DATABASES

1. Introduction to Database Design

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Course Content

• Introduction
• Definitions
• Classifications

• Data Modelling
• Relational Databases
• Querying Relational Databases
• Development of Relational Database Systems
• Database Development
• Database Application Development

• Transaction Management
Bibliography

• F. Ionescu, “Baze de date relationale si aplicatii”, Ed. Tehnica, Bucureşti, 2004

• C. J. Date, “An Introduction to Database Systems”, 8th Edition, 2004
• R. Elmasri, S. B. Navathe, “Fundamentals of Database Systems”, 6th Edition, 2010
• J. Ullman, J. Windom, “A First Course In Database Systems”, 3rd Edition, 2007
• Kevin Kline, Daniel Kline, “ SQL In A Nutshell”, 3rd Edition, 2008
• MySQL Documentation - https://dev.mysql.com/doc/
• PostgreSQL Documentation - https://postgresql.org/docs/
• MS SQL Server Documentation - https://docs.microsoft.com/sql/sql-server/
Chapter 1. Introduction

• Definitions
• Components of a database system
• Internal architecture of database systems
• Advantages of database systems
• Classification of database systems
• Data modelling
• Evolution of database systems
Definitions

• Databases are used in almost all areas of activity:

• Banking and commercial activities
• Bank deposits
• Product sales
• Production
• Inventory management
• Payroll
• Population records, tax information
• Services
• Medical
• Travel
• Education
• Etc.
Definitions

• Definition (broad sense): A database is a logically correlated

collection of data that reflects (models) a particular aspect of the
real world and is intended for a particular group of users.
• In this sense, the following can be considered “databases”:
• Record sheets (manually maintained)
• Document files or spreadsheets (Word, Excel)

• Definition (in a narrow sense, current): A database is a

computerized data collection which allows operations of:
• Insert
• Update
• Delete
• Query
Components of a database system

• A database system is a computerized system for keeping records of

a particular activity
• The components of a database system are: hardware, software,
users and persistent data
• Hardware:
• Database systems are installed on general purpose computers
• Databases are physically stored as files on storage media (hard disks)
• The size and performance of the database depend on the computing system on
which it is installed
Components of a database system

• Software:
• Operating systems, libraries, development tools, interfaces
• Database Management System ( DBMS) - receives user requests for access to
the database, interprets them, executes the corresponding operations and
returns the result
• Database Applications - programs that create and use databases
Components of a database system

• Users:
• Database administrator
• Analysts and designers of databases
• Application developers
• End users
Components of a database system

• Conceptual languages for working with databases:

• Data Definition Language – DDL
• Data Manipulation Language – DML
• Data Control Language – DCL
• Transaction Control Language – TCL
Internal architecture of a database system

• Architecture on 3 relatively independent levels (ANSI/X3/SPARC

standard -1975):
• Internal level
• Describes the physical storage structure of the database. This level is built upon
physical records
• Conceptual level
• Describes the structure of the whole database for the complete community of users.
This level describes the representation of the entire information content of the
database
• External level
• Describes part of the database of interest for a particular user group
Internal architecture of a database system
Advantages of database systems

• Main advantages:
• High data compaction
• High speed for DML operations (insert, update, delete)
• Representing complex associations between data
• Controlled (and lower) data redundancy
• Independence of data over the hardware used
• Data security: user authentication and access authorization
• Integrity restrictions (constraints) on inserting and updating data
• Maintaining the integrity of data in case of failures: rescue and restoration
• Possibility to share data among several types of users with concurrent access
Classification of database systems

• Classification by data model

• Hierarchical data model
• Network data model
• Relational model
• Object-oriented model
• Object-relational model

• Classification by number of users

• Mono/multi-user systems

• Classification by the number of stations

• Centralized databases
• Distributed databases
Data modeling

• A model is an abstraction of a system:

• Captures the most important features of the system (concepts)
• The concepts must be relevant to the purpose for which they are defined

• The technique of identifying the essential characteristics of a system

is called abstraction
• A data model sets out the rules for organizing and interpreting a
collection of data and is represented by:
• Sets of entities
• Associations between sets of entities
Data modeling

• High level conceptual models (Entity-Relationship model,

Enhanced Entity-Relationship model) briefly describe the sets of
entities and their associations
• They do not specify how the data is structured or processed
• They are represented by a high level conceptual scheme
• Data structuring models (hierarchical model, network model,
relational model, etc.) describe the representation of sets of entities
and their associations through certain data structures (trees,
graphs, tables)
Entity-Relationship model

• The Entity-Relationship (ER) model (introduced in 1976) defines

sets of entities and their associations, but does not impose a specific
way of structuring and processing data
• An entity is “whatever exists in the objective reality and can be
distinctively identified”
• Examples: a person, a product, an activity, a course, etc.

• An attribute is a property that describes a particular aspect of an

entity
• Examples: a person has a first name, last name, address, etc.
Entity-Relationship model

• An entity type refers to similar entities that can be described by the

same attributes:
• Examples: person type, product type, etc.

• Entities sets represent collections of all entities of the same type in a

database:
• Examples: the crowd of all people, the catalog of all products, etc.

• An entity can be described as an instance of an entity type

• The previous definitions have a similarity with the object-oriented
model: entity type – class, entity – object
Relationships (Associations)

• A relationship (association) is a correspondence between entities in

two or more entity sets. Associations can have attributes
• The degree (type) of an association is the number of sets of
associated entities:
• Binary (between 2 sets of entities) – most associations
• Multiple (between k sets of entities, where k > 2)

• Types of binary associations (by number of elements in each set):

• 1:1 (one-to-one): person – id card
• 1:M (one-to-many): product – comments
• M:1 (many-to-one): comments – product
• M:M (many-to-many): products – categories
Relationships (Associations) – 1:1
Relationships (Associations) – 1:M
Relationships (Associations) – M:1
Relationships (Associations) – M:M
Cardinality of associations

• Cardinality (multiplicity) of a set of entities is the maximum

number of elements in that set that can be associated with an
element in another set
• Example: The one-to-many relationship between sets A and B shows the
cardinality 1 for set A and M (with M ≥ 1) for set B

• Cardinality ratio is the ratio of the values of the cardinality on two

associated sets of entities:
• Binary associations (1:1, 1:M, M:1, M:M)
• Multiple associations have a cardinality ratio for each pair of sets of entities in
the relationship
Entity-Relationship (ER) Diagram

• The Entity-Relationship (ER) Diagram represents the Entity-

Relationship model graphically, through a set of entities and their
associations
• Symbols (notations):
Entity-Relationship (ER) Diagram
Entity-Relationship (ER) Diagram

• Strong entities
• CUSTOMERS (Username, First name, Last name, Email, etc.)
• CATEGORIES (Name)
• PRODUCTS (Name, Price, Description, etc.)

• Weak entities
• ORDERS (Date, etc.) – depends on CUSTOMERS and PRODUCTS

• Associations:
• PRODUCTS – CATEGORIES (M:M)
• CUSTOMERS – ORDERS (1:M)
• ORDERS – PRODUCTS (M:M)
Entity-Relationship (ER) Diagram

• The cardinality ratio of an association is determined by the

designer so as to reflect as accurately as possible how to organize
the modeled activity
• How to establish entity types and associations is not unique: the
same functionality can be achieved through a variety of ER
diagrams
• A lot of entities are called by a noun, and an association is called (as
a rule) by a verb, because an association is an interaction between
entities
Entity-Relationship (ER) Diagram

• The ER model does not specify how associations between sets of

entities are made: this depends on the data structure used for the
database:
• In the hierarchical model and network model the associations are made by
pointers from an entity to the associated entities
• In the relational model the associations are made by the equality of values of
common attributes of the sets of entities (keys)
• In the object-relational model, associations are represented by references that
use unique object identifiers
Hierarchical model

• The hierarchical data model organizes the data in a tree-like

structure with a single root
• The data is stored as records which are inter-connected through
links
• A record is a collection of attributes, each attribute containing a
single value, with an associated data domain
• The hierarchical model mandates that each child record has only
one parent and each parent can have one or more child records
• In order to retrieve data from a hierarchical database the whole tree
needs to be traversed starting from the root node
Hierarchical model
Network model

• The network model is an extension of the hierarchical data model.

• The data is organized more like a graph, with entity types are
represented as nodes and associations are represented as arcs
• In this model, entities are allowed to have more than one parent
node
• Since the data is more related, the access to data is easier and faster
• The network model was the first to map many-to-many relations
• This was the most widely used database model, before the
relational model was introduced
Network model