CSE306: Database

Systems
Lecture 1
 Outline
▪ Database-System Applications
▪ Purpose of Database Systems
▪ View of Data
▪ Database Languages
▪ Database Design
 Database Systems
▪ DBMS contains information about a particular enterprise
• Collection of interrelated data
• Set of programs to access the data
• An environment that is both convenient and efficient to use
▪ Database systems are used to manage collections of data that are:
• Highly valuable
• Relatively large
• Accessed by multiple users and applications, often at the same
time.
▪ A modern database system is a complex software system whose task is
to manage a large, complex collection of data.
▪ Databases touch all aspects of our lives
 Database Applications Examples
▪ Enterprise Information
• Sales: customers, products, purchases
• Accounting: payments, receipts, assets
• Human Resources: Information about employees, salaries, payroll
taxes.
▪ Manufacturing: management of production, inventory, orders, supply
chain.
▪ Banking and finance
• customer information, accounts, loans, and banking transactions.
• Credit card transactions
• Finance: sales and purchases of financial instruments (e.g., stocks
and bonds; storing real-time market data
▪ Universities: registration, grades
 Database Applications Examples (Cont.)
▪ Airlines: reservations, schedules
▪ Telecommunication: records of calls, texts, and data usage, generating
monthly bills, maintaining balances on prepaid calling cards
▪ Web-based services
• Online retailers: order tracking, customized recommendations
• Online advertisements
▪ Document databases
▪ Navigation systems: For maintaining the locations of various places of
interest along with the exact routes of roads, train systems, buses, etc.
 Purpose of Database Systems
In the early days, database applications were built directly on top of file
systems, which leads to:
▪ Data redundancy and inconsistency: data is stored in multiple file
formats resulting in 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 “buried”
in program code rather than being stated explicitly
• Hard to add new constraints or change existing ones
 Purpose of Database Systems (Cont.)
▪ Atomicity of updates
• Failures may leave database in an inconsistent state with partial
updates carried out
• Example: 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
▪ Ex: Two people reading a balance (say 100) and updating it by
withdrawing money (say 50 each) at the same time
▪ Security problems
• Hard to provide user access to some, but not all, data
Database systems offer solutions to all the above problems
 University Database Example
▪ In this text we will be using a university database to illustrate all the
concepts
▪ Data consists of information about:
• Students
• Instructors
• Classes
• Courses
▪ Application program examples:
• Add new students, instructors, and courses
• Register students for courses, and generate class rosters
• Assign grades to students, compute grade point averages (GPA) and
generate transcripts
 View of Data
▪ A database system is a collection of interrelated data and a set of
programs that allow users to access and modify these data.
▪ A major purpose of a database system is to provide users with an abstract
view of the data.
• Data models
▪ A collection of conceptual tools for describing data, data
relationships, data semantics, and consistency constraints.
• Data abstraction
▪ Hide the complexity of data structures to represent data in the
database from users through several levels of data abstraction.
 Data Models
▪ A collection of tools for describing
• Data
• Data relationships
• Data semantics
• Data constraints
• Example:
▪ Relational model
▪ Entity-Relationship data model (mainly for database design)
▪ Object-based data models (Object-oriented and Object-relational)
▪ Semi-structured data model (XML)
 Relational Model

▪ All the data is stored in various tables.

Rows

Ted Codd
Turing Award 1981
A Sample Relational Database
 Levels of Abstraction
▪ Physical level: describes how a record (e.g., instructor) is stored.
▪ Logical level: describes data stored in database, and the relationships
among the data.
type instructor = record
ID : string;
name : string;
dept_name : string;
salary : integer;
end;
▪ View level: application programs hide details of data types. Views can
also hide information (such as an employee’s salary) for security
purposes.
 View of Data
An architecture for a database system
 Instances and Schemas
▪ Similar to types and variables in programming languages
▪ Logical Schema – the overall logical structure of the database
• Example: The database consists of information about a set of
customers and accounts in a bank and the relationship between them
▪ Analogous to type information of a variable in a program
▪ Physical schema – the overall physical structure of the database
▪ Instance – the actual content of the database at a particular point in time
• Analogous to the value of a variable
 Data Definition Language (DDL)
▪ Specification notation for defining the database schema
Example:create table instructor (
ID char(5),
name varchar(20),
dept_name varchar(20),
salary numeric(8,2))
▪ DDL compiler generates a set of table templates stored in a data
dictionary
▪ Data dictionary contains metadata (i.e., data about data)
• Database schema
• Integrity constraints
▪ Primary key (ID uniquely identifies instructors)
• Authorization
▪ Who can access what
 Data Manipulation Language (DML)
▪ Language for accessing and updating the data organized by the
appropriate data model
• DML also known as query language
▪ There are basically two types of data-manipulation language
• Procedural DML -- require a user to specify what data are needed
and how to get those data.
• Declarative DML -- require a user to specify what data are needed
without specifying how to get those data.
▪ Declarative DMLs are usually easier to learn and use than are procedural
DMLs.
▪ Declarative DMLs are also referred to as non-procedural DMLs
▪ The portion of a DML that involves information retrieval is called a query
language.
 SQL Query Language
▪ SQL query language is nonprocedural. A query takes as input several
tables (possibly only one) and always returns a single table.
▪ Example to find all instructors in Comp. Sci. dept
select name
from instructor
where dept_name = 'Comp. Sci.'
▪ SQL is NOT a Turing machine equivalent language
▪ To be able to compute complex functions SQL is usually embedded in
some higher-level language
▪ 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 Design
The process of designing the general structure of the database:
▪ Logical Design – Deciding on the database schema. Database design
requires that we find a “good” collection of relation schemas.
• Business decision – What attributes should we record in the
database?
• Computer Science decision – What relation schemas should we
have and how should the attributes be distributed among the various
relation schemas?
▪ Physical Design – Deciding on the physical layout of the database
 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.
 Database Administrator
A person who has central control over the system is called a database
administrator (DBA). Functions of a DBA include:
▪ Schema definition
▪ Storage structure and access-method definition
▪ Schema and physical-organization modification
▪ Granting of authorization for data access
▪ Routine maintenance
▪ Periodically backing up the database
▪ Ensuring that enough free disk space is available for normal
operations, and upgrading disk space as required
▪ Monitoring jobs running on the database
End of Lecture 1