Fundamental Concepts of Database Management

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 Introduction
• Applications of Database Technology
• Key definitions
• File versus Database Approach to Data
Management
• Elements of a Database System
• Advantages of Database Systems and Database
Management

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 Applications of Database Technology
• Storage and retrieval of traditional numeric and
alphanumeric data in an inventory application
• Multimedia applications (e.g., YouTube, Spotify)
• Biometric applications (e.g., fingerprints, retina scans)
• Wearable applications (e.g., FitBit, Apple Watch)
• Geographical Information Systems (GIS) applications (e.g.,
Google Maps)
• Sensor applications (e.g., nuclear reactor)
• Big Data applications (e.g., Walmart)
• Internet of Things (IoT) applications (e.g., Telematics) 3
 Key definitions
• A database can be defined as a collection of
related data items within a specific business
process or problem setting
– has a target group of users and applications
• A Database Management System (DBMS), is the
software package used to define, create, use and
maintain a database
– consists of several software modules
• The combination of a DBMS and a database is
then often called a database system 4
File versus Database Approach to Data Management

Invoicing CRM GIS

CustomerNr CustomerNr CustomerNr

CustomerName CustomerName CustomerName
VATcode Turnover ZipCode

Duplicate data!

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File versus Database Approach to Data Management

• File approach
– duplicate or redundant information will be stored
– danger of inconsistent data
– strong coupling between applications and data
– hard to manage concurrency control
– hard to integrate applications aimed at providing cross-
company services

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File versus Database Approach to Data Management

Invoicing CRM GIS

DBMS

Raw data Catalog

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File versus Database Approach to Data Management

• Database approach
– superior to the file approach in terms of efficiency,
consistency and maintenance
– loose coupling between applications and data
– facilities provided for data querying and retrieval

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 File versus Database Approach to Data Management

• File approach • Database approach (SQL)

Procedure FindCustomer; SELECT *

begin FROM Customer
open file Customer.txt; WHERE
Read(Customer) name = 'Bart'
While not EOF(Customer)
If Customer.name='Bart' then
display(Customer);
EndIf
Read(Customer);
EndWhile;
End;
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 Elements of a Database System
• Database model versus instances
• Data Model
• The Three Layer Architecture
• Catalog
• Database Users
• Database Languages

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 Database model versus instances
• Database model or database schema provides the
description of the database data at different levels of
detail and specifies the various data items, their
characteristics and relationships, constraints, storage
details, etc.
– specified during database design and not expected to change
too frequently
– stored in the catalog
• Database state represents the data in the database at a
particular moment
– also called the current set of instance
– typically changes on an ongoing basis 11
 Database model versus instances
• Database model

Student (number, name, address, email)

Course (number, name)
Building (number, address)

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 Database model versus instances
• Database state

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 Data Model
• A database model is comprised of different
data models, each describing the data from
different perspectives
• A data model provides a clear and
unambiguous description of the data items,
their relationships and various data
constraints from a particular perspective

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 Data Model
• A conceptual data model provides a high-level description of the
data items with their characteristics and relationships
– communication instrument between information architect and business user
– should be implementation independent, user-friendly, and close to how the
business user perceives the data
– usually represented using an Enhanced-Entity Relationship (EER) model, or
an object-oriented model
• Logical data model is a translation or mapping of the conceptual
data model towards a specific implementation environment
– can be a hierarchical, CODASYL, relational, object-oriented, extended
relational, XML or NoSQL model

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 Data Model
• Logical data model can be mapped to an internal data
model that represents the data’s physical storage details
– clearly describes which data is stored where, in what format,
which indexes are provided to speed up retrieval, etc.
– highly DBMS specific
• External data model contains various subsets of the data
items in the logical model, also called views, tailored
towards the needs of specific applications or groups of
users

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The Three Layer Architecture

physical data + logical data independence! 17

The Three Layer Architecture

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 Catalog
• Heart of the DBMS
• Contains the data definitions, or metadata, of your
database application
• Stores the definitions of the views, logical and
internal data models, and synchronizes these
three data models to make sure their consistency
is guaranteed

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 Database Users
• Information architect designs the conceptual data model
– closely interacts with the business user
• Database designer translates the conceptual data model
into a logical and internal data model
• Database administrator (DBA) is responsible for the
implementation and monitoring of the database
• Application developer develops database applications in a
programming language such as Java or Python
• Business user will run these applications to perform
specific database operations
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 Database Languages
• Data Definition Language (DDL) is used by the DBA to
express the database's external, logical and internal data
models
– definitions are stored in the catalog
• Data Manipulation Language (DML) is used to retrieve,
insert, delete, and modify data
– DML statements can be embedded in a programming language,
or entered interactively through a front-end querying tool
• Structured Query Language (SQL) offers both DDL and
DML statements for relational database systems
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 Advantages of Database Systems and Database
Management

• Data Independence
• Database Modelling
• Managing Structured, Semi-Structured and Unstructured Data
• Managing Data Redundancy
• Specifying Integrity Rules
• Concurrency Control
• Backup and Recovery Facilities
• Data Security
• Performance Utilities

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 Data Independence
• Data independence implies that changes in data definitions have
minimal to no impact on the applications
• Physical data independence implies that neither the applications,
nor the views or logical data model must be changed when changes
are made to the data storage specifications in the internal data
model
– DBMS should provide interfaces between logical and internal data models
• Logical data independence implies that software applications are
minimally affected by changes in the conceptual or logical data
model
– views in the external data model will act as a protective shield
– DBMS must provide interfaces between conceptual/logical and external layer

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 Database Modelling
• A data model is an explicit representation of the
data items together with their characteristics and
relationships
• A conceptual data model should provide a formal
and perfect mapping of the data requirements of
the business process and is made in collaboration
with the business user
– translated into logical and internal data model
• Important that a data model’s assumptions and
shortcomings are clearly documented 24
 Managing Structured, Semi-Structured and
Unstructured Data
• Structured data
– can be described according to a formal logical data model
– ability to express integrity rules and enforce correctness of data
– also facilitates searching, processing and analyzing the data
– E.g., number, name, address and email of a student
• Unstructured data
– no finer grained components in a file or series of characters that
can be interpreted in a meaningful way by a DBMS or application
– E.g., document with biographies of famous NY citizens
– Note: volume of unstructured data surpasses that of structured
data
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 Managing Structured, Semi-Structured and
Unstructured Data

• Semi-structured data
– data which does have a certain structure, but the
structure may be very irregular or highly volatile
– E.g., individual users’ webpages on a social media
platform, or resume documents in a human resources
database

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 Managing Data Redundancy
• Duplication of data can be desired in distributed
environments to improve data retrieval
performance
• DBMS is now responsible for the management of
the redundancy by providing synchronization
facilities to safeguard data consistency
• Compared to the file approach, the DBMS
guarantees correctness of the data without user
intervention
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 Specifying Integrity Rules
• Syntactical rules specify how the data should be
represented and stored
– E.g., customerID is an integer; birthdate should be stored as
month, day and year
• Semantical rules focus on the semantical correctness or
meaning of the data
– E.g., customerID is unique; account balance should be > 0;
customer cannot be deleted if he/she has pending invoices
• Integrity rules are specified as part of the
conceptual\logical data model and stored in the catalog
– directly enforced by the DBMS instead of applications
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 Concurrency Control
• DBMS has built in facilities to support concurrent
or parallel execution of database programs
• Key concept is a database transaction
– sequence of read/write operations considered to be an
atomic unit in the sense that either all operations are
executed or none at all
• Read/write operations can be executed at the
same time by the DBMS
• DBMS should avoid inconsistencies!
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 Concurrency Control
• Lost update problem

Tim T1 T2 balanc

e e

t1 Begin transaction $100

t2 Begin transaction read(balance) $100

t3 read(balance) balance=balance+1 $100

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t4 balance=balance- write(balance) $220 30

 Concurrency Control
• DBMS must support ACID (Atomicity, Consistency,
Isolation, Durability) properties
– Atomicity requires that a transaction should either be executed
in its entirety or not all
– Consistency assures that a transaction brings the database from
one consistent state to another
– Isolation ensures that the effect of concurrent transactions
should be the same as if they would have been executed in
isolation
– Durability ensures that the database changes made by a
transaction declared successful can be made permanent under
all circumstances
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 Backup and Recovery Facilities
• Backup and recovery facilities can be used to deal
with the effect of loss of data due to hardware or
network errors, or bugs in system or application
software
• Backup facilities can either perform a full or
incremental backup
• Recovery facilities allow to restore the data to a
previous state after loss or damage occurred

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 Data Security
• Data security can be enforced by the DBMS
• Some users have read access, whilst others have
write access to the data (role-based functionality)
– E.g., vendor managed inventory (VMI)
• Data access can be managed via logins and
passwords assigned to users or user accounts
• Each account has its own authorization rules that
can be stored in the catalog

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 Performance Utilities
• Three KPIs of a DBMS are
– response time denoting the time elapsed between issuing a
database request and the successful termination thereof
– throughput rate representing the transactions a DBMS can
process per unit of time
– space utilization referring to the space utilized by the DBMS to
store both raw data and metadata
• DBMSs come with various types of utilities aimed at
improving these KPIs
– E.g., utilities to distribute and optimize data storage, to tune
indexes for faster query execution, to tune queries to improve
application performance, or to optimize buffer management
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 Conclusions
• Applications of Database Technology
• Key definitions
• File versus Database Approach to Data
Management
• Elements of a Database System
• Advantages of Database Systems and Database
Management

35
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