Unit 1 – Week 1

Database Systems

Database Systems: What is Database Management Systems – Advantages of DBMS over File
Processing Systems – Introduction and Applications of DBMS – Purpose of Database System –
Views of Data.

Week 1
Learning Objectives:

1. Understand the definition of Database management system.

2. Learn the Advantages of File Processing system over the DBMS
3. Introduction and Applications of Database Systems
4. Know the Purposes of Database Systems
5. Elaborating the types of views in DBMS.

Key Topics
1.1 What is Database Management System?

1.1.1 Definition

1.1.2 Goals of DBMS

1.2 Advantages of DBMS over File Processing System
1.2.1 Drawbacks of File Processing System
1.3 Introduction and Application of DBMS
1.3.1 Enterprise Information
1.3.2 Banking and Finance
1.3.3 Universities
1.3.4 Airlines
1.3.5 Web based Services
1.3.6 Online advertisements
1.3.7 Document Database
1.3.8 Navigation system
1.4 Purposes of Database Management System
1.5 Views of Data
1.5.1 Physical view
1.5.2 Logical View
1.6 Summary

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1.1 What is Database Management
1.1.1 Definition
A database-management system (DBMS) is a collection of interrelated data and a set of programs to
access those data.
1.1.2 Goal of DBMS

 The basic purpose of a database management system (DBMS) is to provide a simple and
efficient mechanism to store and retrieve database information.
 The database is a collection of data that provides information relevant to a business or an
enterprise.
 Database management systems are made to handle massive amounts of data.
 Data management entails defining data storage structures as well as offering data
manipulation mechanisms.
 Furthermore, the database system must assure the security of the data saved, even if the
system crashes or efforts at illegal access are made.
 If data is to be shared among numerous users, the system must prevent unexpected outcomes.
 Computer scientists have developed a broad set of concepts and approaches for managing
data because it is so crucial in most enterprises.

1.2 Advantages of DBMS over File Processing System

1.2.1 Drawbacks of File Processing System

 Data redundancy and inconsistency:

• Because the files and application programs are created by different programmers throughout
time, the files and programs are likely to have varied structures, and the programs may be
written in a variety of programming languages. Furthermore, the same data may appear in
multiple places (files).
• It may also result in data inconsistency, in which different versions of the same data no longer
agree.

 Difficulty in accessing data:

• The retrieval of needed data in a convenient and fast manner is not possible in traditional file-
processing environments. For wide use, more responsive data-retrieval systems are required.

 Data isolation:
• It's challenging to write new application programs to retrieve necessary data because data is
distributed over multiple files and files may be in different formats.

 Integrity problems:
Certain consistency criteria must be met by the data values contained in the database.

 Atomicity Problems:
– Failures may leave database in an inconsistent state with partial updates carried out

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 –
Example: Transfer of funds from one account to another should either complete or
not happen at all
 Concurrent Access by Multiple users:

 Performance necessitates concurrent access.

 Concurrent accesses that are not controlled can result in inconsistencies.
 For example, two persons reading a balance (say 100) and updating it at the same time by
taking money (say 50 each).
 Security Problems:
 Not every database system user should have access to all of the data. Payroll workers, for
example, at a university, only need access to the financial data section of the database. They
don't need to know about their academic records. However, imposing such security
requirements is difficult since application applications are introduced to the file-processing
system on an ad hoc basis.
These difficulties, among others, prompted both the initial development of
Database systems and the transition of file-based applications to database systems, back in the
1960s and 1970s.

1.3Introduction and Application of DBMS

The first database systems appeared in the 1960s in reaction to the computerization of commercial
data management. When compared to modern database applications, the previous programs were
quite simple. Highly sophisticated, global organizations are examples of modern applications.
All database programs, old and new, have a few key features in common. The facts themselves,
rather than a software executing a calculation, are the most important component of the application.
Database systems are used to manage data sets that are:
• Extremely valuable,
• Relatively large, and
• Frequently accessed by various users and applications.
Only simple, carefully formatted, structured data was used in the initial database applications. Data
with complicated linkages and a more varied structure can now be found in database applications.
Consider the records of a university's courses, students, and course registration as an example of a
structured data application.

1.3.1 Enterprise Information

-Sales: For customer, product, and purchase information.

 Accounting: For payments, receipts, account balances, assets, and other accounting
information.
 Human resources: For information about employees, salaries, payroll taxes, and
Benefits, and for generation of paychecks.
 Manufacturing: For supply chain management, including tracking item production in
factories, inventories in warehouses and retail, and orders for items.

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 1.3.2 Banking and Finance

 Banking: For customer information, accounts, loans, and banking transactions.

 Credit card transactions: For purchases on credit cards and generation of monthly
statements.
 Finance: For storing information on stock and bond holdings, sales, and purchases, as well
as real-time market data to allow consumers to trade online and for the firm to trade
automatically

1.3.3 Universities
In addition to normal corporate information such as human resources and accounting, student
information, course registrations, and grades are stored.

1.3.4 Airlines
 Airlines: For reservations and schedule information. Airlines were among the first
to use databases in a geographically distributed manner.
 Telecommunication: For keeping records of calls, texts, and data usage, generating monthly
bills, maintaining balances on prepaid calling cards, and storing information about the
communication networks.

1.3.5 Web based Services

 Social media: Users' records, relationships between users (such as friend/follower
information), user posts, rating/like information about postings, and so on are all kept in
social media.
 Online retailers: For keeping sales data and orders in the same way that any store would, but
also for tracking a user's product views, search keywords, and other activities in order to
offer the best things to that user.

1.3.6 Online advertisements

To allow targeted adverts, product suggestions, news articles, and other online advertisements,
click history is kept. When people conduct a web search, make an online purchase, or visit a
social networking site, they are interacting with such databases.

1.3.7 Document Database

For maintaining collections of new articles, patents, published research papers, etc.

1.3.8 Navigation system

For maintaining the locations of varies places of interest along with the exact routes of roads, train
systems, buses, etc.

1.4 Purposes of Database Management System

 Consider being a part of a university institution that maintains data on all teachers, students,
departments, and course offers, among other things. Operating-system files are one technique to

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 keep data on a computer.
 The system includes a number of application applications that edit files to allow users to
manipulate the data, such as programs to:
 Students, instructors, and courses can all be added.
 Create class rosters by registering students for courses.
 Assign grades to students, compute GPAs, and create transcripts.
 The university's needs are met by programmers who create these application programs. As and
when the need arises, new application programs are added to the system. Consider the case of a
university creating a new major.

– As a result, the institution forms a new department and adds information to existing
permanent files to record information about all of the department's teachers, students in that
major, course offerings, degree requirements, and so on.
– To comply with requirements related to the new major, the university may need to create
new application programs. To accommodate new university policies, new application
programs may need to be built. As a result, the system accumulates more files and
application programs over time.

1.5 Views of Data

A database system is made up of a collection of interconnected data and a set of tools that allow
users to access and edit that data.
A database system's primary goal is to give users a high-level overview of the data.
That is, the system conceals some aspects of data storage and management.
Data Abstraction
• It must be able to obtain data quickly in order for the system to be useful. Database system
developers have used complicated data structures to describe data in databases due to the
necessity for efficiency.
• Developers hide the complexity from users through many levels of data abstraction to simplify
users' interactions with the system, because many database-system users are not computer
trained:
– Physical level
– Logical level
– View level

• Three levels of Data Abstraction

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 1.5.1 Physical Level

 On a physical level the lowest level of abstraction describes the actual storage of data. The
physical level goes into great detail about complicated low-level data structures.

1.5.2 Logical Level

 The next level of abstraction explains what data is stored in the database and how those data are
related to one another. As a result, the logical level explains the entire database in terms of a small
number of very straightforward structures.
 Although the logical level's implementation of basic structures may involve complicated physical-
level structures, the logical level's user does not need to be aware of this complexity.
 Physical data independence is the term for this. The logical level of abstraction is used by
database managers when deciding what information to keep in the database.

View Level
• Only a fraction of the database is described at the greatest level of abstraction. Despite the
fact that the logical level employs simpler structures, the variety of data stored in a large
database adds to the complexity.
• Many database system customers don't want all of this data; instead, they merely require
access to a portion of the database. The view abstraction level was created to make their
interaction with the system easier. For a single database, the system may provide multiple
views.

1.6 Summary
This unit summarizes about the definition of database systems and goal of DBMS. Practical
Applications of DBMS and the drawbacks of File Processing system is given clearly. The

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 content helps the reader to improve the data abstraction and views of Data.

Questions and Exercises

1. Define Database Management System
2. List the drawbacks of File Processing System over
DBMS.
3. Write some applications of Database system
4. Give the Purposes of database system
5. Draw and explain the types of views in DBMS

References
[1] Abraham Silberschatz, Henry F. Korth, S. Sudharshan, (2011),“Database System Concepts”,
Sixth Edition, Tata McGraw Hill

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