Laboratory Manual: Database System |Date: ____________

Week No. 1:
Title: Introduction to Database Management Systems

Purpose:
To aim of this study is to familiarize with the DBMS, RDBMS, ORDBMS along with their
advantages and disadvantages.

Theory:
 DBMS (Database Management System)
A DBMS is software that allows creation, definition and manipulation of database, allowing users
to store, process and analyze data easily. DBMS provides us with an interface or a tool, to perform
various operations like creating database, storing data in it, updating data, creating tables in the
database and a lot more.
DBMS also provides protection and security to the databases. It also maintains data consistency in
case of multiple users.
Here are some examples of popular DBMS used these days:
• MySql
• Oracle
• SQL Server
• IBM DB2
• PostgreSQL
• Amazon SimpleDB (cloud based) etc.

Characteristics of Database Management System

A database management system has following characteristics:
1. Data stored into Tables:
Data is never directly stored into the database. Data is stored into tables, created inside the
database. DBMS also allows having relationships between tables which makes the data more
meaningful and connected. You can easily understand what type of data is stored where by looking
at all the tables created in a database.
2. Reduced Redundancy:
In the modern world hard drives are very cheap, but earlier when hard drives were too expensive,
unnecessary repetition of data in database was a big problem. But DBMS follows Normalization
which divides the data in such a way that repetition is minimal.
3. Data Consistency:
On Live data, i.e. data that is being continuously updated and added, maintaining the consistency
of data can become a challenge. But DBMS handles it all by itself.

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4. Support Multiple user and Concurrent Access:

DBMS allows multiple users to work on it (update, insert, and delete data) at the same time and
still manages to maintain the data consistency.
5. Query Language:
DBMS provides users with a simple Query language, using which data can be easily fetched,
inserted, deleted and updated in a database.
6. Security:
The DBMS also takes care of the security of data, protecting the data from un-authorized access.
In a typical DBMS, we can create user accounts with different access permissions, using which
we can easily secure our data by restricting user access.
7. DBMS supports transactions, which allows us to better handle and manage data integrity in real
world applications where multi-threading is extensively used.

Advantages of DBMS
o Segregation of application program.
o Minimal data duplicity or data redundancy.
o Easy retrieval of data using the Query Language.
o Reduced development time and maintenance need.
o With Cloud Datacenters, we now have Database Management Systems capable of storing
almost infinite data.
o Seamless integration into the application programming languages which makes it very
easier to add a database to almost any application or website.

Disadvantages of DBMS
o It's Complexity
o Except MySQL, which is open source, licensed DBMSs are generally costly.
o They are large in size.

 RDBMS (Relational Database management System)

A Relational Database management System (RDBMS) is a database management system based on
the relational model introduced by E.F Codd. In relational model, data is stored in relations (tables)
and is represented in form of tuples (rows).
RDBMS is used to manage Relational database. Relational database is a collection of organized
set of tables related to each other, and from which data can be accessed easily. Relational Database
is the most commonly used database these days.
In relational model in which data is stored in multiple tables where tables are related to each other
using primary keys and foreign keys and indexes. RDBMS uses database normalization techniques
to avoid redundancy in tables. It helps to fetch data faster using SQL query. It is widely used by
enterprises and software developers to store large amount of complex data

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Laboratory Manual: Database System |Date: ____________

Examples:
• SQL server,
• Oracle
• MySQL
• MariaDB
• SQLite

Important Concept Related to RDBMS:

Table
In Relational database model, a table is a collection of data elements organized in terms of rows
and columns. A table is also considered as a convenient representation of relations. But a table can
have duplicate row of data while a true relation cannot have duplicate data. Table is the simplest
form of data storage.
Below is an example of an Employee table

Tuple

A single entry in a table is called a Tuple or Record or Row. A tuple in a table represents a set of
related data. For example, the above Employee table has 4 tuples/records/rows.
Following is an example of single record or tuple.

Attribute
A table consists of several records (row), each record can be broken down into several smaller
parts of data known as Attributes. The above Employee table consists of four attributes, ID, Name,
Age and Salary.

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Laboratory Manual: Database System |Date: ____________

Advantages of RDBMS
o It is easy to use
o It is secured in nature
o The data manipulation can be done
o It limits redundancy and replication of the data
o It offers better data integrity
o It provides better data integrity
o It provides better physical data independence
o If offers logical database independence
o It provides better backup and recovery procedures
o It provides multiple interfaces
o Multiple users can access the database which is not possible in DBMS

Disadvantages of RDBMS
o Software is expensive
o Complex software refers to expensive hardware and hence increases overall cost to avail
the RDBMS service.
o It requires skilled human resources to implement
o Certain applications are slow in processing
o It is difficult to recover the lost data

 ORDBMS (Object Relational Database Management Systems)

An object relational database management system (ORDBMS) is a database management system

with that is similar to a relational database, except that it has an object-oriented database model.
This system supports objects, classes and inheritance in database schemas and query language.
Object relational database management systems provide a middle ground between relational and
object-oriented databases. In an ORDBMS, data is manipulated using queries in a query language.
These systems bridge the gap between conceptual data modeling techniques such as entity
relationship diagrams and object relational mapping using classes and inheritance. ORDBMSs also
support data model extensions with custom data types and methods. This allows developers to
raise the abstraction levels at which problem domains are viewed.

Examples of ORDBMSs include:

o PostgreSQL. Open source ORDBMS developed by the PostgreSQL Global Development
Group.
o Oracle Database by Oracle Corporation.
o Informix by IBM

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Laboratory Manual: Database System |Date: ____________

o SQL Server by Microsoft

o Greenplum Database by Pivotal Software

Advantages of ORDBMS
o Reusable and Sharable – able to reuse the hard-coded components. Through database
servers those components can be shared among available resources.
o Ability of applying Objects with existing RDBMS models as it is – That is, RDBMS can
be extended with Object concepts without changing the underlying models. This leads the
organizations to switch over to ORDBMS concepts easily without performing bigger
migration or major change.
o It allows users and programmers to start using object-oriented systems in parallel.
o Object Relational Database Management Systems ensures large storage capacity.
o Supports rich data types by adding a new object-oriented layer.
o Scalability
o Relationships are represented explicitly, often supporting both navigational and
associative access to information.
o Improved concurrency - concurrent users can safely query the same data.
o Support for Composite data types - data is bundled with its metadata.
o Improved integrity - ability to reject bad data before it is stored in an ORDBMS.
o Database extensibility - easy addition of data types and operations.
o Uniform treatment of data items - the SQL interface can perform complex queries based
on any of these data items, e.g., metadata as well as data; hence there is less need for
custom programming by users.
o Custom data access methods - e.g., R-tree indexes.
o Point-in-time recovery of data is possible.
o Built-in complex SQL functions can be provided for data operations - e.g., aggregating,
slicing, subsetting, reprojecting, etc.

Disadvantages of ORDBMS
o Complexity
o Increased cost
o Unclear if the ORDBMS will actually combine relationships and encapsulated objects to
correctly and completely mirror the ‘real world’.

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Laboratory Manual: Database System |Date: ____________

Lab Task:

You have just started a new company. It is time to hire some employees. You will need to create
a table that will contain the following information about your new employees: firstname,
lastname, title, age, and salary.

 Find Entity
 Find Attributes

Conclusion:
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