Chapter 1: Introduction

 Purpose of Database Systems

 View of Data
 Data Models
 Data Definition Language
 Data Manipulation Language
 Transaction Management
 Storage Management
 Database Administrator
 Database Users
 Overall System Structure
 Database Management System (DBMS)
 Collection of interrelated data
 Set of programs to access the data
 DBMS contains information about a particular enterprise
 DBMS provides an environment that is both convenient and efficient to use.
 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, writing new application

programs to retrieve the appropriate data is difficult.
 Integrity problems
 Integrity constraints (e.g. account balance > 0) become part of program code
 Hard to add new constraints or change existing ones
 Purpose of Database Systems (Cont.)

 Drawbacks of using file systems (cont.)

 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 access 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.
 View of Data
An architecture for a database system
 Instances and Schemas
 Like 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
 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.
 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
 Entity-Relationship Model
Example of schema in the entity-relationship model
Entity Relationship Model (Cont.)

 E-R model of real world

 Entities (objects)
 E.g. customers, accounts, bank branch

 Relationships between entities

 E.g. Account A-101 is held by customer Johnson
 Relationship set depositor associates customers with accounts

 Widely used for database design

 Database design in E-R model usually converted to design in the relational
model (coming up next) which is used for storage and processing
 Relational Model Attributes
 Example of tabular data in the relational model

customer- customer- customer- account-

Customer
name street city number
-id
192-83-7465 Johnson Alma Palo Alto A-101
019-28-3746 Smith North Rye A-215
192-83-7465 Johnson Alma Palo Alto A-201
321-12-3123 Jones Main Harrison A-217
019-28-3746 Smith North Rye A-201
A Sample Relational Database
Data Definition Language (DDL)

 Specification notation for defining the database schema

 E.g.
create table account (
account-number char(10),
balance integer)
 DDL compiler generates a set of tables stored in a data dictionary
 Data dictionary contains metadata (i.e., data about data)
 database schema
 Data storage and definition language
 language in which the storage structure and access methods used by the
database system are specified
 Usually an extension of the data definition language
Data Manipulation Language (DML)

 Language for accessing and manipulating the data organized by the

appropriate data model
 DML also known as query language
 Two classes of languages
 Procedural – user specifies what data is required and how to get those data
 Nonprocedural – user specifies what data is required without specifying how to
get those data
 SQL is the most widely used query language
SQL
 SQL: widely used non-procedural language
 E.g. find the name of the customer with customer-id 192-83-7465
select customer.customer-name
from customer
where customer.customer-id = ‘192-83-7465’
 E.g. find the balances of all accounts held by the customer with customer-
id 192-83-7465
select account.balance
from depositor, account
where depositor.customer-id = ‘192-83-7465’ and
depositor.account-number = account.account-number
 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
 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. Sophisticated users
can be engineers, scientists, business analyst, who are familiar with the database. They can
develop their own database applications according to their requirement. They don’t write the
program code but they interact the database by writing SQL queries directly through the query
processor.
 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. Parametric End Users are the unsophisticated who don’t have any DBMS
knowledge but they frequently use the database applications in their daily life to get the desired
results.
 For examples, Railway’s ticket booking users are naive users. Clerks in any bank is a naive user
because they don’t have any DBMS knowledge but they still use the database and perform their given
task.
 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
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.
 Storage Management

 Storage manager is 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 file manager
 efficient storing, retrieving and updating of data
Overall
System
Structure
 Application Architectures

▪Two-tier architecture: the application

resides at the client machine and invokes
database system functionality at the server
machine through query language
statements.
▪ E.g. client programs using ODBC/JDBC to
communicate with a database
▪Three-tier architecture: client machine
acts as merely a front end and does not
contain any direct database calls. Front
end communicates with the application
server and application server in turn
communicates with the database system to
access data.
▪Business logic of the application is
embedded in the application server instead
of distributing across multiple clients.
▪Provides better security and performance
▪E.g. web-based applications, and
applications built using “middleware”