Database Systems

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 Key Terms cont.
• Database System
– A database, a database management
system and appropriate hardware and
personnel.

number,
Designation
Hours
worked, Pay
rate
Insurance,
Pension

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Database System: Hardware

• Set of physical devices on which a

database resides. It consists of one
or more computers, disk drives, CRT
terminals, printers, tape drives,
connecting cables and other
auxiliary and connecting hardware.

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Database System: Hardware cont.
Printer TAPE
TAPE

Client

Server
Client
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Database System: Software
• A database software includes two types of
software
– General-purpose database management
software, usually called the database
management system (DBMS)
– Application software that uses DBMS facilities
to manipulate the database to achieve a specific
business function, such as providing reports or
documents, which can be used by users.

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Database System: Software cont.
• Application software is generally written standard
programming language such as C, or it may be
written in a language (commonly called a fourth-
generation language) supplied with the DBMS.
• These programs utilise the command language of
the DBMS and make use of the information
contained in the data dictionary.

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Database System: Software cont.
• User Interface
– Language, menus and other facilities by which users
interact with various system components, such as
application programs, the DBMS
• Computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools
– Automated tools used to design databases and
application programs.

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Data Dictionary/Directory
(Repository)
• A subsystem that keeps track of the
– definitions of all data items in the database.
– relationships that exists between various data
structures.
– indexes that are used to access data quickly.
– screen and report format definitions that may
be used by various application programs.

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 Data Dictionary
• Definitions of data items in the database
includes:
– Elementary-level data items (fields),
– group and record-level data structures, and
– files or relational tables.

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Metadata
• Data that describe the properties or
characteristics of other data.
• Some of these properties include data definitions,
data structures and rules or constraints. Item
name, the data type, length, minimum and
maximum allowable values (where appropriate)
and a brief description of each data item.
• Metadata allow database designers and users to
understand what data exist, what the data mean.
• Data without clear meaning can be confusing,
misinterpreted or erroneous.
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Metadata
E.g.
Data Item Value
Name Type Length Min Max Description
Name Character 30 Employee Name
ID Number 9 Employee No.
Dept Character 10 Dept. No.
Age Integer 2 18 60 Employee Age

Name Character 15 Dept. Name

Manager Number 9 Mgr. Emp. No.

Employee No. (ID) unique

Manager is an employee of the organisation
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Database System: People
• Two different types of people (users and
practitioners) are concerned with the
database.
Users
– who need information from the database to
carry out their primary business
responsibility
e.g. Executives, managers, staff, clerical
personnel
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Database System: People cont.
Practitioners
– people responsible for the database system
and its associated application software.
e.g. Database administrators, analysts,
programmers, database and system designers,
information systems managers.

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Components of a Database System
Four components: People, H/W, S/W, Data
• Practitioners (analysts and database
designers) in consultation with users
identify data needs and design database
structures to accommodate these needs.
• The database structures are specified to
the DBMS through the data dictionary.

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Components of a DBS cont.
• Users enter data into the system by following
specified procedures.
• The entered data are maintained on hardware
media such as disks and tapes.
• Application programmes that access the database
are written by practitioners and users to be run
on computers.

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Components of a DBS cont.
Application
Program DATA
Application DICTIONARY/
Analyst Program DIRECTORY
Application
Program

DBMS DATA
BASE
Terminals
Computer
User PRINTER

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 Key Terms cont.
• Database Management System
– Systems software that facilitates the
management of a database.
E.g. Oracle, Access, SQL Server

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Database Management System
(DBMS)
• DBMS
– An application software that
organises data into records in one
or more databases and allows
organising, accessing and sorting
of the data in a variety of formats.

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DBMS cont.
• Relational DBMS
– Most common type of DBMS.
Data elements are stored in
different tables made up of rows
and columns. Relates data in
different tables through the use
of common data element(s).

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 Components of a DBMS
DBMS DATA
DICTIONARY/
Data Dictionary/ DIRECTORY
USER User Query and Directory
Reporting Subsystem
Facilities
Security and
Application Integrity
Program Subsystem
Development
Facilities Database Access
USER Subsystem DATA
BASE

PROGRAMMER PROGRAMMER

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 Data Security
• The database is a valuable resource
needing protection.
• The DBMS provides database security by
limiting access to the database to
authorised personnel.
• Authorised users will generally be
restricted as to the particular data they
can access and whether they can update it.

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 Data Security
• Access is often controlled by passwords
and by data views, which are definitions
of restricted portions of the database.

3
1 2 4

Data items
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 Data Integrity
• The integrity and consistency of the
database are protected via constraints on
values that data items can have and by
backup and recovery capabilities
provided within the DBMS.
• Data constraint definitions are
maintained in the data dictionary.

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 Data Integrity
• Backup and recovery are supported by
software that automatically logs changes
to the database and provides for a means
of recovering the current state of the
database in case of system failure.

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 Concurrent Data Access
• One of the chief functions of the DBMS
is to support the access, retrieval and
update of data in the database.
• The DBMS provides the physical
mechanisms allowing multiple users to
access a variety of related data quickly
and efficiently.

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User-Oriented Data Manipulation
• DBMS provides user-oriented data
manipulation tools.
• Easy-to-use query languages allow users
to formulate queries and request one-
time reports directly from the database.
• Often query languages will contain
facilities to format the results of queries
as reports.

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 Data Manipulation
• Report generators have more powerful
reporting facilities than those in the
query language.

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 Application Development
• The DBMS commonly provides
significant assistance to the application
programmer.
– Tools for screen, menu and report
generation
– application generators
– compilers
– data and view definition facilities

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 Application Development
• Modern database systems provide
language components that are much
more powerful than those of traditional
languages, making the programming
process itself considerably more efficient.
– Developer 2000/PowerBuilder for Oracle
– Visual Basic for Microsoft SQL server

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 Database Applications
Databases range from those for a
single user with a desktop computer
to those on mainframe computers
with thousands of users.
• Personal databases
• Workgroup databases
• Departmental databases
• Enterprise databases
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 Personal Computer Databases
Designed to support one user with a
standard alone PC.
E.g. a sales person keeping track of
this customer information with
contact details.

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 Workgroup Databases
A relatively small team of people (less
than 25) who collaborate on the
same project or application.
E.g. a software development team
maintaining a list of software
objects.

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 Department Databases
A department is a functional unit of an
organisation. It is larger than a
workgroup.
Department databases are designed to
support the various functions and
activities of a department.
E.g. a personnel database that is designed to
track data concerning employees, jobs,
skills and job assignments.

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 Enterprise Databases
An enterprise is one whose scope is the
entire organisation or enterprise.
Such databases are intended to support
organisation-wide operations and
decision making.
E.g. a large health care organisation that
operates a group of medical centre's
including hospitals, clinics and nursing
homes.

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 Enterprise Databases cont.
An enterprise database does support
information needs from many
departments. The most important
type of enterprise database today is
called a data warehouse.
• Data warehouse
– An integrated decision support database
whose content is derived from the various
operational databases.

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Database Environment
Marketing
Accounting
Sales Advertising
Accounts Accounts
Receivable Payable

Accounting

Corporate Database Purchasing

Marketing
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 3 Level ANSI/SPARC
Architecture
• Made databases more independent of
application
• Became a standard for the organisation
of DBMS

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 3 Levels
• External
– User’s and Application’s view of data
• Conceptual
– Logical Data Model
• Physical
– Physical data Model

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• External (Sub) Schema
– defines the external view of data
as seen by a user or program
• Conceptual Schema
– defines the logical view of data
as seen by all users and programs
• Physical (Internal) Schema
– defines the physical view of data
as seen by a DBMS
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 3 Level Architecture
user a user i/program j program x

sub-schema a sub-schema i sub-schema z

conceptual schema

physical schema

Databa
ses
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 Physical View
• The DBMS must know
– exact physical location
– precise physical structure database

Employee record
A.B.C. De Silva |222, Galle Road, Colombo |
Name (20 characters) Address (40 characters)

650370690V|Senior Lecturer
NID (10 char) Designation (15 char)

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 Physical View
• Physical view provides the disk drives,
physical addresses, indexes and pointers.
• Physical Database Design is the
responsibility of the Database
Administrator (DBA). No user is concerned
with this view.
• Physical devices to contain the data
• Access methods to retrieve and update data
• maintain and improve database performance

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 Logical View
• The user/application must
know
database
– existence
– logical reference Employee

NID 650370690V Name A.B.C. De Silva

Designation Senior Lecturer

Address 222, Galle Road, Colombo

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 Logical View
• This is a single logical description of all
data elements and their relationships.
• It is the result of the conceptual design
which involves analysis of all users
information needs and data definition
of data items needs to meet them.
• SQL CREATE TABLE statement is
used to define the data elements.

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 External View
• The user/application see
– authorised data
– own format database

Lecturer
Name A.B.C. De Silva

Department Dept. of Computer Science

Designation Senior Lecturer Age 35

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 External View
• This consists of user views of the
database.
• Each definable user group will have its
own view of the database.
• Each of these views gives a user-
oriented description of the data
elements and relationships of which the
view is composed.

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User View
• A logical description of some portion of
the database that is required by a user
to perform some task.
E.g. Benefit application user will view
part of the employee data, excluding
data such as date of birth and salary.

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 External View
• It can be derived directly from the
conceptual schema.
• The collection of all user views is the
external level.
• SQL CREATE VIEW statement is
used to create these views and SQL
GRANT statement is used to restrict
its use to a user group.

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 External View cont.
• External Views Allows to
– hide unauthorised data
e.g. salary, dob
– provide user view
e.g. view employee name, designation,
department data taken from employee and
department files
– derive new attributes
e.g. age derived from dob or nid

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 External View cont.
• External Views Allows to
– change unit of measurement
e.g. show age in years or months
– define security levels
e.g. update access to employee file
read-only to department file

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 Mapping between Levels
• DBMS map or translate from one level
to another.
External  Conceptual
Conceptual  Physical
• Database exists in reality only at the
internal level.

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 DML/SQL
user a user i/program j program x

sub-schema a sub-schema i sub-schema z

SDDL
conceptual schema DDL

physical schema
Practitioners:
Databa DBA
Users ses
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 Practitioners:DBA
• Data Definition Language (DDL)
- is the language component of a DBMS
that defines each data element as it
appears in the database.

• Sub-Schema Data Definition Language

(SDDL)
- is the language component of a DBMS
that defines data elements as it should
appear to the end users and
programmers.
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 User

• Data Manipulation Language (DML)

- is a language associated with a DBMS
that is employed by end users and
programmers to manipulate data in the
database.

• Structured Query Language (SQL)

- pronounced as sequel, is the standard
data manipulation for relational
DBMSs.

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Characteristics of Early DBMS

• Centralised Storage Management

• Transaction Management
• Recovery Facilities
• System Maintained Access Paths

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Characteristics of Modern DBMS
• Query processing and optimisation
• Transaction management
• Concurrency control
• Database recovery
• Database security and authorisation
• Distributed databases
• Data warehousing and data mining

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 Function of a DBMS
Functions of a DBMS are concerned with
providing efficient flexible data processing
capabilities without compromising data
validity.
Main Functions are:
– Shared data
– Control redundancy
– Data integrity
– Data security
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 Capabilities of a DBMS

Capabilities vary considerable, but basic

operations are:
• Data definition
• Data entry
• Data manipulation
• Data display

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Database Approach
Advantages
• Program-data independence
• Minimal data redundancy
• Improved data consistency
• Improved data sharing
• Increased productivity of application
development
• Enforcement of standards
• Improved data quality
• Improved data accessibility and responsiveness
• Reduced program maintenance
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Program-Data/Data Independence
• The separation of data descriptions
(metadata) from the application programs
that use the data.

In the database approach data descriptions

are stored in a central location called the
data dictionary. This property allows an
organisation’s data to change and evolve
(within limits) without changing the
application program that process the data.
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Minimal Data Redundancy
• Data files are integrated into a single,
logical structure. Each primary fact is
recorded (ideally) in only one place in the
database.
E.g. Employee data not with the payroll and
benefit files.
Note: Data redundancy is not eliminated
entirely. Some data items will appear in
more than one place (e.g. employee no.) to
represent the relationship with others.
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Improved Data Consistency
• By eliminating (or controlling) data
redundancy, we greatly reduce the
opportunities for inconsistency.
E.g. employee address is stored only once
and hence we cannot have disagreement
on the stored values.
• Also, updating data values is greatly
simplified and have avoid the wasted
storage space.

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Improved Data Sharing
• A database is designed as a shared
corporate resource. Authorised users
are granted permission to use the
database, and each user (or group of
users) is provided one or more user
views to facilitate this use.
E.g. employee data common to payroll,
benefit applications will be shared
among different users.

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Increased Productivity of
Application Development
• A major advantage of the database
approach is that it greatly reduces the
cost and time for developing new
business applications.
– Programmer could concentrate on the
specific functions required for the new
application, without having to worry about
design or low-level implementation details;
as related data have already been designed
and implemented.
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Increased Productivity of
Application Development cont.
– DBMS provides a number of high-level
productivity tools such as forms and report
generations and high-level languages that
automate some of the activities of database
design and implementation.

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Enforcement of Standards
– When the database approach is implemented
with full management support, the database
administration function should be granted
single-point authority and responsibility for
establishing and enforcing data standards.
– Standards include naming conventions, data
quality standards and uniform procedures for
accessing, updating and protecting data.
– Powerful set of tools for developing and
enforcing these standards are available for some
DBMS.
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Improved Data Quality
A number of tools and processes are available to
improve data quality.
– Database designers can specify integrity
constraints that are enforced by the DBMS.
– One of the objectives of a data warehouse
environment is to clean up operational data
before they are placed in the data warehouse.

Constraint
A rule that cannot be violated by database users.

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Improved Data Accessibility
and Responsiveness
With relational database, end users without
programming experience can often retrieve and
display data, even when it crosses traditional
departmental boundaries.

– English-like query language SQL and query

tools such as Query-By-Example provide such
facilities.

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Reduced Program
Maintenance
Stored data are changed frequently for
variety of reasons such as new data items
types are added, and data formats change
(e.g. date format from two-digit to four
digit).
Data independence allows to reduce the
program maintenance time.

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 Database Approach
Disadvantages
• DBMS are more vulnerable than file-based
system because of the centralised nature of
a large integrated database.
• If a failure occurs the recovery process is
more complex and some times may results
in lost transactions.
• Hardware, software and personnel cost are
higher for DBMS.

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