carr [email protected]
C245 Miss Mabel Jenkins [email protected]
C364 Miss Jasmine Kumar [email protected]

tblSubscription subID startdate endDate custID productID

S1211 25/02/2016 24/02/2017 C111 P36
S1212 01/02/2016 31/01/2017 C111 P47
S1213 04/02/2016 03/02/2017 C245 P36

tblProduct productID productName subject level price

P24 Equations Maths 2 £12.00
P36 Programming Comp Science 4 £25.00
P47 Database Comp Science 4 £25.00
 Many-to-many relationships

• When there is a many-to-many relationship

between tables, they cannot be directly linked
– For example, you cannot link the entities
Customer and Product directly

• Why not?
 Many-to-many relationships

• You would need several fields in tblCustomer

to hold the ProductID of each product a
customer has subscribed to
• But how many fields would you allow?
– How would you find all customers who had
subscribed to a particular product?
custID title firstname surname email ProdID1 ProdID2
C111 Mr Fred Carr [email protected] P36 P47
C245 Miss Mabel Jenkins [email protected] P36
C364 Miss Jasmine Kumar [email protected] P25 P36
 Many-to-many relationships

• This configuration does not work

• It is impractical to allow several fields ProdID1,
ProdID2, etc.
• You cannot easily extract information from this
table
• An alternative way of organising the data is
required
custID title firstname surname email ProdID1 ProdID2
C111 Mr Fred Carr [email protected] P36 P47
C245 Miss Mabel Jenkins [email protected] P36
C364 Miss Jasmine Kumar [email protected] P25 P36
 Linking tables
• Suppose you have a table holding details of gym
members and the classes they take – yoga,
indoor cycling, pilates, interval training, etc.

• You need a link table “in the middle” just as the

entity Subscription was between Customer and
Product
Recap according to A level spec
 Exam Preparation for Thursday and
HOMEWORK
OCR Book

1. Make notes from the Powerpoint slides on VLE

2. Make notes on Pages 82 - 89
3. Answer questions on pages 86-87
4. Extra revision. Go through the PPT in the folder along with
the tasks

ALL incomplete work MUST be done for homework ready for

THURSDAYS MOCK