1. What is database?

A database is a logically coherent collection of data with some inherent meaning, representing some aspect of real world and which is designed, built and populated with data for a specific purpose. 2. What is DBMS? It is a collection of programs that enables user to create and maintain a database. In other words it is general-purpose software that provides the users with the processes of defining, constructing and manipulating the database for various applications. Describe the three levels of data abstraction? The are three levels of abstraction: 1. Physical level: The lowest level of abstraction describes how data are stored. 2. Logical level: The next higher level of abstraction, describes what data are stored in database and what relationship among those data. 3. View level: The highest level of abstraction describes only part of entire database. Define the "integrity rules"? There are two Integrity rules. 1. Entity Integrity: States that "Primary key cannot have NULL value" 2. Referential Integrity: States that "Foreign Key can be either a NULL value or should be Primary Key value of other relation. 3. What is a view? How it is related to data independence? A view may be thought of as a virtual table, that is, a table that does not really exist in its own right but is instead derived from one or more underlying base table. In other words, there is no stored file that direct represents the view instead a definition of view is stored in data dictionary. What is E-R model? This data model is based on real world that consists of basic objects called entities and of relationship among these objects. Entities are described in a database by a set of attributes. What is an Entity? It is a 'thing' in the real world with an independent existence.

What is an Entity type?

It is a collection of all entities of particular entity type in the database What is Query evaluation engine? It executes low-level instruction generated by compiler. What is DDL Interpreter? It interprets DDL statements and record them in tables containing metadata. What is 1 NF (Normal Form)? The domain of attribute must include only atomic (simple, indivisible) values. What is Fully Functional dependency? It is based on concept of full functional dependency. A functional dependency X Y is full functional dependency if removal of any attribute A from X means that the dependency does not hold any more. What is 2NF? A relation schema R is in 2NF if it is in 1NF and every non-prime attribute A in R is fully functionally dependent on primary key. What is 3NF? A relation schema R is in 3NF if it is in 2NF and for every FD X A either of the following is true 1. X is a Super-key of R. 2. A is a prime attribute of R. In other words, if every non prime attribute is non-transitively dependent on primary key. What is BCNF (Boyce-Codd Normal Form)? A relation schema R is in BCNF if it is in 3NF and satisfies an additional constraint that for every FD X A, X must be a candidate key. What is 4NF? A relation schema R is said to be in 4NF if for every Multivalued dependency X Y that holds over R, one of following is true. 1.) X is subset or equal to (or) XY = R. 2.) X is a super key. What is 5NF?

A Relation schema R is said to be 5NF if for every join dependency {R1, R2, ..., Rn} that holds R, one the following is true 1.) Ri = R for some i. 2.) The join dependency is implied by the set of FD, over R in which the left side is key of R. What is meant by query optimization? The phase that identifies an efficient execution plan for evaluating a query that has the least estimated cost is referred to as query optimization. What is durability in DBMS? Once the DBMS informs the user that a transaction has successfully completed, its effects should persist even if the system crashes before all its changes are reflected on disk. This property is called durability. What do you mean by atomicity and aggregation? 1. Atomicity: Either all actions are carried out or none are. Users should not have to worry about the effect of incomplete transactions. DBMS ensures this by undoing the actions of incomplete transactions. 2. Aggregation: A concept which is used to model a relationship between a collection of entities and relationships. It is used when we need to express a relationship among relationships. What is a checkpoint and When does it occur? A Checkpoint is like a snapshot of the DBMS state. By taking checkpoints, the DBMS can reduce the amount of work to be done during restart in the event of subsequent crashes. What is database Trigger? A database trigger is a PL/SQL block that can defined to automatically execute for insert, update, and delete statements against a table. The trigger can e defined to execute once for the entire statement or once for every row that is inserted, updated, or deleted. For any one table, there are twelve events for which you can define database triggers. A database trigger can call database procedures that are also written in PL/SQL.

Define rollback and roll forward. Rollback :- Undoing the changes made by a transaction before it commits or to cancel any changes to a database made during the current transaction RollForward :- Re-doing the changes made by a transaction after it commits or to overwrite the chnaged calue again to ensure consistency Explain the meaning of the expression ACID transaction. ACID means Atomic, Consistency, Isolation, Durability, so when any transaction happen it should be Atomic that is it should either be complete or fully incomplete. There should not be anything like Semi complete. The Database State should remain consistent after the completion of the transaction. If there are more than one Transaction then the transaction should be scheduled in such a fashion that they

remain in Isolation of one another.Durability means that Once a transaction commits, its effects will persist even if there are system failures.

. What is data ware housing & OLAP? Ans: Data warehousing and OLAP (online analytical processing ) systems are the techniques used in many companies to extract and analyze useful information from very large databases for decision making .

What is schema? Ans: The description of a data base is called the database schema , which is specified during database design and is not expected to change frequently . A displayed schema is called schema diagram .We call each object in the schema as schema construct. What are types of schema? 1. internal schema. 2. Conceptual schema. 3. External schemas or user views. What is Data independency? Data independency is defined as the capacity to change the conceptual schema without having to change the schema at the next higher level. We can define two types of data independence: 1. Logical data independence. 2. Physical data independence. LDI is the capacity to change the conceptual schema without having to change external schemas or application programs. PDI is the capacity to change the internal schema without having to change conceptual (or external) schemas.
What is a lock? Ans: A lock is a variable associated with a data item that describes the status of the item with respect to the possible operations that can be applied to it.

What are various types of locking techniques? 1. a binary lock 2. Shared/Exclusive lock 3. Two phase locking What is a binary lock? A binary lock can have two states or values: 1. locked (1) 2. unlocked(0) If locked it cannot be accessed by any other operations, else can be.

What is shared or exclusive lock? It implements multiple-mode lock. Allowing multiple accesses for read operations but exclusive access for write operation. Explain two phase locking? All the locking operations must precede the first unlock operation in the transaction .It does have two phases: 1. expanding phase (Locks are issued) 2. Shrinking phase (Locks are released) What are different types of two phase lockings (2pl)? 1. Basic 2. Conservative 3. Strict 4. Rigorous this is the basic technique of 2pl described above. Conservative 2pl requires a transaction to lock all the items it accesses before the transaction begins its execution, by pre-declaring its read-set and write-set. Strict 2pl guarantees that a transaction doesnt release any of its exclusive locks until after it commits or aborts. Rigorous guarantees that a transaction doesnt release any of its locks (including shared locks) until after it commits or aborts. What is a deadlock? Dead lock occurs when each transaction T in a set of two or more transactions is waiting for some item that is locked by some other transaction T in the set. Hence each transaction is in a waiting queue, waiting for one of the other transactions to release the lock on them. What is difference between a super key, a key, a candidate key and a primary key? A super key specifies a uniqueness constrain that no two distinct tuples in a state can have the same value for the super key. Every relation has at least one default super key. A key is a minimal super key or the subset of the super key which is obtained after removing redundancy. A relation schema may have more than one key .In this case each key is called a candidate key. One of the candidate key with minimum number of attributes is chosen as primary key. What is a foreign key? A key of a relation schema is called as a foreign key if it is the primary key of some other relation to which it is related to. What is a transaction? A transaction is a logical unit of database processing that includes one or more database access operations.

What are the properties of transaction? 1. Atomicity 2. Consistency preservation 3. Isolation 4. Durability (permanence)
What is specialization? It is the process of defining a set of subclasses of an entity type where each subclass contain all the attributes and relationships of the parent entity and may have additional attributes and relationships which are specific to itself.

What is generalization? It is the process of finding common attributes and relations of a number of entities and defining a common super class for them
What is aggregation and association? Aggregation is an abstraction concept for building composite objects from their component objects. The abstraction of association is used to associate objects from several independent classes.