SQL – 2

Debapriyo Majumdar
DBMS
Indian Statistical Institute Kolkata

Slides re-used, with minor modification, from

Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
[Link]
Outline
§ Join Expressions
§ Views
§ Transactions
§ Integrity Constraints
§ SQL Data Types and Schemas
§ Authorization

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Joined Relations
§ Join operations take two relations and return as a
result another relation
§ A join operation is a Cartesian product which requires
that tuples in the two relations match under some
condition
§ It also specifies the attributes that are present in the
result of the join
§ Typically used as subquery expressions in the from
clause

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Join operations – Example
§ Relation course

§ Relation prereq

§ Observe that
§ prereq information is missing for CS-315 and
§ course information is missing for CS-347 4
Outer Join
§ An extension of the join operation that avoids loss of
information
– Computes the join and then
– Adds tuples from one relation that does not match tuples in
the other relation to the result of the join
§ Uses null values

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Left Outer Join
course prereq

course natural left outer join prereq

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Right Outer Join
course prereq

course natural right outer join prereq

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Joined Relations
§ Join operations take two relations and return as a result another
relation
§ These additional operations are typically used as subquery
expressions in the from clause
§ Join condition – defines which tuples in the two relations match,
and what attributes are present in the result of the join
§ Join type – defines how tuples in each relation that do not match
any tuple in the other relation (based on the join condition) are
treated

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Full Outer Join
course prereq

course natural full outer join prereq

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Joined Relations – Examples
§ course inner join prereq on course.course_id = prereq.course_id

§ What is the difference between the above, and a natural join?

§ course left outer join prereq on course.course_id = prereq.course_id

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Joined Relations – Examples
§ course natural right outer join prereq

§ course full outer join prereq using (course_id)

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Views
§ In some cases, it is not desirable for all users to see the entire
logical model (all the actual relations stored in the database)
§ Example: A person needs to know an instructors name and
department, but not the salary
– This person should see a relation described, in SQL, by

select ID, name, dept_name

from instructor

§ A view provides a mechanism to hide certain data from the

view of certain users
§ Any relation that is not of the conceptual model but is made
visible to a user as a “virtual relation” is called a view
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View Definition
§ A view is defined using the create view statement which has
the form
create view v as < query expression >
where <query expression> is any legal SQL expression. The
view name is represented by v.
§ Once a view is defined, the view name can be used to refer to
the virtual relation that the view generates.
§ View definition is not the same as creating a new relation by
evaluating the query expression
– Rather, a view definition causes the saving of an
expression; the expression is substituted into queries using
the view.

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Example Views
§ A view of instructors without their salary
create view faculty as
select ID, name, dept_name from instructor
§ A view with all instructors in the Biology department
create view biology_instructors as
select name from faculty where dept_name = ‘Biology’
§ Create a view of department salary totals
create view
departments_total_salary(dept_name, total_salary) as
select dept_name, sum (salary) from instructor
group by dept_name;

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Views defined by other views
§ create view physics_fall_2009 as
select course.course_id, sec_id, building, room_number
from course, section
where course.course_id = section.course_id
and course.dept_name = ’Physics’
and [Link] = ’Fall’
and [Link] = ’2009’;
§ create view physics_fall_2009_watson as
select course_id, room_number
from physics_fall_2009
where building= ’Watson’;

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View Expansion
§ Expand use of a view in a query/another view

create view physics_fall_2009_watson as

(select course_id, room_number
from (select course.course_id, building, room_number
from course, section
where course.course_id = section.course_id
and course.dept_name = ’Physics’
and [Link] = ’Fall’
and [Link] = ’2009’)
where building= ’Watson’;

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Views Defined Using Other Views
§ One view may be used in the expression defining another
view
§ A view relation v1 is said to depend directly on a view
relation v2 if v2 is used in the expression defining v1
§ A view relation v1 is said to depend on view relation v2 if
either v1 depends directly to v2 or there is a path of
dependencies from v1 to v2
§ A view relation v is said to be recursive if it depends on
itself

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View Expansion
§ A way to define the meaning of views defined in terms of
other views.
§ Let view v1 be defined by an expression e1 that may itself
contain uses of view relations.
§ View expansion of an expression repeats the following
replacement step:
repeat
Find any view relation vi in e1
Replace the view relation vi by the expression defining vi
until no more view relations are present in e1
§ As long as the view definitions are not recursive, this loop will
terminate

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Update of a view
§ Add a new tuple to faculty view which we defined earlier

insert into faculty values (’30765’, ’Green’, ’Music’);

§ This insertion must be represented by the insertion of the tuple

(’30765’, ’Green’, ’Music’, null)

into the instructor relation

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Some Updates cannot be Translated Uniquely
§ create view instructor_info as
select ID, name, building
from instructor, department
where instructor.dept_name= department.dept_name;
§ insert into instructor_info values (’69987’, ’White’, ’Taylor’);
• which department, if multiple departments in Taylor?
• what if no department is in Taylor?
§ Most SQL implementations allow updates only on simple views
– The from clause has only one database relation.
– The select clause contains only attribute names of the relation,
and does not have any expressions, aggregates, or distinct
specification.
– Any attribute not listed in the select clause can be set to null
– The query does not have a group by or having clause.
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And Some Not at All
§ create view history_instructors as
select *
from instructor
where dept_name= ’History’;
§ What happens if we insert (’25566’, ’Brown’, ’Biology’,
100000) into history_instructors?

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Materialized Views
§ Materializing a view: create a physical table containing all
the tuples in the result of the query defining the view
§ If relations used in the query are updated, the materialized
view result becomes out of date
– Need to maintain the view, by updating the view whenever
the underlying relations are updated

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Transactions
§ Unit of work
§ Atomic transaction
– either fully executed or rolled back as if it never occurred
§ Isolation from concurrent transactions
§ Transactions begin implicitly
– Ended by commit work or rollback work
§ But default on most databases: each SQL statement commits
automatically
– Can turn off auto commit for a session (e.g. using API)
– In SQL:1999, can use: begin atomic …. end
• Not supported on most databases

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Integrity Constraints
§ Integrity constraints guard against accidental damage to the
database, by ensuring that authorized changes to the database
do not result in a loss of data consistency.
– A checking account must have a balance greater than
$10,000.00
– A salary of a bank employee must be at least $4.00 an hour
– A customer must have a (non-null) phone number

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Integrity Constraints on a Single Relation
§ not null
§ primary key
§ unique
§ check (P), where P is a predicate

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Not Null and Unique Constraints
§ not null
– Declare name and budget to be not null
name varchar(20) not null
budget numeric(12,2) not null
§ unique ( A1, A2, …, Am)
– The unique specification states that the attributes A1, A2,
… Am
form a candidate key.
– Candidate keys are permitted to be null (in contrast to
primary keys).

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The check clause
§ check (P)
– where P is a predicate
§ Example: ensure that semester is one of fall, winter, spring or
summer:
create table section (
course_id varchar (8), sec_id varchar (8), semester
varchar (6), year numeric (4,0), building varchar (15),
room_number varchar (7), time slot id varchar (4), primary
key (course_id, sec_id, semester, year),
check (semester in (’Fall’, ’Winter’, ’Spring’,
’Summer’)) );

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Referential Integrity
§ Ensures that a value that appears in one relation for a given
set of attributes also appears for a certain set of attributes in
another relation
– Example: If “Biology” is a department name appearing in
one of the tuples in the instructor relation, then there
exists a tuple in the department relation for “Biology”
§ Let A be a set of attributes. Let R and S be two relations that
contain attributes A and where A is the primary key of S. A is
said to be a foreign key of R if for any values of A appearing
in R these values also appear in S

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Cascading Actions in Referential Integrity

§ create table course (

course_id char(5) primary key,
title varchar(20),
dept_name varchar(20) references department
)
§ create table course (
…
dept_name varchar(20),
foreign key (dept_name) references department
on delete cascade
on update cascade,
...
)
§ alternative actions to cascade: set null, set default
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Integrity Constraint Violation During Transactions

§ Example:
create table person (
ID char(10),
name char(40),
mother char(10),
father char(10),
primary key ID,
foreign key father references person,
foreign key mother references person)
§ How to insert a tuple without causing constraint violation ?
– insert father and mother of a person before inserting person
– OR, set father and mother to null initially, update after inserting
all persons (not possible if father and mother attributes declared to
be not null)
– OR defer constraint checking (next slide)
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Complex Check Clauses
§ check (time_slot_id in (select time_slot_id from time_slot))
– why not use a foreign key here?
§ Every section has at least one instructor teaching the section.
– how to write this?
§ Unfortunately: subquery in check clause not supported by
pretty much any database
– Alternative: triggers (later)
§ create assertion <assertion-name> check <predicate>;
– Also not supported by anyone

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Built-in Data Types in SQL
§ date: Dates, containing a (4 digit) year, month and date
– Example: date ‘2005-7-27’
§ time: Time of day, in hours, minutes and seconds.
– Example: time ‘09:00:30’ time ‘09:00:30.75’
§ timestamp: date plus time of day
– Example: timestamp ‘2005-7-27 09:00:30.75’
§ interval: period of time
– Example: interval ‘1’ day
– Subtracting a date/time/timestamp value from another
gives an interval value
– Interval values can be added to date/time/timestamp
values
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Index Creation
§ create table student
(ID varchar (5),
name varchar (20) not null,
dept_name varchar (20),
tot_cred numeric (3,0) default 0,
primary key (ID))
§ create index studentID_index on student(ID)
§ Indices are data structures used to speed up access to records with
specified values for index attributes
– e.g. select *
from student
where ID = ‘12345’
can be executed by using the index to find the required record,
without looking at all records of student
A separate in-depth topic
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User-Defined Types
§ create type construct in SQL creates user-defined type

create type Dollars as numeric (12,2) final

– create table department

(dept_name varchar (20),
building varchar (15),
budget Dollars);

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Domains
§ create domain construct in SQL-92 creates user-defined
domain types

create domain person_name char(20) not null

§ Types and domains are similar. Domains can have constraints,

such as not null, specified on them.
§ create domain degree_level varchar(10)
constraint degree_level_test
check (value in (’Bachelors’, ’Masters’, ’Doctorate’));

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Large-Object Types
§ Large objects (photos, videos, CAD files, etc.) are stored as a
large object:
– blob: binary large object -- object is a large collection of
uninterpreted binary data (whose interpretation is left to an
application outside of the database system)
– clob: character large object -- object is a large collection of
character data
– When a query returns a large object, a pointer is returned
rather than the large object itself.

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Authorization
Forms of authorization on parts of the database:

§ Read - allows reading, but not modification of data.

§ Insert - allows insertion of new data, but not modification of
existing data.
§ Update - allows modification, but not deletion of data.
§ Delete - allows deletion of data.

Forms of authorization to modify the database schema

§ Index - allows creation and deletion of indices.
§ Resources - allows creation of new relations.
§ Alteration - allows addition or deletion of attributes in a relation.
§ Drop - allows deletion of relations.

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Authorization Specification in SQL
§ The grant statement is used to confer authorization
grant <privilege list>
on <relation name or view name> to <user list>
§ <user list> is:
– a user-id
– public, which allows all valid users the privilege granted
– A role (more on this later)
§ Granting a privilege on a view does not imply granting any
privileges on the underlying relations.
§ The grantor of the privilege must already hold the privilege on the
specified item (or be the database administrator).

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Privileges in SQL
§ select: allows read access to relation,or the ability to query
using the view
– Example: grant users U1, U2, and U3 select authorization
on the instructor relation:
grant select on instructor to U1, U2, U3
§ insert: the ability to insert tuples
§ update: the ability to update using the SQL update statement
§ delete: the ability to delete tuples.
§ all privileges: used as a short form for all the allowable
privileges

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Revoking Authorization in SQL
§ The revoke statement is used to revoke authorization.
revoke <privilege list>
on <relation name or view name> from <user list>
§ Example:
revoke select on branch from U1, U2, U3
§ <privilege-list> may be all to revoke all privileges the revokee may
hold.
§ If <revokee-list> includes public, all users lose the privilege except
those granted it explicitly.
§ If the same privilege was granted twice to the same user by
different grantees, the user may retain the privilege after the
revocation.
§ All privileges that depend on the privilege being revoked are also
revoked.
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Roles
§ create role instructor;
§ grant instructor to Amit;
§ Privileges can be granted to roles:
– grant select on takes to instructor;
§ Roles can be granted to users, as well as to other roles
– create role teaching_assistant
– grant teaching_assistant to instructor;
• Instructor inherits all privileges of teaching_assistant
§ Chain of roles
– create role dean;
– grant instructor to dean;
– grant dean to Satoshi;
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Authorization on Views
§ create view geo_instructor as
(select *
from instructor
where dept_name = ’Geology’);
§ grant select on geo_instructor to geo_staff
§ Suppose that a geo_staff member issues
– select *
from geo_instructor;
§ What if
– geo_staff does not have permissions on instructor?
– creator of view did not have some permissions on
instructor?

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Other Authorization Features
§ references privilege to create foreign key
– grant reference (dept_name) on department to Mariano;
– why is this required?
§ transfer of privileges
– grant select on department to Amit with grant option;
– revoke select on department from Amit, Satoshi cascade;
– revoke select on department from Amit, Satoshi restrict;
§ Etc. read Section 4.6 for more details we have omitted here.

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