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Information Technology Essentials
Session 6
Relational Databases
Acknowledgments:
Adapted from Chris Dellarocas, U. Md..
Copyright © 2005 Thomas Malone, Chris Dellarocas
Outline
• What is a database?
• What is a database management system?
• An Introduction to Microsoft Access
– How to create a database
– How to retrieve data from a database
– How to build a nice Graphical User Interface on top of a database
Why are we learning this?
• Databases are perhaps the single most important class
of corporate applications
• Databases are surprisingly powerful data modeling
and analysis tools in situations where spreadsheets
fall short
– Students who plan to work in management consulting will soon
find this out
• MS Access is a great example of how easy it is to
build powerful applications without the need of a
background in technology
What is a database
• Boring answer
– A structured collection of data
– Example: A telephone directory
• Insightful answer
– A data-centered mirror of an organization’s business processes
– Structure of data reflects organizational processes
– Content of data reflects organization’s history
Example: Northwind Traders
Representing the Real World as Data
What Data Are Businesses Interested In?
• Entity
– a person, place, thing, or event on which we maintain information
– Examples: Employees, Customers, Products, Warehouses
• Attribute
– characteristic or quality of particular entity
– Examples: Employee’s SSN, Customer’s Address, Product’s Unit
Price
• Relationships Among Entities
– Examples:
» Customer - Orders - Product(s)
» Order - Serviced by - Employee
From Spreadsheets to Databases
• Spreadsheets are great for keeping track of data for
one type of entities
– Participants of a conference
– Students of a class
– Customers of a company
– ….
What is the basic spreadsheet “data
model”?
• Each row stores data about one entity
• Each column stores data about an attribute
• Each cell stores data about an attribute of an entity
Spreadsheet limitations
• Things get complicated when we want to keep track
of several inter-related entities
• For example:
– Customers
– Products
– Orders
• Let’s try it!
Spreadsheets are awkward for storing
relationships
• Main difficulty is that an “Order” is essentially a
relationship between one Customer and one or more
Products
Storage of information is not even half the
story
• The reason we build databases is in order to easily
retrieve information to answer questions that support
managerial decision-making
• For example:
Who are our top 10 customers based on their total
order value in the year 2002?
• Can you do this using a spreadsheet?
Enter Relational Databases
• A relational DB supports storage of data as a set of
inter-related tables
– Each table stores data about a set of Entities
– Each table row is a record about one such Entity
– Each record column is a field specifying an attribute of this Entity
– Each record has a field that acts as a unique identifier of an entity
– Relationships among entities are specified by referring to this
unique identifier from other tables
Customer Unique Id
Product Unique Id
Order Unique Id
Reference to a Customer
Relational Database Management
Systems (DBMS)
• Allows the creation of relational databases
• Supports specialized languages for easy retrieval of
data from a set of inter-related tables
• Supports easy construction of a Graphical User
Interface on top of the database
• Allows very large table sizes
• Provides security, fault tolerance, multi-user support,
etc.
SQL – Structured Query Language
• Every statement yields a table of values as output
– Sometimes there’s only one row in the table!
select columns and/or expressions
from tables
where conditions on the rows
group by group rows together
order by order the rows
Display an Entire Table
SELECT *
FROM Employees;
Choose Columns
• Choosing a subset of columns is sometimes called a "project"
operation
• Display first and last name of all employees
SELECT FirstName, LastName
FROM Employees;
• Display company name and contact name for all customers
Choose Rows
• Find US Employees
SELECT FirstName, LastName
FROM Employees
WHERE Country = “USA”;
• Find employees hired after Jan. 1, 1993
Compute Columns
• Find total inventory value of each product
SELECT ProductName,
UnitPrice*UnitsInStock AS TotalValue
FROM Products;
• Nice names for output columns
– Name following computed column (e.g., TotalValue) will be used to name output
column
• Find total price for each line item in “Order Details” table
Sorting
• Can sort output by contents of a column
– sort in ascending or descending order
– sort by more than one column (second one breaks ties)
• Sort products by total inventory value
SELECT ProductName,
UnitPrice*UnitsInStock AS TotalValue
FROM Products
ORDER BY TotalValue DESC;
• What are our 10 most expensive products?
Aggregates
• Can make calculations on entire columns
– sum, avg, max, min, count
• What is the total value of a given customer order
SELECT OrderID, Sum([UnitPrice]*[Quantity]*(1-[Discount]))
AS Subtotal
FROM [Order Details]
WHERE OrderID=11001;
– returns a table with just one row!
• What is average unit price of our products?
Grouping and Aggregates
• Each different value for the GROUP BY fields defines a new
group
– One row of output is produced for each group
– Several rows of input table may belong to same group. They are aggregated using
aggregation operator.
• Compute total value of all orders
SELECT OrderID,
Sum([UnitPrice]*[Quantity]*(1-[Discount]))
AS Subtotal
FROM [Order Details]
GROUP BY OrderID;
• Create a table that shows how many line items are in each order
Joins
• Combine rows from one table with rows from another
• Usually join on some common column
– Don'
t combine rows unless their value in the common column is the same
– WHERE clause says the common column must be same in each table
• Produce a list of all products and their categories
SELECT Products.ProductName,
Categories.CategoryName
FROM Categories, Products
WHERE
Categories.CategoryID = Products.CategoryID;
More Join examples
• Produce a list of all products and their suppliers
• Produce a list of all suppliers for Tofu
SQL Summary
select columns and/or expressions
from tables
where conditions on the rows
group by group rows together
order by order the rows
