Module 1 (DECE304)

What is Data?
Data can be defined as a representation of facts, concepts, or instructions in a formalized manner,
which should be suitable for communication, interpretation, or processing by human or electronic
machine.
Data is represented with the help of characters such as alphabets (A-Z, a-z), digits (0-9) or special
characters (+,-,/,*,<,>,= etc.)

What is Information?
Information is organized or classified data, which has some meaningful values for the receiver.
Information is the processed data on which decisions and actions are based.
For the decision to be meaningful, the processed data must qualify for the following characteristics −
● Timely − Information should be available when required.
● Accuracy − Information should be accurate.
● Completeness − Information should be complete.

Data Processing Cycle

Data processing is the re-structuring or re-ordering of data by people or machine to increase their
usefulness and add values for a particular purpose. Data processing consists of the following basic
steps - input, processing, and output. These three steps constitute the data processing cycle.

● Input − In this step, the input data is prepared in some convenient form for processing. The
form will depend on the processing machine. For example, when electronic computers are
used, the input data can be recorded on any one of the several types of input medium, such
as magnetic disks, tapes, and so on.
● Processing − In this step, the input data is changed to produce data in a more useful form.
For example, pay-checks can be calculated from the time cards, or a summary of sales for the
month can be calculated from the sales orders.
● Output − At this stage, the result of the proceeding processing step is collected. The
particular form of the output data depends on the use of the data. For example, output data
may be pay-checks for employees.
What is Database?
A database is an organized collection of structured information, or data, typically stored
electronically in a computer system. A database is usually controlled by a database management
system (DBMS). Together, the data and the DBMS, along with the applications that are associated
with them, are referred to as a database system, often shortened to just database.

Data within the most common types of databases in operation today is typically modeled in rows and
columns in a series of tables to make processing and data querying efficient. The data can then be
easily accessed, managed, modified, updated, controlled, and organized. Most databases use
structured query language (SQL) for writing and querying data.

What is DBMS?
Database Management System (DBMS) is a software for storing and retrieving users' data
while considering appropriate security measures. It consists of a group of programs which manipulate
the database. The DBMS accepts the request for data from an application and instructs the operating
system to provide the specific data. In large systems, a DBMS helps users and other third-party
software to store and retrieve data.

DBMS allows users to create their own databases as per their requirement. The term “DBMS”
includes the user of the database and other application programs. It provides an interface between
the data and the software application.

Advantages of DBMS

● Controls database redundancy: It can control data redundancy because it stores all the data

in one single database file and that recorded data is placed in the database.
● Data sharing: In DBMS, the authorized users of an organization can share the data among

multiple users.
● Easily Maintenance: It can be easily maintainable due to the centralized nature of the

database system.
● Reduce time: It reduces development time and maintenance need.

● Backup: It provides backup and recovery subsystems which create automatic backup of data

from hardware and software failures and restores the data if required.
● multiple user interface: It provides different types of user interfaces like graphical user

interfaces, application program interfaces

Disadvantages of DBMS

● Cost of Hardware and Software: It requires a high speed of data processor and large

memory size to run DBMS software.

● Size: It occupies a large space of disks and large memory to run them efficiently.
 ● Complexity: Database system creates additional complexity and requirements.

● Higher impact of failure: Failure is highly impacted the database because in most of the

organization, all the data stored in a single database and if the database is damaged due to
electric failure or database corruption then the data may be lost forever.

Database Applications – DBMS

Applications where we use Database Management Systems are:

Telecom: There is a database to keeps track of the information regarding calls made, network usage,
customer details etc. Without the database systems it is hard to maintain that huge amount of data
that keeps updating every millisecond.

Industry: Where it is a manufacturing unit, warehouse or distribution centre, each one needs a
database to keep the records of ins and outs. For example distribution centre should keep a track of
the product units that supplied into the center as well as the products that got delivered out from the
distribution center on each day; this is where DBMS comes into picture.

Banking System: For storing customer info, tracking day to day credit and debit transactions,
generating bank statements etc. All this work has been done with the help of Database management
systems.

Sales: To store customer information, production information and invoice details.

Airlines: To travel though airlines, we make early reservations, this reservation information along
with flight schedule is stored in database.

Education sector: Database systems are frequently used in schools and colleges to store and
retrieve the data regarding student details, staff details, course details, exam details, payroll data,
attendance details, fees details etc. There is a hell lot amount of inter-related data that needs to be
stored and retrieved in an efficient manner.

Online shopping: You must be aware of the online shopping websites such as Amazon, Flipkart etc.
These sites store the product information, your addresses and preferences, credit details and provide
you the relevant list of products based on your query. All this involves a Database management
system.

I have mentioned very few applications, this list is never going to end if we start mentioning all the
DBMS applications.

Data Model
Data Model is the modeling of the data description, data semantics, and consistency constraints of
the data. It provides the conceptual tools for describing the design of a database at each level of data
abstraction. Therefore, there are following six data models used for understanding the structure of the
database:
Hierarchical Model: This database model organises data into a tree-like-structure, with a single root,
to which all the other data is linked. The hierarchy starts from the Root data, and expands like a tree,
adding child nodes to the parent nodes. In this model, a child node will only have a single parent
node.This model efficiently describes many real-world relationships like index of a book, recipes etc.

In hierarchical model, data is organised into tree-like structure with one one-to-many relationship
between two different types of data, for example, one department can have many courses, many
professors and of-course many students.

Network Model: This is an extension of the Hierarchical model. In this model data is organised more
like a graph, and are allowed to have more than one parent node.

In this database model data is more related as more relationships are established in this database
model. Also, as the data is more related, hence accessing the data is also easier and fast. This
database model was used to map many-to-many data relationships.
This was the most widely used database model, before Relational Model was introduced.

Entity-Relationship Data Model: An ER model is the logical representation of data as objects and
relationships among them. These objects are known as entities, and relationship is an association
among these entities. This model was designed by Peter Chen and published in 1976 papers. It was
widely used in database designing. A set of attributes describe the entities. For example,
student_name, student_id describes the 'student' entity. A set of the same type of entities is known as
an 'Entity set', and the set of the same type of relationships is known as 'relationship set'.

Relational Data: Model was first proposed by Ted Codd of IBM in the 1970s. But, its commercial
implementations were observed in the 1980s. The relational data model is employed for storing and
processing the data in the database.

The building blocks of the relational model has been developed on the concept of mathematical
relation. And its theoretical concepts are based on set theory and first-order predicate logic. The
relational model is also referred to as the record-based model as it frames the database in fixed-
format records of various types.

A relational model is popular for its simplicity and possibility of hiding the low-level implementation
details from database developer and database users.

Relational data model expresses the database as a set of relations (table of values). Each relation
has columns and rows which are formally called attributes and tuples respectively. Each tuple in
relation is a real-world entity or relationship. The name of the relation and the name of attributes
contribute to interpreting the sense of each tuple.

Object oriented data model: is based upon real world situations. These situations are represented
as objects, with different attributes. All these object have multiple relationships between them.
Elements of Object oriented data model
Objects: The real world entities and situations are represented as objects in the Object oriented
database model.
 Attributes and Method :Every object has certain characteristics. These are represented using
Attributes. The behaviour of the objects is represented using Methods.

Class: Similar attributes and methods are grouped together using a class. An object can be called as
an instance of the class.

Inheritance: A new class can be derived from the original class. The derived class contains attributes
and methods of the original class as well as its own.

Example
An Example of the Object Oriented data model is −

Shape, Circle, Rectangle and Triangle are all objects in this model.
Circle has the attributes Center and Radius.
Rectangle has the attributes Length and Breath
Triangle has the attributes Base and Height.
The objects Circle, Rectangle and Triangle inherit from the object Shape.

Entity-Attribute-Value Model:

The Main Concept of the Entity-Attribute-Value Model. The entity-attribute-value serves for storing
the structure of the information along with the actual values. This model mainly consists of three
relations: The relations Entity and Attribute contain information about entities and their attributes and
the relation Value stores the actual values for occurring entity-attribute pairs.