Lecture 3:

Relational Databases/Working
with MySQL

Bhuban Khatiwada
bhuban.khatiwada@iic.edu.np

CC4057 Introduction to Information Systems

Contents
• constraints (continued..)
• MySQL comparison and logical operators
• data dictionary

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Recap
• Constraints are used to specify rules for the data in a table
• Constraints are used to limit the type of data that can go into a table ensuring the
accuracy and reliability of the data
• Primary key - column which uniquely identifies each row in the table
• Foreign key - column which refers to the primary key in another table, relates two
tables

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Constraints
• Some other useful constraints in MySQL are:
Constraint Use
UNIQUE Ensure that all the values in a column are
unique/different
NOT NULL Ensure that a column cannot have a NULL value

DEFAULT Set a default value for a column when no value

• NULL values represent missing unknownisdataspecified

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Auto Increment
• Auto-increment allows a unique number to be generated automatically when a
new record is inserted into a table
• By default, the starting value for AUTO_INCREMENT is 1, and it will increment by 1
for each new record
• Useful for generating a unique primary key for each new record inserted into a
table

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Example
CREATE DATABASE college;
USE college;

CREATE TABLE groups (groupID INT PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT,

name VARCHAR(2) UNIQUE,
profile VARCHAR(20) DEFAULT "IT");
CREATE TABLE students (studentID INT PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT,
name VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL,
DOB DATE NOT NULL,
groupID INT,
FOREIGN KEY (groupID) REFERENCES groups

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Example column names

INSERT INTO groups (name,profile) VALUES ('C1','computing');

INSERT INTO groups (name,profile) VALUES ('C2','computing');
INSERT INTO groups (name,profile) VALUES
('N1','networking');
INSERT INTO groups (name,profile) VALUES
('N2','networking');
INSERT INTO groups (name) VALUES ('N3'); value for profile not given, so default
value will be used
INSERT INTO groups (profile,name) VALUES
('multimedia','M1');
auto incremented field is not needed to be specified in the insert
statements
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Example
INSERT INTO students (DOB,name,groupID) VALUES ("1997-02-11",
"Jeff",1);
INSERT INTO students (DOB,name,groupID) VALUES ("1998-05-11",
"Anna",2);
INSERT INTO students (name,DOB,groupID) VALUES ("Jack","1998-05-11",
3);
INSERT INTO students (name,DOB,groupID) VALUES ("Mark","1996-10-1",
4);
INSERT INTO students (name,DOB,groupID) VALUES ("Ben","1996-1-1",3);
INSERT INTO students VALUES ("","Kate","1997-09-22",1);
inserting a row without specifying columns, put
empty string value for auto incremented field
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Example
• while inserting date always write date in
the format YY-MM-DD and put inside
quotations
• another useful data type is timestamp
which is used to insert the current date
and time

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SQL – WHERE Clause
• The WHERE clause is used to extract only those records that fulfill a specified
criteria
• Used to filter/search data
SELECT column_name, column_name FROM table_name WHERE
column_name operator value;

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SQL – Operators
Arithmetic Comparison Logical
Operators Operators Operators

+, -, *, /, % AND, OR,
=,<=,>=, !=, NOT,
<, > BETWEEN,
IN, LIKE

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ing where clause with date

during comparison date can be

written as string values or
numeric values

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 Example customers
blue – primary keys
yellow – foreign keys

id name address
suppliers 1 John Smith Kathmandu
name phone 2 Allan Turing Pokhara
Google 865-898-644 3 Sarah Jones Banepa
Microsoft 661-182-856 4 Jeff Hinton Lalitpur
Sony 500-122-999 5 Ashley Stone Chitwan
6 Donald Duck Chitwan

item
orders
s
name supplier price order_id customer_id item
Nexus-5X Google 200 1 1 Xbox-360
Nexus-6P Google 300 2 1 Nexus-5X
PS2 Sony 300 3 2 Nexus-6P
Xbox-360 Microsoft 250 4 3 PS2
5 4 PS2
6 4 Nexus-5X
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Example - Between

The BETWEEN operator selects values

within a range. The values can be
numbers, text, or dates.

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Example - In
The IN operator allows to specify
multiple values in a WHERE
clause. It performs membership
check.

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Example - Like

The LIKE operator is used in a

WHERE clause to search for a
specified pattern

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Aggregate functions
• SUM() – sum of all the values in a
column
• MAX() – maximum value of a column
• MIN() – minimum value of a column
• AVG() – average value of a column

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Arithmetic operations

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Arithmetic operations
AS can be used to give a
temporary column name

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Arithmetic operations
A simple query to calculate the
discounted amount of all the items.

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Data Dictionary
• Describes the structure of the whole database
• Organized in a spreadsheet format
• Includes the names and descriptions of the tables and the fields contained in each
table along with information of the data type, field length
• Main purpose: to provide metadata, or information about data
• Technically, it is a database about a database
• No one set standard in terms of layout or information

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Example of a data dictionary
Entity Entity Column Column Data type Lengt Primary Foreig Nullable Unique Notes
name descriptio name Description h key n key
n
Employee An ID ID of the INT True False False True Auto
employee employee, for the Incremente
is unique d
someone identification of
who works each employee
in the
company Name Name of the VARCHAR 255 False False False False
employee
Departmen ID of department VARCHAR 32 False True False False References
t where the to ID
employee works column of
Department
s table
A separate table is created for each entity of the database !!
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End of Lecture 4

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 Thank you !
Any questions ?

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