Introduction to IT Lecture Notes

Topic 14: Database Concepts

In our information society, record keeping and data processing using database has become an
important aspect of every organization, and much of the world's computing power is dedicated to
doing this. You probably use databases all the time, often without knowing it. For examples,
withdrawing money from the Agriculture Bank's ATM or selecting elective courses from UIC's
online system. This chapter will provide you with an introduction to basic database concepts.
1 What is a Database?
Data are unprocessed raw facts that include text, number, images, audio, and video.
Information is processed data that is organized, meaningful, and useful. Database, in simple
terms, can be stated to be storage of information in a systematic manner usually records,
from which data can be easily (relatively speaking) retrieved or to which modifications can be
made or new data can be added. Formally, a database is a collection of organized data and a
means to allow you to manipulate it in a useful way.
From pre-stage fat-file system, to relational and object-relational systems, database technology
has gone through several generations and its 40 years history.
Example: Examples of databases include a telephone book, the library catalogue, and the TV
guide.
2 What is a DBMS?
Usually a database accompanies with a management software called Database Management
System (DBMS), which provides some convenient ways to the users to manipulate (add, update,
delete), retrieve and present the data.
Example: On PCs, Microsoft Access is a popular example of a single or small-group user
DBMS. Microsoft's SQL Server is an example of a DBMS that serves database requests from
multiple (client) users. Other popular DBMSs are IBM's DB2, Oracle Corporation's Oracle, and
Sybase Corporation's Sybase.
3 A Short History of Database
The origins go back to libraries, governmental, business, and medical records. There is a very
long history of information storage, indexing, and retrieval. Good design principles goes way
back and lots is known now about how to make good designs that lead to better reliability and
performance. In 1960's, computers become cost effective for private companies along with
increasing storage capability of computers. Two main data models were developed: network
model (CODASYL) and hierarchical (IMS). Access to database is through low-level pointer
operations linking records. Storage details depended on the type of data to be stored. Thus
adding an extra field to your database requires rewriting the underlying access/modification
scheme. Emphasis was on records to be processed, not overall structure of the system. A user
would need to know the physical structure of the database in order to query for information.
In 1970's, E.F. Codd proposed a relational model for databases in a landmark paper on how to
think about databases. He disconnects the schema (logical organization) of a database from the
physical storage methods. This system has been standard ever since.
In 1980's, Commercialization of relational systems began as a boom in computer purchasing
fuels DB market for business. SQL (Structured Query Language) became "intergalactic
standard". DB2 becomes IBM's fagship product. Network and hierarchical models fade into the
background, with essentially no development of these systems today but some legacy systems
are still in use.
In 1990's, an industry shakeout begins with fewer surviving companies (IBM, Oracle, Sybase,
Microsoft, etc.) offering increasingly complex products at higher prices. Client-server model for
computing becomes the norm for future business decisions. In mid-1990's, the usable
Internet/WWW appears. A mad scramble ensues to allow remote access to computer systems
with legacy data. Client-server frenzy reaches the desktop of average users with little patience
for complexity while Web/DB grows exponentially. In late-1990's, the large investment in
Internet companies fuels tools market boom for Web/Internet/DB connectors. Open source
solution comes online with widespread use of gcc, cgi, Apache, MySQL, etc. Online Transaction
processing (OLTP) and online analytic processing (OLAP) comes of age with many merchants
using point-of-sale (POS) technology on a daily basis. The early 21st century saw the decline of
the Internet industry as a whole but solid growth of DB applications continues. More interactive
applications appear with use of PDAs, POS transactions, consolidation of vendors, etc.
ID Name Address Phone
004 Alice 111 Washington Str. 6123432
005 Ben 222 Anderson Ave. 6123433
006 Candy 333 Washington Str. 6123434
007 Doris 444 J ingfeng Rd. 6123435
007 Eva 444 J ingfeng Rd. 6123435
Table 1: A telephone book table with 4 fields (columns) and 5 records (rows).
Three main (western) companies predominate in the large DB market: IBM (buys Informix),
Microsoft, and Oracle.
4 What is a Relational Database?
Every database or DBMS is based on a specific data model, which consists of rules and
standards that define how the database organizes data, and how users view the organization of
the data.
A database model called Relational Database Model is widely adopted. A relational database
stores all its data in tables, and nothing more. All operations on data are done on the tables
themselves or produces another table as the result. You never see anything except for tables.
5 What is a Table?
A table is a set of rows and columns. Each row (record) is a set of columns (fields) with only
one value for each. All rows from the same table have the same set of columns, although some
columns may have NULL values, i.e. the values for that rows was not initialized.
Example: Table 1 contains telephone number information. It has 4 columns and 5 rows. Each
row represents one person. Each column describes one attribute of the person.
6 The Hierarchy of Data
To manage, a database is organized in a hierarchy which consists of several levels such as
character, field, record and file. Each higher level of data consists of one or more items from
the lower level.
6.1 Character
A bit is the smallest data unit in a computer. Eight bits grouped together in a unit comprise a
byte. Each byte represents a single character, which can be number, letter, punctuation mark, or
other symbol.
Example: Each phone number in Table 1 consists of 7 characters. Each character is represented
by 8 bits in ASCII code. So each phone number is a string of 56 characters.
6.2 Field
A field is a combination of one or more related characters. A field is a column in a table. It is the
smallest unit of data a user accesses. There are three parameters associate with each field:
1. A field name uniquely identifies each field.
2. A field size defines the maximum number of characters a field can contain.
3. A data type specifies the kind of data a field can contain. The common data types are:
o Text: Letters, numbers or special characters. Example: "Alice"
o Numeric: Numbers only. Example: 123456. automatically assigned by the
DBMS to each added record.
o Currency: Dollar and cent amount.
o Date: Month, day, year, and time information.
o Memo: Lengthy text entries.
o Boolean: 0 or 1 (two states).
o Hyperlink: Web address that links to a document or a Web page.
o Object: This data type can be photograph, audio, video, or a document created by
other programs.
Example: Table 1 has 4 fields: ID, NAME, Address, and PHONE.
MovieID Title Genre Rating
001 Back to the Future comedy adventure PG
002 X-Men action sci-fi 12
003 Aliens sci-fi horror 18
004 Independence Day action sci-fi 15
005 Forest Gump comedy PG
Table 2: Movies.
6.3 Record
A record is a group of related fields. Each row in a table is called a record.
A table is a collection of records. Each record represents or describes a unique item in the
database. For examples, each record in a telephone book represents a person; each record in a
library catalogue represents a book; and each record in the TV guide represents a TV program.
Each record must consists of a special field called a primary key that uniquely identifies each
record. Primary Keys are often used to linked tables. Example: Table 1 has 5 records
representing five persons: Alice, Ben, Candy, Doris, Eva. We can use their ID as the primary key
if we require each person's ID must be unique.
6.4 File
A data file (table) is a collection of related records stored on a disk. A database includes a group
of related data files or tables.
7 Relationships
Consider what happens at a movie rental store as an example. There must be a table, say Movie
(Table 3), containing information about movies. The Movie table in Table 3 has 5 movie records.
Each movie record has 4 fields or attributes: MovieID, Title, Genre, Rating. The key field is
MovieID that must be unique.
When a person comes to rent a movie, a clerk enters the customer's information in another table,
say Customer. The Customer table has 5 fields: CustomerID, FirstName, Surname, Address,
CreditCardNumber. Similar to what we did with the Movie table, the Customer table contains a
CustomerID as the key field.

CustomerID FirstName Surname Address CreditCardNumber
101 Dennis Cook 123 Main Street 2723 4657 8765 0834
102 Mike Scofield 456 Second Ave. 3472 3098 4678 2764
103 Doug Nickle 789 Elm Street 4253 3471 5082 5494
104 Amy Stevens 321 Yellow Street 8932 4657 8957 0834
105 Susan Person
654 Broadway
Street
7890 4767 6786 4268
106 Andy May 789 Lois Lane 0281 4657 8765 7896
107 David Wang
3214 Anderson
Street
1370 8676 28657
6867
Table 3: Customers.
CustomerID MovieID DateRented DateDue
103 001 3-12-2006 3-14-2006
103 002 3-12-2006 3-14-2006
105 003 3-12-2006 3-14-2006
Table 4: Rents.
The Movie table and the Customer table show how data can be organized as records within
isolated tables. The power of relational DBMS, though, is in the ability to create tables that
conceptually link various tables together. When a customer rents a movie, there is a "rents"
relationship between the person and the movie. We can use a table, Rents, to contain information
about this relationship. The table Rents has four fields: CustomerID, MovieID, DataRented,
DateDue. Note that it does not contain all of the data about a customer or a movie. There is no
need to store these information in the Rents table. They are already stored in the Customer table
and the Movie table. When we need data about the customer, we use CustomerID stored in the
Rents table to look up the customer's detail data in the Customer table. Likewise, when we need
data about the movie, we use MovieID stored in the Rents table to look up the movie's detail data
in the Movie table.
This is the basis of relational database. Relational database is based on the idea that objects
(tables) of a database are connected or related so they can exchange information. This
exchange of information is made possible by creating relationships among objects (tables) of a
database.
The "rents" relationship is called a one-to-many relationship. That is, one customer is allowed to
rent many movies, but a movie can only be rented by a single customer at any given time. There
are three general cardinality constraints:
one-to-one
one-to-many
many-to-many



These cardinality constraints help the database designer convey the details of a relationship. Note
that the CustomerID value 103 is shown in two records in Table 4. That indicates that the same
customer rented two different movies.
Data is modifies in, added to, and deleted from our various database tables as needed. When
movies are added or removed from the available stock, we update the records of the Movie table.
As people become customers of our store, we add them to the Customer table. On an ongoing
basis we add and remove records from the Rents table as customers rent and return movies.
8 Query and Operations on Table
8.1 Queries
A query is a question or a request for specific data in a database. A DBMS provides a tool called
Query Language which consists of simple, Englishlike statements that allow users to manage,
update and retrieve the data in a database. A query language provides the following common
functions:
Select records: Users can retrieve all or partial records from the database.
Insert records: Users will add records in the database when they obtain new data.
Update records: Users can update the records when the records have any changes.
Delete records: When a record no longer is needed, a user can delete it from a file.
8.2 Validating Data
Validation is the process of comparing data with a set of rules or values to find out if the data is
correct. DBMS performs validity check to help ensure the integrity of entered data, where the
data integrity is measured by:
Correctness and completeness
Alphabetic/Numeric Check: Ensure that users enter only alphabetic/numeric data into a
field.
Range Check: Determine whether the input number is within a specific range
Consistency Check: Test the data in two or more associated fields to ensure that
relationship is logical.
Completeness Check: Verify that a required field contains data.
Check Digit: A check digit is a number(s) or character(s) that is appended to or inserted
into specific data value. It is used to check the accuracy of the value.
9 SQL
The Structured Query Language (SQL) is a comprehensive database language for managing
relational databases. It includes statements to specify database schemas as well as statements that
add, modify, and delete database contents. It also includes, as its name implies, the ability to
query the database to retrieve specific data.
The original version of SQL was Sequal, developed by IBM in the early 1970s. In 1986, the
American National Standards Institute (ANSI) published the SQL standard, the basis for
commercial database languages for accessing relational databases.
9.1 Queries
The select statement is the primary tool for this purpose. The basic select statement includes a
select clause, a from clause, and a where clause:
SELCET attribute-list FROM table-list WHERE condition
The select clause determines what attributes are returned. The from clause determines what
tables are used in the query. The where clause restricts the data that is returned. For example:
SELECT Title FROM Movie WHERE Rating = 'PG'
The result of this query is a list of all titles from the Movie table that have a rating of PG.
9.2 Modifying Database Content
The insert, update, and delete statements in SQL allow the data in a table to be changed. The
insert statement adds a new record into a table. Each insert statement specifies the values of the
attributes for the new record.
For example:
INSERT INTO Customer VALUES (9876, 'J ohn', 'Smith', '602 Green Street', '2120 9873 0976
2445')
This statement inserts a new record into the Customer table with the specified attributes.
The update statement changes the values in one or more records of a table. For example:
UPDATE Movie SET Genre ='thriller drama' WHERE title ='X-Men'
This statement changes the Genre of the Movie X-Men to 'thriller drama'. The delete statement
removes all records from a table matching the specified condition. For example, if we want to
remove all R-rated movies from the table Movie, we could use the following delete statement:
delete from Movie where Rating ='R'
10 File Processing versus Database
Usually there are two approaches to store and manage data: file processing or database. In a
typical file processing system, each department or area within an organization has its own set of
files. These files are often are designed specifically for their particular applications. The records
in one file may not relate to the records in any other files. By using the database approach, all
data is centralized in one place such that many programs and users share the data in the database.
The database approach provides following advantages:
1. Reduce data redundancy: Since all data is centralized in one place, all the programs and
users share the same data in the database. So that it reduces the data replication.
2. Improve data integrity: DBMS performs validity check to help ensure the entered data
is correct. Also, the database approach reduces the possibility of introducing
inconsistencies.
3. Share data: The data in a database environment belongs to and is shared, usually over a
network, by the entire organization.
4. Easier access: The database approach allows non-technical users to access and
maintaining data.
5. Reduce development time: It is often easier and faster to develop programs that use the
database approach.
6. More secure: When the companies use databases, they typically have security settings to
define who can access, add, change, and delete the data in a database.