Database Concepts and Architecture.

By

Muhammad Usman
Topics To Be Covered

 Data models.
 Schemas.
 Instances.
 DBMS Architecture.
 Data Independence.
Data Modelling
 What is data modelling?
 – A collection of concept that can be used to describe the structure
of the database.
 An information system typically consists of a database (contained
stored data) together with programs that capture, store, manipulate,
and retrieve

 • Process Model => the programs

 • Data Model => the database
Data Model (cont.)

 Data Model Structure and Constraints:

 Constraints are used to define the database structure
 Constraints typically include elements (and their data types) as well as
groups of elements (e.g. entity, record, table), and relationships
among such groups
 Constraints specify some restrictions on valid data; these constraints
must be enforced at all times
Categories of Data Model
 High Level or Conceptual Data Model:
 It provide the concepts that are close on the way many users perceive
data.

 Low Level or Physical Data Model:

 It provide the concepts that describe the details how the data stored in
the computer.
 Concepts provided by the low-level model are basically meant for the
computer specialist not for the layman user.
 Representational Model:
 Between these extreme model(High-level and low-level) is
a class of Representational or implementation data
models.
 It is understood by the end users but that is not too far
from the way in which the data is organized with the
computer.
Concepts of Data Model
 Conceptual model uses concepts like entities, attribute and relationship.
 Entity:
 An entity represent a real world object or concept, such as an employee or a
project that is described in the database.
 Attribute:
 An attribute represent some property of interest that further describe an entity,
such as the employee’s name or salary.
 Relationship:
 A relationship among the two or more entities represent an association among two
or more entities.
 For example work-on relationship between an employer and a project.
Mapping

 The processes of transforming requests and results between levels

are called mappings.
 These mappings may be time-consuming, so some DBMSs-
especially those that are meant to support small databases-do not
support external views.
 Even in such systems, however, a certain amount of mapping is
necessary to transform requests between the conceptual and
internal levels.
Abstraction Of Database--The Three Schema
Architecture
 Internal level Architecture:
 Internal architecture has the internal schema which describe the
physical storage structure of the database
 The internal schema uses physical data model and describe the
complete details of data storage and access paths for the database.

 Conceptual Level:
 The conceptual level have the conceptual schema which describe
the structure of the database for a community of users.
 The conceptual schema hides the details of the physical storage
structures and concentrates on describing the entities, data type,
relationships, user operations, and constraints.
 External or View Level:
 External level includes a number of external schemas or user views.
 Each external schema describes the part of the database that a
particular user group is interested in and hides the rest of the
database from that user group.
Schema
 In any database it is important to distinguish between the data itself and description of
data.
 The description of database is called SCHEMA, which is specified during database design
and is not expected to change frequently.
 A displayed schema is called schema diagram.
 Instances
 The actual content of the database, the data, changes often over the years. A database state at a
specific time defined through the currently existing content and relationship and their attributes
is called a database instance
 The following illustration shows that a database scheme could be looked at like a template or
building plan for one or several database instances.
Example Of Data state or INSTANCE
Difference between Data Schema and Database
state.
 Distinction
 The database schema changes very infrequently.
 The database state changes every time the database is
updated.
 Data Independence
 The capacity to change the schema at one level of a database system without
having to change the schema at the next higher level. We can defined two
types of data independence:

 Logical data independence:

 It is the capacity to change the conceptual schema without having the external
schema.
 We may change the conceptual schema to expand the database(by adding a
record type or data item), to change the constraint, or to reduce the database
(by removing a record type or data item).
Physical Data independence
 It is the capacity to change the internal schema without having to change
the conceptual schema.
 Hence the external schema need not to be change.
 Changes to the internal schema may be needed because some physical files
were reorganized. In order to improve the performance of retrieval or
update.
End Of Lecture - 2