Chapter 1: Introduction

Database System Concepts, 7th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
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 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 System Concepts - 7th Edition 1.4 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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 varies places of
interest along with the exact routes of roads, train systems, buses, etc.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 1.5 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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 induplication 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

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 1.6 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 1.7 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 View of Data

An architecture for a database system

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 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

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 Physical Data Independence

 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.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 1.13 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Data Models
 A collection of tools for describing
• Data
• Data relationships
• Data semantics
• Data constraints
 Relational model
 Entity-Relationship data model (mainly for database design)
 Object-based data models (Object-oriented and Object-relational)
 Semi-structured data model (XML)
 Other older models:
• Network model
• Hierarchical model

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 1.14 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Data Models

 [Link] key
 [Link] Constraints
 3. NOT NULL
 4. Foreign Key

Create table student(

Id varchar2(13),
Name varchar(20) NOT NULL,
Cgpa number,
Primary key (id),
Check (cgpa>=0.0)
);

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 1.15 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Relational Model

 All the data is stored in various tables.

 Example of tabular data in the relational model

Columns

Rows

Ted Codd
Turing Award 1981

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 A Sample Relational Database

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 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

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 1.18 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Data Definition Language (DDL)

DDL is a set of SQL commands used to create, modify, and delete

database structures but not data. These commands are normally not
used by a general user.
DDL -> CREATE, ALTER, DROP, TURNCATE, RENAME.
Integrity constraints
Integrity constraints are the set of predefined rules that are used to
maintain the quality of information.
 Types of Integrity Constraints:
• Domain Constraints
• Not-Null Constraints
• Entity integrity Constraints
• Key Constraints
• Primary Key Constrains
• Referential integrity constraints

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 1.19 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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.

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 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

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 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

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 Design Approaches

 Normalization Theory (Chapter 8)

 Formalize what designs are bad, and test for them
 Entity Relationship Model (Chapter 7)
 Models an enterprise as a collection of entities and relationships
 Entity: a “thing” or “object” in the enterprise that is
distinguishable from other objects
– Described by a set of attributes
 Relationship: an association among several entities
 Represented diagrammatically by an entity-relationship diagram:

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 The Entity-Relationship Model

 Models an enterprise as a collection of entities and relationships

 Entity: a “thing” or “object” in the enterprise that is distinguishable
from other objects
 Described by a set of attributes
 Relationship: an association among several entities
 Represented diagrammatically by an entity-relationship diagram:

What happened to dept_name of instructor and student?

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 Object-Relational Data Models

 Relational model: flat, “atomic” values

 Object Relational Data Models
 Extend the relational data model by including object orientation
and constructs to deal with added data types.
 Allow attributes of tuples to have complex types, including non-
atomic values such as nested relations.
 Preserve relational foundations, in particular the declarative
access to data, while extending modeling power.
 Provide upward compatibility with existing relational languages.

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 Storage Manager
 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 OS file manager
• Efficient storing, retrieving and updating of data
 The storage manager components include:
• Authorization and integrity manager
• Transaction manager
• File manager
• Buffer manager

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 Storage Manager (Cont.)
 The storage manager implements several data structures as part of the
physical system implementation:
• Data files -- store the database itself
• Data dictionary -- stores metadata about the structure of the
database, in particular the schema of the database.
• Indices -- can provide fast access to data items. A database index
provides pointers to those data items that hold a particular value.
 Issues:
• Storage access
• File organization
• Indexing and hashing

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 Components of Storage Manager

 Authorization and integrity manager

 which tests for the satisfaction of integrity constraints and checks
the authority of users to access data.
 Transaction manager
 which ensures that the database remains in a consistent (correct)
state despite system failures, and that concurrent transaction
executions proceed without conflicting.
 File manager,
 which manages the allocation of space on disk storage and the
data structures used to represent information stored on disk.
 Buffer manager
 which is responsible for fetching data from disk storage into main
memory, and deciding what data to cache in main memory.

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 Query Processor

 The query processor components include:

• DDL interpreter -- interprets DDL statements and records the
definitions in the data dictionary.
• DML compiler -- translates DML statements in a query language into
an evaluation plan consisting of low-level instructions that the query
evaluation engine understands.
 The DML compiler performs query optimization; that is, it picks the
lowest cost evaluation plan from among the various alternatives.
• Query evaluation engine -- executes low-level instructions generated
by the DML compiler.

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 Query Processing

1. Parsing and translation

2. Optimization
3. Evaluation

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 Query Processing (Cont.)
 Alternative ways of evaluating a given query
 Equivalent expressions
 Different algorithms for each operation
 Cost difference between a good and a bad way of evaluating a query can
be enormous
 Need to estimate the cost of operations
 Depends critically on statistical information about relations which the
database must maintain
 Need to estimate statistics for intermediate results to compute cost of
complex expressions

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 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.

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 Database Users and Administrators

Database

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 Database Administrator
 Schema definition.
 The DBA creates the original database schema by executing a set
of data definition statements in the DDL.
 Storage structure and access-method definition.
 Schema and physical-organization modification.
 The DBA carries out changes to the schema and physical
organization to reflect the changing needs of the organization, or
to alter the physical organization to improve performance.
 Granting of authorization for data access
 By granting different types of authorization, the database
administrator can regulate which parts of the database various
users can access
 Routine maintenance

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 Two and Three-tier Database Systems

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 Database System Internals

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 Database Architecture

The architecture of a database systems is greatly influenced by

the underlying computer system on which the database is running:
 Centralized
 Client-server
 Parallel (multi-processor)
 Distributed

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 History of Database Systems

 1950s and early 1960s:

• Data processing using magnetic tapes for storage
 Tapes provided only sequential access

• Punched cards for input

 Late 1960s and 1970s:
• Hard disks allowed direct access to data
• Network and hierarchical data models in widespread use
• Ted Codd defines the relational data model
 Would win the ACM Turing Award for this work
 IBM Research begins System R prototype
 UC Berkeley (Michael Stonebraker) begins Ingres prototype
 Oracle releases first commercial relational database

• High-performance (for the era) transaction processing

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 History of Database Systems (Cont.)

 1980s:
• Research relational prototypes evolve into commercial systems
 SQL becomes industrial standard
• Parallel and distributed database systems
 Wisconsin, IBM, Teradata
• Object-oriented database systems
 1990s:
• Large decision support and data-mining applications
• Large multi-terabyte data warehouses
• Emergence of Web commerce

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 1.39 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 History of Database Systems (Cont.)

 2000s
• Big data storage systems
 Google BigTable, Yahoo PNuts, Amazon,
 “NoSQL” systems.
• Big data analysis: beyond SQL
 Map reduce and friends
 2010s
• SQL reloaded
 SQL front end to Map Reduce systems
 Massively parallel database systems
 Multi-core main-memory databases

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 End of Chapter 1

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 1.41 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan