DATABASE

TECHNOLOGIES
Database Management System (DBMS)
• Collection of interrelated data with Set of programs
to access those data
• Database Applications:
– Banking: all transactions
– Airlines: reservations, schedules
– Universities: registration, grades
– Sales: customers, products, purchases
– Manufacturing: production, inventory, orders, supply
chain
– Human resources: employee records, salaries, tax
deductions
• Databases touch all aspects of our lives
Purpose of Database System
• In the early days, database applications were built
on top of file systems
• Drawbacks of using file systems to store data:
– Data redundancy and inconsistency
• Multiple file formats, duplication 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 part
of program code
• Hard to add new constraints or change existing ones
 – Atomicity of updates
• Failures may leave database in an inconsistent state with partial
updates carried out
• E.g. transfer of funds from one account to another should either
complete or not happen at all
– Concurrent access by multiple users
• Concurrent accessed needed for performance
• Uncontrolled concurrent accesses can lead to inconsistencies
– E.g. two people reading a balance and updating it at the same time
– Security problems

• Database systems offer solutions to all the above

problems
 Levels of Abstraction
• Physical level describes how a record (e.g., customer) is
stored.
• Logical level: describes data stored in database, and the
relationships among the data.
type customer = record
name : string;
street : string;
city : integer;
end;
• View level: application programs hide details of data types.
Views can also hide information (e.g., salary) for security
purposes.
An architecture for a database system
 Instances and Schemas
• Similar to types and variables in programming
languages

• Schema – the logical structure of the database

– e.g., the database consists of information about a set of
customers and accounts and the relationship between them)
– Analogous to type information of a variable in a program
– Physical schema: database design at the physical level
– Logical schema: database design at the logical level

• Instance – the actual content of the database at a

particular point in time
 Data Models
• A collection of tools for describing
– data
– data relationships
– data semantics
– data constraints
• Entity-Relationship model
• Relational model
• Other models:
– object-oriented model
– semi-structured data models
– Older models: network model and hierarchical model
 Database Users
• Users are differentiated by the way they expect to interact
with the system
• Application programmers – interact with system through
DML calls
• Sophisticated users – form requests in a database query
language
• Specialized users – write specialized database applications
that do not fit into the traditional data processing framework
• Naïve users – invoke one of the permanent application
programs that have been written previously
– E.g. people accessing database over the web, bank tellers, clerical
staff
 Database Administrator
• Coordinates all the activities of the database
system; the database administrator has a good
understanding of the enterprise’s information
resources and needs.
• Database administrator's duties include:
– Schema definition
– Storage structure and access method definition
– Schema and physical organization modification
– Granting user authority to access the database
– Specifying integrity constraints
– Acting as liaison with users
– Monitoring performance and responding to changes in
requirements
 Application Architectures

Two-tier architecture: E.g. client programs using

ODBC/JDBC to communicate with a database
Three-tier architecture: E.g. web-based applications,
and applications built using “middleware”
Entity-Relationship Model
 Introduction
• A database can be modeled as:
– a collection of entities,
– relationship among entities.
• An entity is an object that exists and is distinguishable
from other objects.
– Example: specific person, company, event, plant
• Entities have attributes
– Example: people have names and addresses
• An entity set is a set of entities of the same type that
share the same properties.
– Example: set of all persons, companies, trees, holidays
• A relationship is an association among
several entities
• An relationship set is a set of relationship
of the same type that share the same
properties
• An entity is represented by a set of
attributes, that is descriptive properties
possessed by all members of an entity set.
• Attribute types:
– Simple and composite attributes.
– Single-valued and multi-valued attributes
• Example: multivalued attribute: phone_numbers
– Derived attributes
• Can be computed from other attributes
• Example: age, given date_of_birth
Mapping Cardinality Constraints
• Express the number of entities to which another
entity can be associated via a relationship set.
• Most useful in describing binary relationship
sets.
• For a binary relationship set the mapping
cardinality must be one of the following types:
– One to one
– One to many
– Many to one
– Many to many
One to one One to many
Many to one Many to many
 Keys
• A super key of an entity set is a set of one
or more attributes whose values uniquely
determine each entity.
• A candidate key of an entity set is a
minimal super key
– Customer_id is candidate key of customer
– account_number is candidate key of account
• Although several candidate keys may
exist, one of the candidate keys is selected
to be the primary key.
 E-R Diagram
• Rectangles represent entity sets.
• Diamonds represent relationship sets.
• Lines link attributes to entity sets and
entity sets to relationship sets.
• Ellipses represent attributes
– Double ellipses represent multivalued
attributes.
– Dashed ellipses denote derived attributes.
• Underline indicates primary key attributes
Example
 E-R Diagram With Composite,
Multivalued, and Derived Attributes
Relationship Sets with Attributes
One-To-Many Relationship
Many-To-One Relationships
Many-To-Many Relationship
Specialization & Generalization