Database Intro

Terminology
Data Types
SQL queries
PHP/MySQL
Examples
 Relational Databases
● Formal (mathematical) basis
● Stores "relationships" by storing common
values in more than one table.
● Not the only kind of database
– object databases
– hierarchical
– network

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 Tables
● Each database is made up of one or more
tables.
– tables have names, typically a word that describes
what information is held in the table.
– A table is defined by a list of the value names/types
that compose each record held in the table.
– Each name/type is called a column.
– Each record is called a row.

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 Example Table
with Three Records
columns

LastName FirstName DateOfBirth Username Password

Smith Joe 1909-03-22 joes niners
Jones Sally 1956-1-14 joness elvis
Potter Harold 1990-3-4 harry muggle

rows (records)

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 Possible Schema
● Table People
LastName: varchar(30)
FirstName: varchar(30)
DateOfBirth: date
Username: varchar(20)
Password: varchar(10)

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 Data Types
● Varies (a little) from one vendor to another...
● Numeric Types
– Integer various sizes: Small/Tiny/Medium...
– Floating point various sizes: Float, Double, ...
● String Types
– varchar: variable length strings (up to some max)
– char: fixed length strings.
– and others...
● A number of Date/Time data types

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 Column (field) names
● Some people like to prefix all field names with
something related to the table name:
● Table People
pLastName: varchar(30)
pFirstName: varchar(30)
pDateOfBirth: date
pUsername: varchar(20)
pPassword: varchar(10)

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phpMySql

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 Field Attributes
● Is it legal for there to be a record where a field
is empty (NULL) ?
● Number attributes:
– signed vs. unsigned
– autoincrement (every record gets a unique number)
● Default values
● Collation:
– for strings, what alphabetic ordering is used when
comparing strings?
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 Keys and Indexes
● The Database system build indexes based on
the value of certain fields (called keys).
– this speeds up the process of looking for records
based on the value of the field.
● Every table needs a primary key
– a field whose value will be unique among all
records.
● You can specify the primary key, or let MySql
do it for you (sometimes as a combination of
multiple fields).
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 SQL
● Structured Query Language
● An english-like language used to express
database operations.
– the database system understands SQL
– the application sends commands to the database
as strings containing SQL.
● in some environments this is actually hidden from the
programmer – libraries generate the SQL automatically.

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 SQL in use

Local
Application

SQL

Database
Remote SQL
Server
Application
(process)

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Some of the basic SQL commands
● SELECT - lookup data.
● INSERT – create a new record.
● UPDATE – change existing records.
● DELETE – remove some records.

There are lots more commands, but these

provide what we need.

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 The SELECT command
● SELECT is used to extract data from a table
(possibly multiple tables).
● We have to specify:
– which table(s)
– what part of each record we want (what fields)
● We can specify:
– what subset of records we want (what rows).
– how to order the results
– limit on how many records can be returned.
– lots of other options
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 Simple SELECT
SQL keywords

SELECT FirstName, LastName FROM People

what columns (fields) we

want from each record

The name of the table

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Initial table

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Entering an SQL Query

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Query Result

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 Another SELECT
SQL keyword

SELECT * FROM people WHERE FirstName='Joe'

* means "all columns" Indicates which records

(rows) we want.

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Another Query (using a function)

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 Exercise: Get dbintro Database
● Grab the file labeled "dbintro sample database"
(on the course home page) and save on your
computer.
● Start up your MySQL client (phpMyAdmin or
whatever you are using).
● The file contains SQL commands to create a
database named dbinfo with tabled people and
product – tell your database to process these
SQL commands.

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 dbintro Tables
Primary Keys

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 Simple SQL Exercises
● get the first names of all people

● get the names and product Ids of all products

whose price is less than $1.00

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 Telling the database how to order
the results.
● You can add "ORDER BY" condition to the end
of the query:
SELECT * FROM people ORDER BY LastName

SELECT Name FROM products ORDER BY Price DESC

Descending

SELECT * FROM people ORDER BY DateOfBirth ASC

Ascending
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 Shopping Cart
● Suppose we want to store a user's shopping
cart in the database.
– we need some way to store this information.
– we need to be careful how we set this up, doing it
the wrong way will make the system difficult to
maintain.
● Requirements:
– need to store information on the number of each
product in each users shopping cart.

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 One Bad Idea
● We could consider this:
– for each person record, add the following fields:
● Snickers: integer
● Candy Corn: integer
● Wax Lips: integer
● Bubble Gum: integer

● Exercise: why is this a bad idea?

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 Problems
● What if we add new products?
– M&Ms are always a good idea.

● What if we remove products?

– The margin on Bubble Gum is too small to make $.

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 Another Bad Idea
● We could add a field in each product record for
each user.
– obviously a waste of space.
– we hope we get new users!

● In general we need a solution that does not

require changes to our database schema every
time we change our products.

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The Relational in Relation Database
● We want to establish a relationship between
users and products.
– how many of product x is associated with user y.
● We create a new table to represent this
relationship.
– needs to refer to a user.
– needs to refer to a product.
– we also need a quantity (of the product in the
shopping cart).

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 New Table: cartentries
● Table cartentries
userid: integer
productid: integer
quantity: integer

Why not use FirstName,LastName and

ProductName ?
what if these change? Does it invalidate some
shopping cart entries?
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A Picture of the relationship

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 Exercise: Create cartentries Table
● You can do this via the User Interface, or issue
the following SQL statement:

CREATE TABLE `cartentries` (

`userid` INT NOT NULL ,
`productid` INT NOT NULL ,
`quantity` INT NOT NULL
) TYPE = MYISAM ;

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 Add some records
● Joe Smith (userid=1) has 3 Candy Corns (productid=2)
● Sally Jones (userid=2) has 1 Candy Corn
● ...

INSERT INTO `cartentries` VALUES (1, 2, 3);

INSERT INTO `cartentries` VALUES (2, 2, 1);
INSERT INTO `cartentries` VALUES (1, 4, 2);
INSERT INTO `cartentries` VALUES (4, 3, 17);

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All shopping cart entries

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 A Join
● You can select information from two tables,
using a relationship (common field value) to join
the tables together.
● The result can contain fields from both tables.
● The result is still a list of records (rows)
– each row contains fields from more than one table.
● For example, we would like to see a list of all
products in all shopping carts, but we want to
see product names (not ids).
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Joining products and cartentries
SELECT * FROM cartentries,products WHERE
cartentries.productid=products.productid

--or--

SELECT *
FROM cartentries JOIN products ON
( cartentries.productid =
products.productid )

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Join result

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 SQL Exercises
● A query that retrieves all the information
needed to display a user's shopping cart:
– need list of products:
● product name
● quantity
● price

● We need this for a single user (use userid 2).

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 Fancier stuff
● SQL SELECT commands can actually do lots
more than just retrieve data:
– can compute things, like the total cost for each item in
the cart: quantity * price:
SELECT *,
cartentries.quantity * products.price AS itemtotal
FROM cartentries, products
WHERE cartentries.productid = products.productid
AND cartentries.userid =1
LIMIT 0 , 30

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 PHP and MySQL
● To make use of the database with PHP, we
need to do the following:
– establish a connection
– identify the database we want to use
● there can be many databases
– Issue SQL commands (queries)
– Retrieve and process results
● often display as HTML

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 PHP/MySQL
● Your installation of PHP needs to have MySQL
support (either built-in or as a module). You
tested this in HW1.
● Although we can connect to any MySQL server,
we will use the one running on the same
machine as the web server (your laptop).
– everyone has their own database.

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 Establishing a Connection
● You need a username and password to access
your MySQL server.
● You need to know what machine the server is
running on.
● You call the php function mysql_connect():
mysql_connect(server,username,password);
● The function returns a PHP resource that is used by other
functions later, or FALSE if the connection fails.

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 Sample Connection

// establish a connection with the MySQL server

// server is 'localhost'
// user, pass is 'joe', 'abc'
$link = mysql_connect('localhost','joe','abc');
if (! $link) {
echo ("<h3>Error" . mysql_error()."</h3>\n");
exit;
}

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 Selecting a Database
● Typically an application deals with a single
database (your MySQL server can have many
databases).
You have to tell the server what database you
are using:
mysql_select_db( databasename );
● This function returns a boolean indicating
success or failure.

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 Example: Selecting a Database

if (mysql_select_db("dbintro")) {
echo "<h3>Connected !</h3>\n";
} else {
echo "Error connecting: " . mysql_error();
exit;
}

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 Sending a Query
● The query (SQL command) is a string.
– we often need to build these strings based partially
on information from the HTTP request.

mysql_query(SQLstring)

● returns a PHP resource (that we can use later

to get at the results) or FALSE on error.
– For some kinds of SQL commands, returns TRUE
or FALSE Database Intro (MySQL/PHP) 47
 Query Example
// get all people records
$res = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM people");
if (! $res) {
echo "<p>Error: ". mysql_error() . "</p>\n";
exit;
}

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 Getting the results
● The return value from mysql_query can be
used to retrieve the results.
– There are many different PHP functions that can be
used to get individual records/fields.
– We will look at the simplest function :

mysql_result( resource , row , fieldname );

● resource is the return value from mysql_query
● row is a number (the record number in the result)
● fieldname is a string the identifies the field.

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 How many records (rows)?
mysql_num_rows(resource)

Example:

$res = mysql_query($q);
$num = mysql_num_rows($res);
echo "<p>I found $num records</p>";

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 Example Code
$res = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM people");
if (! $res){
echo "<h3>Error!</h3>"; exit;
}
echo "<H3>All people found:</H3>\n";
$num = mysql_num_rows($res);
for ($i=0;$i<$num;$i++) {
$f = mysql_result($res,$i,'FirstName');
$l = mysql_result($res,$i,'LastName');
echo "<p>$f $l</p>\n";
}
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