ADVANCED DATABASE

MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
MCS - 043
For
Masters In Computer Applications [MCA]
Dinesh Verma
S. Roy

Useful For
IGNOU, KSOU (Karnataka), Bihar University (Muzaffarpur), Nalanda
University, Jamia Millia Islamia, Vardhman Mahaveer Open University
(Kota), Uttarakhand Open University, Kurukshetra University, Seva
Sadan’s College of Education (Maharashtra), Lalit Narayan Mithila
University, Andhra University, Pt. Sunderlal Sharma (Open) University
(Bilaspur), Annamalai University, Bangalore University, Bharathiar
University, Bharathidasan University, HP University, Centre for distance
and open learning, Kakatiya University (Andhra Pradesh), KOU
(Rajasthan), MPBOU (MP), MDU (Haryana), Punjab University,
Tamilnadu Open University, Sri Padmavati Mahila Visvavidyalayam
(Andhra Pradesh), Sri Venkateswara University (Andhra Pradesh),
UCSDE (Kerala), University of Jammu, YCMOU, Rajasthan University,
UPRTOU, Kalyani University, Banaras Hindu University (BHU) and all
other Indian Universities.

Closer to Nature We use Recycled Paper

®

GULLYBABA PUBLISHING HOUSE PVT LTD.

ISO 9001 & ISO 14001 CERTIFIED CO.
Published by:
GullyBaba Publishing House Pvt. Ltd.
Regd. Office: Branch Office:
2525/193, 1 st Floor, Onkar Nagar-A, 1A/2A, 20, Hari Sadan,
Tri Nagar, Delhi-110035 Ansari Road, Daryaganj,
(From Kanhaiya Nagar Metro Station Towards New Delhi-110002
Old Bus Stand) Ph. 011-45794768
011-27387998, 27384836, 27385249
+919350849407
E-mail: [email protected], Website:GullyBaba.com, GPHbook.com

New Edition

Price: `129/-

ISBN: 978-93-81638-09-5

Copyright© with Publisher

All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means;
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the
written permission of the copyright holder.
Disclaimer: Although the author and publisher have made every effort to
ensure that the information in this book is correct, the author and publisher
do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss,
damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or
omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.
If you find any kind of error, please let us know and get reward and or the
new book free of cost.
The book is based on IGNOU syllabus. This is only a sample. The book/author/
publisher does not impose any guarantee or claim for full marks or to be
passed in exam. You are advised only to understand the contents with the
help of this book and answer in your words.
All disputes with respect to this publication shall be subject to the jurisdiction
of the Courts, Tribunals and Forums of New Delhi, India only.

Home Delivery of GPH Books

You can get GPH books by VPP/COD/Speed Post/Courier.
You can order books by Email/SMS/WhatsApp/Call.
For more details, visit gullybaba.com/faq-books.html
Our packaging department usually dispatches the books within 2 days after
receiving your order and it takes nearly 5-6 days in postal/courier services
to reach your destination.
Note: Selling this book on any online platform like Amazon, Flipkart,
Shopclues, Rediff, etc. without prior written permission of the publisher
is prohibited and hence any sales by the SELLER will be termed as
ILLEGAL SALE of GPH Books which will attract strict legal action against
the offender.
 Preface

This book (MCS-043) is mainly targeted for the exam of ‘Advanced

Database Management Systems’ for all Universities. This topic has been in demand
and is the need of current scenario. Providing well researched material to the learners,
with focus on examination and learning has been a constant pursuit for us. We at
GPH, believe in the power of education and respect the growth and positive
contribution that education and respect contribution that education can contribute
to a society.
The unavailability of material in the market is a demotivating factor for the students
and searching and collecting it, becomes a tough task for the student community.
We, at GPH wish to strive for excellence as we perceive it not only as earning a
degree but a step towards the growth and enrichment.
GPH Books are the pioneers in the field and an effort to provide a Strategy and a
unique methodology so as to give you excellent performance in the examination.
Your goal of attaining a higher grade and securing your future can be made accessible
by the use of our published material. Your goal can thus be achievable and realistic!
Hoping for your better, brighter and a promising and successful future!
Our website is www.gullybaba.com. It is a vital resource for your exams
and can have manifold effect on our meticulous preparation. Now you can access
us on the net thorough www.doeacconline.com, www.ignounline.com, and
www.astrologyeverywhere.com.
We greatefully acknowledge the significant contributions of our experts
in bringing out this publication.

Dear Reader,
Welcome in the world of GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd. Profound,
in-depth study and research can guarantee you the most reliable, latest & accurate
information on the subject. However, as the saying goes, nothing is perfect, but we
still believe that there is always a scope for improvement. And we wish to be
nothing less but aim for the best.
You, the reader can be our best guide in making this book more interesting and user
friendly.
Your valuable suggestions are welcome!
Feedback about the book can be sent at [email protected].
Publisher.
 TOPICS COVERED
Block—1 Data Base Design and Implementation

Unit—1 Relational Database Design

Unit—2 Database Implementation and Tools
Unit—3 Advanced SQL
Unit—4 Database System Catalogue

Block—2 DBMS Advanced Features and Distributed Database

Unit—5 Query Processing and Evaluation

Unit—6 Transaction Management and Recovery
Unit—7 Database Security and Authorisation
Unit—8 Distributed Database

Block—3 Enhanced Database Models

Unit—9 Object Oriented Database

Unit—10 Database and XML
Unit—11 Introduction to Data Warehousing
Unit—12 Introduction and Data Mining

Block—4 Emerging Trends and Example DBMS Architectures

Unit—13 Emerging Database Models, Technologies and

Applications-I
Unit—14 Emerging Database Models, Technologies and
Applications-II
Unit—15 PostgreSQL
Unit—16 Oracle
Contents
Chapter—1 Database Design..................................................................1-13
Chapter—2 Database Implementation...............................................14-34
Chapter—3 Important ER Diagrams..................................................35-47
Chapter—4 Advanced SQL and System Catalogue......................48-67
Chapter—5 DBMS Advanced Features and
Distributed Database......................................................68-112
Chapter—6 Enhanced Database Models....................................113-139
Chapter—7 Emerging Trends and Example DBMS
Architectures..................................................................140-150
Chapter—8 ORACLE..........................................................................151-159
Question Papers
(1) Dec-2006 (Solved)................................................................................161-180
(2) June- 2007 (Solved).............................................................................181-199
(3) Dec-2007.................................................................................................200-202
(4) Dec-2007 (Solved)................................................................................203-211
(5) June- 2008 (Solved).............................................................................212-226
(6) Dec-2008 (Solved)................................................................................227-233
(7) June-2009 (Solved)..............................................................................234-242
(8) Dec-2009 (Solved)................................................................................243-255
(9) June- 2010 (Solved).............................................................................256-266
(10) Dec-2010 (Solved).............................................................................267-276
(11) June- 2011 (Solved)..........................................................................277-285
(12) Dec-2011 (Solved).............................................................................286-289
(13) June- 2012 (Solved)..........................................................................290-293
(14) Dec-2012 (Solved).............................................................................295-301
(15) June- 2013 (Solved)..........................................................................302-314
(16) Dec-2013...............................................................................................315-317
(17) June- 2014 (Solved)..........................................................................318-332
(18) Dec-2014...............................................................................................333-334
(19) June- 2015............................................................................................335-336
(20) Dec-2015...............................................................................................337-339
(21) June- 2016............................................................................................340-341
(22) Dec-2016...............................................................................................342-343
(23) June- 2017............................................................................................344-345
(24) Dec- 2017 (Solved)............................................................................346-349
(25) June- 2018............................................................................................350-351
(26) Dec- 2018 .........................................................................................352-353
(27) June- 2019 (Solved)..........................................................................354-358
(28) Dec- 2019 .........................................................................................359-360
(29) June- 2020 ..........................................................................................361-362
 GPH Books
Also Available for :
BA(History, Sociology, Public Administration, Political Science,
English, Hindi), B.Ed., BCA, MCA, CIC, MBA, B.Com., B.Sc.,
MA(English, History, Hindi), and for Tourism (DTS, BTS, MTM).
Read GPH Books
FOR
IGNOU AND
ALL INDIAN UNIVERSITIES

GullyBaba Publishing House

2525/193, Ist Floor, Kanhaiya Nagar Metro Station,
Tota Ram Bazar, Onkar Nagar-A, Tri Nagar, Delhi-110035
Phone : 011-27387998, 9350849407, 9312235086
Chapter-1
DATABASE DESIGN

Q1. What is the need of EER model?

Ans. The ER modeling concepts which are sufficient for representing many
database schemas for “traditional” database applications, which mainly include
data-processing applications in business and industry. Since the late 1970s,
however, newer applications of database technology have become
commonplace; these include databases for engineering design and
manufacturing (CAD/CAM), telecommunications, images and graphics,
multimedia, data mining, data warehousing, geographic information systems
(GIS), and databases for indexing the World Wide Web, among many other
applications. These types of database have more complex requirements than
do the more traditional applications. To represent these requirements as
accurately and clearly as possible, designers of database applications must use
additional semantic data modeling concepts.
Features that have been proposed for semantic data models, leading to the
enhanced-ER or EER model. The EER(Enhance-ER) model includes all the
modeling concepts of the ER model. In addition, it includes the concepts of
subclass and superclass and the related concepts of specialization and
generalization. Another concept included in EER model is that of category
which is used to represent a collection of objects that is the union of objects of
different entity types.

Q2. What is the use of EER diagram?

Ans. The EER diagrams are used to model advanced data model requiring
inheritance, specialisation and generalisation.

Q3. Define Specialisation & Generalisation. Represent them in an

example of diagram. Also discuss their constraints.
Ans. The process of defining the subclasses of an entity type is called
specialization, where the entity type is called the super class of the
specialization.

Generalisation is the reverse process of specialization; in other words, it is a

process of suppressing the differences between several entity types, identifying
their common features into a single super class. For example, the entity type
2 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

CAR and TRUCK can be generalized into entity type VEHICLE. Therefore,
CAR and TRUCK can now be subclasses of the super class generalized class
VEHICLE.

Type Number Owner

G S
E P
Vehicle
N E
E C
R I
A A
L d L
I I
S S
E Car Scooter Truck E
D D

Mileage Stock Capacity

Generalisation and specialisation

Constraints and Characteristics of Specialisation and Generalisation

A super class may either have a single subclass or many subclasses in
specialization. In case of only one subclass we do not use circle notation to
show the relationship of subclass / super class. Sometimes in specialization,
the subclass becomes the member of the super class after satisfying a condition
on the value of some attributes of the super class. Such subclasses are called
condition defined subclasses or predicate defined subclasses. For example,
vehicle entity type has an attribute vehicle “type”, as shown in the above
figure.

Disjointness is also the constraints to a specialisation. It means that an entity

can be a member of at most one of the subclasses of the specialisation. In an
attribute-defined specialization the disjointness constraint means that an entity
can be a member of a single sub-class only. In the above figure, the symbol ‘d
’in circle stands for disjoint.

But if the real world entity is not disjoint their set of entities may overlap; that
is an entity may be a member of more than one subclass of the specialization.
This is represented by an (o) in the circle. For example, if we classify cars as
luxury cars and cars then they will overlap.
MCS-043 GPH Book 3

In some cases, a single class has a similar relationship with more than one
class. For example, the sub class ‘car’ may be owned by two different types
of owners:
INDIVIDUAL or ORGANISATION. Both these types of owners are different
classes thus such a situation can be modeled with the help of a Union (u).

Q4. What are the constraints used in EER diagrams?

Ans. The basic constraints used in EER diagrams are disjointness, overlapping
and unions.

Q5. How is an EER diagram converted into a table?

Ans. For disjointness and union constraints the chances are that we create
separate tables for the subclasses and no table for super class. For overlapping
constraints it is advisable to have a table of super class. For such cases the
tables of subclasses will have only those attributes that are not common to
super class except for the primary key.

Q6. Explain the EER diagram with example of an institution.

Ans. The INSTITUTE Database Example: Consider a INSTITUTE database
that keeps track students and their majors, transcripts and registration as well
as of the institute’s course offerings. The database also keeps track of the
sponsored research projects of faculty and graduate students. A discussion of
the requirements that led to this schema follows.
For each person, the database maintains information on the person’s Name
Name, social security number Ssn, address Address, sex Sex, and birth date
BDate. Two subclasses of the PERSON entity type were identified: FACULTY
and STUDENT. Specific attributes of FACULTY are rank Rank (assistant,
associate, adjunct, research, visiting, etc.), office FOffice, office phone
FPhone, and salary Salary, and all faculty members are related to the academic
department(s) with which they are affiliated BELONGS (a faculty member
can be associated with several departments, so the relationship is M:N). A
specific attribute of STUDENT is [Class] (freshman = 1, sophomore = 2, …
, graduate student = 5). Each student is also related to his or her major and
minor departments, if known (MAJOR and MINOR), to the course sections
he or she is currently attending REGISTERED, and to the courses completed
TRANSCRIPT. Each transcript instance includes the grade the student received
Grade in the course section.
GRAD_STUDENT is a subclass of STUDENT, with the defining predicate
Class = 5. For each graduate student, we keep a list of previous degrees in a
composite, multivalued attribute Degrees. We also relate the graduate student
to a faculty advisor ADVISOR and to a thesis committee COMMITTEE if
4 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

one exists.
An academic department has the attributes name DName, telephone DPhone,
and office number Office and is related to the faculty member who is its
chairperson CHAIRS and to the college to which it belongs CD. Each college
has attributes college name CName, office number COffice, and the name of
its dean Dean.
A course has attributes course number C#; course name Cname, and course
description CDesc. Several sections of each course are offered, with each
section having the attributes section number Sec# and the year and quarter in
which the section was offered (Year and Qtr). Section numbers uniquely
identify each section. The sections being offered during the current semester
are in a subclass CURRENT_SECTION of SECTION, with the defining
predicate Qtr = CurrentQtr and Year = CurrentYear. Each section is related to
the instructor who taught or is teaching it (TEACH, if that instructor is in the
database).
The category INSTRUCTOR_RESEARCHER is a subset of the union of
FACULTY and GRAD_STUDENT and includes all faculty, as well as graduate
students who are supported by teaching or research. Finally, the entity type
GRANT keeps track of research grants and contracts awarded to the university.
Each grant has attributes grant title Title, grant number No, the awarding
agency Agency, and the starting date StDate. A grant is related to one principal
investigator PI and to all the researchers it supports SUPPORT. Each instance
of support has an attributes the starting date of support Start, the ending date
of the support (if known) End, and the percentage of time being spent on the
project Time by the researcher being supported.
MCS-043 GPH Book 5

Sen BDate Sex

FName Minit LName No Street AptNo City State Zip

Name PERSON Address

d

FOffice Rank Salary

FPhone FACULTY
Class
1
N College Degree Year
ADVISOR
STUDENT
M
N Degrees
COMMITTEE
Class=5
GRAD_STUDENT
1
Pl
Title
N No
GRANT
Agency
M U
StDate M
BELONGS Start N
1 N
Time
SUPPORT MINOR N REGISTERED
CHAIRS N End
MAJOR
M INSTRUCTOR_RESEARCHER 1 N
1
1 Grade
M
1
TEACH N TRANSCRIPT
CURRENT_SECTION
Qtr=Current Qtr
N
and
Year=Current Year

Sce#
DEPARTMENT
SECTION Year
DName DPhone Office N Otr
CS
1
1 N 1
N
COLLEGE CD DC COURSE

Dean C# CName CDesc

COffice
CName
An EER conceptual schema for Institute offering Various courses

Q7. What are Multi valued Dependencies? When we can say that a
constraint X is multi determined.
Ans. An MVD is a constraint due to multi-valued attributes. A relational must
have at least 3 attributes out of which two should be Multi-valued.

Q8. Decompose the following into 4NF

EMP
6 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

ENAME PNAME DNAME

Krishna X Vijay
Krishna Y Manu
Krishna X Manu
Krishna Y Vijay

Ans.EMP_PROJECTS

ENAME PNAME
Krishna X
Krishna Y

EMP_DEPENDENCIES

ENAME DNAME
Krishna Vijay
Krishna Manu

Q9. Does the following relation satisfy MVDs with 4NF? Decompose the
following relation into 5NF.
SUPPLY
SNAME PARTNAME PROJNAME
Krishna Bolt X
Krishna Nut Y
Radha Bolt Y
Vasudev Nut Z
Radha Nail X
Radha Bolt X
Krishna Bolt Y
Ans. No,
R1
SNAME PARTNAME
Krishna Bolt
Krishna Nut
Radha Bolt
Vasudev Nut
Radha Nail
R2
MCS-043 GPH Book 7

SNAME PROJNAME
Krishna X
Krishna Y
Radha Y
Vasudev Z
Radha X

R3
PARTNAME PROJNAME
Bolt X
Nut Y
Bolt Y
Nut Z
Nail X

Q10. Define 5NF. Explain why the following relation does not satisfy 5NF
and decompose it to satisfy 5NF. What advantages are gained by this
decomposition? [Dec06(s), Q1(i)]
Parent Child Hobby
P1 C1 H1
P1 C1 H2
P1 C2 H3
P2 C3 H3
P2 C4 H3
P3 C4 H4
Ans. 5NF: A Relation is said to be in the fifth normal form (5NF) if every join
dependency is a consequence of its relation (candidate keys).
Alternatively, for each and every non-trivial join dependency * (R1, R2, R3)
each decomposed Relation R1 is a super key of the main Relation.
5NF is also called project-Join Normal Form (PJNF).

Relation given as below:

Parent Child Hobby
P1 C1 H1
P1 C1 H2
P1 C2 H3
P2 C3 H3
P2 C4 H3
P3 C4 H4
8 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Projections:
D1:

Parent Child
P1 C1
P1 C2
P2 C3
P2 C4
P3 C4
D2:
Parent Hobby
P1 H1
P1 H2
P1 H3
P2 H3
P3 H4

D3:
Parent Hobby
P1 H1
P1 H2
P1 H3
P2 H3
P3 H4

D1 D2

Spurious tuple (s)

MCS-043 GPH Book 9

D1 D3

Spurious tuple(s)

D2 D3

Spurious tuple (s)

record missing: P2 C4 H3
But D1 = D2 = D3 = R
So *(D1, D2, D3) is join dependency
*((Parent, Child), (Child, Hobby), (Parent, Hobby)) is a join dependency.
The consequence of these join dependencies is that parent, child or Hobby is
not relation key.
Decompose Relation to Satisfy 5NF:
R Decomposed in
10 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

R1 (Parent, Child),
R2 (Parent, Hobby), and
R3 (Child, Hobby)
Advantage of 5NF Decomposition
Relations R1 R2 and R3
are in 5NF
as it satisfy trivial join-dependency
So, no need to insert a value of Hobby when new child record is inserted.

Q11. When is a set of functional dependencies F minimal?

Ans. A set of functional dependencies F is minimal if it satisfies the following
conditions:
• Every dependency in F has a single attribute for its right-hand side.
• We cannot replace any dependency X → A in F with Dependency Y → A,
where Y is a proper subset of X and still have a set of dependencies that is
equivalent to F.
• We cannot remove any dependency from F and still have a set of dependencies
that is equivalent to F.

Q12. Give the proof of transitive rule {X → Y, Y → Z} | = X → Z.

Ans. 1. X → Y and 2. Y → Z both holds in a relation r. Then for any two
tuples t1 and t2 in r such that t1[X] = t2[X], we must have 3. t1[Y] = t2[y],
from assumption 1; hence we must also have 4. t1[Z] = t2[z], from 3 and
assumption 2; hence X → Z must hold in r..

Q13. Define Inclusion Dependencies.

Ans. An inclusion dependency R.X < S.Y between two sets of attributes – X
of a relation schema R, and Y of a relation schema S – is defined as the
following constraint:
If r and s are the relation state of R and S respectively at any specific time
then:
x
(r(R)) ⊆ Y(s(S))
The subset relationship does not necessarily have to be a proper subset. Please
note that the sets of attributes on which the inclusion dependency is specified
viz., X of R and Y of S above, must have the same number of attributes. In
addition, the domains for each corresponding pair of attributes in X and Y
should be compatible.

Q14. What is the key idea behind DKNF?

Ans. The key idea behind DKNF is to specify the “ultimate normal form.”
MCS-043 GPH Book 11

Q15. Define Template Dependency.

Ans. The template dependencies are the more general and natural class of data
dependencies that generalizes the concepts of JDs. A template dependency is
representation of the statement that a relation is invariant under a certain tableau
mapping. Therefore, it resembles a tableau. It consists of a number of
hypotheses rows that define certain variables with a special row at the bottom,
called the conclusion row. A relation r satisfies a template dependency, if and
only if , a valuation (say ρ ) that successfully maps the hypothesis rows to
tuples in a relation r, finds a map for conclusion row to a tuple in r.

Q16. How is template dependency is different from a tableau ? Explain

with example.
Ans. A template dependency is different from a tableau in the following two
ways:
(1) A variable like (a, b, c etc.) in the conclusion row need not appear in any of
the hypothesis row.
(2) Variables may not be necessarily restricted to a single column.

Let us show both the points above with the help of an example each.

Example : Consider the TD T on schema A B C in Figure below. It is a valid

TD expression; variable c is not appearing in the hypothesis rows where the
variables are c’ and c”. This TD has the variable of conclusion row on A and
B in the hypothesis rows, but not on C, therefore, is called A B-partial.

T (A B C)
a' b c"
a' b c'
a b ' c"
a b c

Figure : A sample A B-Partial TD T

A TDT on schema R where every variable in the conclusion row appears in
some hypothesis’s row is termed as full. Consider a TD having w1, w2,…,
wk as the hypothesis rows and w as the conclusion row, a TD is called S-
partial, where S is the set defined as: {S Î R | w (S)} appears in one of w1,
w2, …, wk). The TD is full if the S = R and strictly partial if S ¹ R.
A TD in which each variable appears in exactly one column is called a typed
TD, but if some variable appears in multiple columns then it is called an untyped
12 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

TD.

Another Example : Figure below shows an untyped TDT. This TD assumes

that the domain of A is same as that of domain of B, otherwise such TD will
not make any sense.

T (A B)
b c
a b
a c
Figure : Untyped TD T
Let us now show the relationship of JD and MVD to the TD.

Another Example : Consider the MVD A ®® B over the relation schema A

B C is equivalent to the TD T in Figure below. TDT indicates that if a relation
has two tuples t1 and t2 that agree on A, it must also have a tuple t3 such that
t3 (A B) = t1 (A B) and t3 (A C) = t2 (A C), which is just a way of stating that
the relation satisfies A ®® B

T (A B C)
a b c'
a b' c
a b c
Figure : A TD T for MVD
However, please note that not every TD corresponds to a JD. This can be
ascertained from the fact that their can an infinite number of different TDs
over a given relation schema, whereas there is only a finite set of JDs over the
same schema. Therefore, some of the TDs must not be equivalent to any JD.

Q17. List the various points which should be kept in mind while modeling
the time in a temporal database system.
In a temporal database system you need to model time keeping the following
points in mind:
• You need to define database as a sequence of time based data in chronological
order.
• You need to resolve events that happen at the same time.
• A reference point of time may be defined to find time relative to it.
• Sometimes a calendar is used.
MCS-043 GPH Book 13

• The SQL support for temporal data includes:

(i) data types such as Date (dd, mm, yyyy,
(ii) TIME (hh:mm:ss), TIMEST AMP.
which specifies a unique sequence number, based on time, to identify sequence
of events/activities, INTERVAL (time durations) and PERIOD (period frame
reference point).
(iii) You can also define the concept of valid time for a data entity for example
an assignment may be valid till a particular time.

Q18. Why is the DBMS most suitable for Information System

implementation?
Ans. The following characteristics make DBMS a very valuable tool for
information systems:
• Data independence
• Data sharing under secure environment
• Simple query mechanism
• Support for transaction and recovery
• Availability of tools for knowledge extraction.

Q19. Which of the information System Life Cycle stages are important
for database design?
Ans. The stages where a lot of useful input is generated for database design
are communication and modeling.
Chapter-2
DATABASE IMPLEMENTATION

Q1. Why database application design activity in an organisation is very

important? Also draw and explain the diagramatic representation of
database application design.
Ans. The database application design activity in an organisation is very
important. This activity determines the overall quality of the information system.
The database application design involves database design and application system
design. The Figure shows the steps of these processes and the linkage for
database application design and implementation.

Database Design Application SystemDesign

- Transactions and data

Design of Conceptual Schema processing design
- Constraint specification

- View designs for various

applications
- Index design

- Implementing Database Implementing transactions

using SQL or Database Performance using embedded programs/
implementation tools Tuning data SQL/other implementation
- Performance tuning tools

Database application system design and implementation

Q2. Explain the process of conceptual Database design.

Ans. The process of conceptual database design is given in Fig.
MCS-043 GPH Book 15

Designing the Conceptual

Database

Conceptual Schema Design Application & Transaction Design

Single Schema View Integration Retrieval Update Mixed

Design Approach Transactions Transactions Transactions

Conceptual Schema Design :

The following details are produced during the conceptual database design :
- Database structures and data types associated with each field.
- Keys and constraints.
- Data irrelationships such as referential constraints.
- Data dictionary.

The process of conceptual schema design requires primarily modification

and conversion of E-R diagram into tables keeping the following points in
consideration:
- Proper identification of entities, relationship, and attributes.
- Identification of key attributes.
- Identification of cardinality of relationship.
- Identifying weak entities, specialisation/generalisation etc.

Two common approaches for conceptual schema design :

a) Single Schema Design
b) View Integration

(i) Single Schema Design : This process results in the development of single
schema.

(ii) View Integration : A commercial database may be very complex. It may

be a good idea to model this database as per the viewpoints of various
stakeholders, thus creating many views. A conceptual schema may be an
integration of all such views. Integration involves the following steps :
16 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

• finding out the common entities and relationships of interest

• finding out if any conflicting requirements exist, such as name, type,
constraints etc.
• modifying and manage the views.
• Refining the final model, if necessary

Q3. List the important considerations at logical & physical database

design stages of database design.
Ans. Important considerations at this stage of database design are :
- The database views should be identified.
- The security considerations and constraints on the view should be identified
and duly specified.
- The performance criteria for views may be identified.
- The physical database design which includes specific storage structure (e.g.,
clustered file organisation) and access paths (indexes etc.) may be identified.

Q4. Why is physical database design required?

Ans. A high-performance transaction process systems requires continuous
operation of the system. Transaction performance, in terms of the average
number of transactions per minute and maximum transaction response time,
is critical. Hence, a careful physical database design that meets the organisation's
transaction processing needs is a must.

Q5. Why do we choose a specific physical structure?

Ans. We do it so that the database application can achieve good performance.
The physical database design process is restricted to choosing the most
appropriate structure for the database files from among the options offered by
that DBMS.

Q6. What are the steps for design of database system?

Ans. Following are the steps for design of database system:
• Conceptual and Schema Design
• Logical and physical schema design
• Data processing and transaction design.

Q7. Consider the following EER diagram.

MCS-043 GPH Book 17

Name

Type Teacher Teaches Programme

m n

ID
Code Details
‘Type’ can be regular or visiting faculty. A visiting faculty members can
teach only one programme. Make a suitable database application design
for this.
Ans. The modified EER diagram is:

Name
Teacher Teaches Programme
m n
ID

Code Details
d

Full time Visiting

Faculty Faculty

Increment Host
date institute
TEACHER (id, Name, Increment-date)
VISITING (id, Name, Host-institute)
TEACHES (id, code)
PROGRAMME (code, details)
Transaction/constraints: The id in TEACHES, if exists in id in visiting then
COUNT on ‘id’ in teaches should not exceed 1.

Q8. List the criteria for physical design?

Ans. Following is the criteria list for physical data :
* Response time
∗ Space utilization
* Transaction throughput.
18 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Q9. What is UML? Describe its main features, also what are major building
blocks of UML? Why is it widely used?
Ans. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is used to express the construct
and the relationships of complex systems. It was created in response to a
request for proposal (RFP) from the Object Management Group (OMG). Earlier
in the 1990s, different methodologies along with their own set of notations
were introduced in the market. The three prime methods were OMT
(Rumbaugh), Booch and OOSE (Jacobson). OMT was strong in analysis,
Booch was strong in design, and Jacobson was strong in behavioral analysis.
UML represents unification of the Booch, OMT and OOSE notations, as well
as are the key points from other methodologies. The major contributors in this
development shown in Figure below.
UML is an attempt to standardize the artifacts of analysis and design consisting
of semantic models, syntactic notations and diagrams. The first draft (version
0.8) was introduced in October 1995. The next two versions, 0.9 in July 1996
and 0.91 in October 1996 were presented after taking input from Jacobson.
Version 1.0 was presented to Object Management Group in September 1997.
In November 1997, UML was adopted as standard modeling language by
OMG. The current version while writing this material is UML 2.0.

Booch
UML
Rumbaugh Development
Jacobson
Mayer

Harel
Brock
Odell
Mellor
Gamma
Embley
Fusion
The Input for UML development
The major features of UML are:
• defined system structure for object modeling
• support for different model organization
• strong modeling for structure and behavior
• clear representation of concurrent activities
MCS-043 GPH Book 19

• support for object oriented patterns for design reuse.

The model for the object oriented development could be shown as in Figure.
It could be classified as static/dynamic and logical/physical model.

Dynamic Model
Static Model

Class Structure
Logical Model Object Structure

Physical Model Module Structure

Process Structure

The Model for Object oriented development

The Logical view of a system serves to describe the existence and meaning
of the key abstractions and the mechanism that form the problem space, or
that define the system architecture.
The Physical model describes the concrete software and hardware components
of the system’s context or implementation. UML could be used in visualizing,
specifying, constructing and documenting object oriented systems. The major
building blocks of UML are structural, behavioral, grouping, and annotational
notations. Let us discuss these blocks, one by one.
(a) Structural Notations: These notations include static elements of a model.
They are considered as nouns of the UML model which could be conceptual
or physical. Their elements comprises class, interface, collaboration, use case,
active class, component, and node. It also includes actors, signals, utilities,
processes, threads, applications, documents, files, library, pages, etc.
(b) Behavioral Notations: These notations include dynamic elements of a
model. Their elements comprises interaction, and state machine. It also includes
classes, collaborations, and objects.
(c) Grouping Notations: These notations are the boxes into which a model
can be decomposed. Their elements comprises of packages, frameworks,
and subsystems.
(d) Annotational Notations: These notations may be applied to describe,
illuminate, and remark about any element in the model. They are considered as
20 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

explanatory of the UML. Their elements comprised of notes which could be

used for constraints, comments and requirements.
UML is widely used as it is expressive enough, easy to use, unambiguous and
is supported by suitable tools.

Q10. Describe the object modeling notations of UML.

Ans. A system is a collection of subsystems organised to accomplish a purpose
and described by a set of models from different viewpoints.

A model is a semantically closed abstraction of a system which represents a

complete and self-consistent simplification of reality, created in order to better
understand the system.

A view is a projection into an organisation and structure of a system’s model,

focused on one aspect of that system.

A diagram is a graphical presentation of a set of elements.

A classifier is a mechanism that describes structural and behavioral features.

In UML the important classifiers are class, interface, data type, signals,
components, nodes, use case, and subsystems.

A class is a description of a set of objects that share the same attribute,

operations, relationships, and semantics. In UML, it is shown by a rectangle.

A attribute is a named property of a class that describes a range of values that

instances of the property may hold. In UML, they are listed in the compartment
just below that class name.

An operation is the implementation of a service that can be requested from

any object of the class to affect behavior. In UML, they are listed in the
compartment just below that class attribute.
The notation for class, attribute, and operations is shown as:

Class Name
Attribute: Type = initial Value
Operation (arg list): return type

Class with attributes and operations

MCS-043 GPH Book 21

An interface is a collection of operations that are used to specify a service of

a class or a component.

<<Interface>>
Message
Comparable
Realizing an interface

A signal is the specification of an asynchronous stimulus communicated

between instances.

A component is a physical and replaceable part of the system that confirms

to, and provides the realization of a set of interfaces. In UML, it is shown as a
rectangle with tabs. The notation for component and interface is shown as:

Component

Component

Components

Components

Components and Server

A node is a physical element that exists at runtime, and represents a

computational resource generally having a large memory and often process
capability. In UML, it is shown as a cube. The notation for node is shown as:
22 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Node Name Node Node

Node and relationship between nodes

A use case is a description of a set of sequence of actions that a system

performs to yield an observable result that is of a value to an actor. The user is
called actor and the process is depicted by use case. The notation for use case
is shown as:
Use case Use case

Use case
<<user>>

Actor
Use case

Use case

Use case
Actor
Relationship between actor and use case

A subsystem is a grouping of elements of which some constitute a specification

of the behavior offered by other contained elements.
An object is an instance of a class. The object could be shown as the instance
of a class, with the path name along with the attributes. Multiple objects could
be connected with links. The notation for unnamed and named objects, object
with path name, active objects, object with attributes, multiple objects, and
self linked object is shown as:
MCS-043 GPH Book 23

Different types of objects

A package is a general purpose mechanism for organising elements into groups.

It can also contain other packages. The notation for the package shown contains
name and attributes as shown in Figure. Packages are used widely in a Java
based development environment.
24 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Package
Name

Package Name

+Attribute 1
+Attribute 2
+Attribute 3

Package Diagram

A collaboration is a society of classes, interfaces and other elements that

work together to provide some cooperative behavior that is bigger than the
sum of its parts.

A relationship is a connection among things. In object models, the common

types of relationships are inheritance, dependency, aggregation, containment,
association, realisation, and generalisation. The notation for relationship between
use cases is shown as:

Use Case

<<uses>>
Actor
Use Case

<<extends>>

Use Case Use Case

Relationship between different use case

Relationships exists in many forms. The notation for different form of

MCS-043 GPH Book 25

relationship is shown as:

Inheritance

Dependency

Aggregation

Containment

Association

Directed
Association

Realization

Common relationship types

A dependency is a relationship that states, that a change in specification of

one thing may affect another thing, but not necessarily the reverse. In UML, it
is shown as a dashed directed line. The notation for dependency between
components and packages is shown as:

Component

Component

Dependency

Component

Dependency between components

26 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Package Name

+Attribute 1
-Attribute 2

<<import>>

Package Name

+Attribute 1
-Attribute 2

Dependency between packages

A generalization is a relationship between a general thing and a specific kind
of thing. It is also called “is-a-kind-of” relationship. Inheritance may be modeled
using generalization. In UML, it is shown as a solid directed line with a large
open arrow pointing to the parents.
An association is a structural relationship that specifies that the objects of one
thing are connected with the objects of another. In UML, it is shown as a solid
line connecting same or different class. The notation for association between
nodes is shown as:

Node Course
Hospital

Hospital

Node Course Node Course

Hospital

Hospital
MCS-043 GPH Book 27

Association between nodes

The four enhancements that apply to association are name, role, multiplicity,
and aggregation. Each class participating in an association has a specific role
which is specified at the rear end of the association.

Multiplicity specifies how many objects may be concerned across an instance

of an association which is written as a range of values (like 1..*). The notation
for roles and multiplicity between classes is shown as:

Class A name Class B

role
Class A Class B
role

1 no more than one Company

0..1 zero or one
* many 1
0.. * zero or many
1.. * one or many 1.. *
Person

Various roles and multiplicity defined with association

An aggregation is a structural relationship that specifies that one class represents

a large thing which constitute of smaller things. It represents “has-a”
relationship. In UML, it is shown as association with an open diamond at the
large end. The notation for aggregation is shown as:

1 *
Message Queue Message

Aggregation
A state encompasses all the properties of the object along with the values of
each of these properties.

An instance is a concrete manifestation of an abstraction to which a set of

operations can be applied and which has a state that stores the effect of the
operation.
28 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

A transition is a relationship between two states indicating that an object in

the first state will perform certain action and enter the second state when a
specific event occurs and specific conditions are satisfied.

A note is a graphical symbol for rendering constraints or comments attached

to an element or collection of elements.

Q11. What is a class diagram? Explain by drawing a class diagram for a

class room scheduling system.
Ans. Class Diagram
A class diagram is used to support functional requirement of system. In a
static design view, the class diagram is used to model the vocabulary of the
system, simple collaboration, and logical schema. It contains sets of classes,
interfaces, collaborations, dependency, generalization and association
relationship. The notation for classes and the relationship between classes is
shown as:

Class Name 1 Class Name 2

Attribute Association name Attribute
Attribute: type Attribute: type
Attribute= Value Attribute= Value
Stat Operation () Rolename 1 Rolename 2 Stat Operation ()
Operation (x: T) Operation (p: T)
Operation (y): T Operation (q): T

Relationship among classes

If in any college, there are limited classrooms that have to be allocated to

different classes and instructors are fixed for all classes, then the class diagram
for the allocation of classrooms and instructors is shown as:
MCS-043 GPH Book 29

Interface Controller Reservation Repository

Current User
Login () add reservation ()
add student () remove reservation ()
add instructor () make weekly schedule ()
add room () 1 1 make instructor Schedule ()
remove student () make room schedule ()
remove instructor ()
remove room ()
1
1
1 1
1 * Instructor *
1 Name class Reservation

Student date

Name 1
Class
Batch * Room
1
Check Class Location
Check Batch () capacity
Class diagram for a class room scheduling system

Q12. Explain different UML Behavioural Diagrams.

Ans. The UML stands for the Unified Modeling Language used to express the
construct and the relationships of complex system. It was created in response
to request for proposal (RFP) from the Object Management Group (OMG).
UML is an attempt to standardize the aircrafts of analysis and design consisting
of semantic models syntactic notations and diagrams.

The major features of UML are:

• Defined system structure for object modeling.
• Support for different model organization.
• Strong modeling for structures and behaviour..
• Clear representation of concurrent activities.
• Support for object oriented patterns for design reuse.

UML could be used in visualizing, specifying constructing and documenting

object oriented system. UML is build up by structural, behavioral, grouping
and annotational notations. Behavioral Notations include dynamic elements of
30 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

a model. Their elements comprise interaction and state machine and also classes,
collaborations and objects.

Behavioral Diagrams : It is used for visualize, specify, construct and

document dynamically a system. The interaction between objects indicate the
flow of control among them is show by using these diagrams. The flow of
control may includes simple, sequential thread through a system, as well as
complex flows may involves branching, looking, recursion and concurrency.
They could model time ordering or sequences of messages as correspondingly
sequence diagram and collaboration diagram. The four main behavioral diagrams
are: use case interaction, activity and statechart diagrams.

1. Use Case Diagram : It shows a set of use cases, actors and their
relationships according to the context or requirement of system. It contains
use cases, actors dependency, generalizations, association, relationships, roles,
constraints, packages and instances. Such types of diagrams makes systems,
a subsystems and classes approachable by presenting outside view of how the
elements may be used in context.

use cases <<include>> Base cases

<<extend>>
Extend cases

Relationship among use cases.

2. Interaction Diagram: It shows an interaction, consisting a set of objects

and relationship, including the messages may be dispatched among them. It
includes sequence diagrams and collaboration diagrams.

Sequence Diagrams : These are interaction diagrams emphasizes the time

ordering of message. It is shown as a table that shows objects along x-axis
and messages in increasing time, along the y-axis. It has global life line and the
focus of control.
MCS-043 GPH Book 31

Role: base Class : Base Class

Message (x) Base Class ( ) : Base Class

[Condition] Message (x)

Return v

<<Message (x)

<<Destroy>>

Return (Y)

The sequence diagram for sending the document along the matter is shown
as:

Network Request File CIG Network

Listener Processor Loader Script Writer
Request ( )

load files ( )
[ERROR]
send ERROR ( )
[HTML]
send Document ( )

[CGI] process ( )
[ERROR]
send ERROR ( )
send Document ( )

Collaboration Diagrams: These are the interaction diagrams that Emphasize

the structural organization of an object that send & receive messages. There is
a path in collaboration diagrams to indicate how one object is linked to another
and sequence numbers to indicate time ordering of messages.
32 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

1:y = Message (x)

Role: base Class

1.2: message (x)

1.1: Base Class( )

1.3 <<Destroy>>

: Base Class
Collaboration Diagrams
Activity Diagrams : It shows the flow from one activity to another. An
activity is an ongoing nonatomic execution with in a state machine. It results
in some action which results in a change in state of the system or return of a
value. It contains activity states, action states, transition states and objects.

Establish E-mail
Communication

Receive
Send E-mail Response
See Subsidiary
Activity Diagram
UML Activity
Private Diagram E-mail
control Encryption
else Wait 1 hours
after sending
End [no reply]
(error)
Encrypted Encrypted
E-mail E-mail

Proper
reply

Communication
Activity diagram
Established
for E-mail encryption
MCS-043 GPH Book 33

Statechart Diagram : It shows a state machine, Emphasizing the flow of

control from one state to another. A state machine is a behaviour that specifies
the sequence of states that an object goes through during life time in response
to events together with its response to those events. A state is a situation or
condition. It contains simple states, composite states, events, actions &
transitions.

Event (Good) Action

State State
do activity do activity

State State
do activity do activity

Event (Good) Action Event (Good) Action

State diagram for multiple activities

Q13. Discuss the features of UML based design tools.

Ans. There are many tools used in the industry to develop information system.
These tools provide the initial specification in UML that eventually leads to the
database development. These tools provide support for conceptual, logical
and physical database modeling design. Some of the features of these tools are
:
- Support for Reverse Engineering : These tools allow the user to create a data
model based on the already existing database structure.
- Forward Engineering and creation of database definitions : The tools can
read the schema of the data models available in UML diagram - class diagram
and create the database and the data storage model and generate appropriate
DDL code for the same.
- Conceptual Design in UML notation : It allows modeling of database using
UML notations.
34 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Q14. Which of the UML diagrams help in database schema design the
most and why?
Ans. The class diagram – it resembles ER diagram and also shows the possible
transactions. Thus, it is useful for schema design as well as application design.

Q15. What are the various UML based design tools?

Ans. There are many open sources and proprietary UML based design tools
available which can be easily searched through Internet.

Q16. What are the features of automated database design and

implementation tools?
Ans. They should have facilities for:
• Drawing conceptual schema
• Mapping implementation
• Normalization
• Simple User interaction and displays
• Task analysis and
• Design verification.
Chapter-3
IMPORTANT ER DIAGRAMS

Q1. A departmental store consists of many item sections. A section is

looked after by one section incharge. The store has three kinds of
employees : accounts and billing; administrators; section maintainers.
A request for purchase of items for the store is initiated by accounts and
billing department which has the inventory details. Purchases are made
by administration with proper quality checks from specified vendors.
The section maintainers update the inventory placed at shelfs. Draw the
E-R diagram for the store specifying aggregation, generalisation or
specialisation hierarchy, if any. Translate your E-R diagram to relational
schema and then design the tables in 3NF.
In E-R diagram, there are two Generalisations & specializations.
Ans. (1) Unionizing the three departments: Accounts & billing, Administration,
and production into Department entity (Generalization) and Department entity
can be specialized into accounts & billing, Administration & production
(specialization).

(2) Unionizing Accountant, section incharge, Administrator into EMPLOYEE

entity (Generalization) and EMPLOYEE entity is specialized into accountant,
section incharge, administrator (Specialization).
In the following E-R diagram there is one Aggregation i.e. Inventory-
management which is among Department, Vendor, Inventory, Purchased-From,
PURCHASED-FROM, UPDATES, REQUEST-FOR-PURCHASE. An Inventory
is maintained when, a request for purchase for the required item is made by
accounts & billing department then the required items are purchased from
vendors by administration department & then the inventory of the organization
is updated by Section Maintainer.
 36

Section-Incharge Name Address

Designation
Name
Department Store
Employee Governed-By

Is-A Code HAS Section_Code

Generalization
Address
Section Section-Name
accounts & billing Administrators Section-

Specialization
Maintainer Updates
HAS
Inventory Management

Department D-Number
Manage
Is-A D-Name
I-Number

(d) DEPARTMENT = {D-Number, D-Name)

(c) VENDOR = {V-Name, Address, V-Code}
(b) INVENTORY = {I-Code, I-Name, Quantity}
I-Name Inventory

The tables which are used in above E-R diagram :

Accounts & Administration
Specialization
Generalization

Quantity

(a) EMPLOYEE {Name, Code, Address, Designation}

Billing

I_Quantity
V_Name Request for
I_code Purchase

Vendor Purchases

Address
GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
MCS-043 GPH Book 37

Here the attributes of tables are enclosed within curly braces and underlined
attributes represent key to the relation.
The EMPLOYEE table is in 3NF because code is the prime attribute of
EMPLOYEE and all other attributes are dependant on the code attribute i.e.
Code →| Name, Address, Designation
The INVENTORY table is in 3NF because I-Code is the prime attribute and all
other attributes are dependant upon I-Code i.e.
I-Code →| I-Name Quantity
The DEPARTMENT table is also in 3NF because the D-Number is the prime
attribute of DEPARTMENT and D-Name is dependant on D-Number i.e.
D-Number →| D-Name
The VENDOR table is also in 3NF because V-Code is the prime attribute of
VENDOR table and
V-Code →| V-Name Address
This implies all are in 3NF.

Q2. A construction company has many branches spread all over the
country. The company has two types of constructions to offer: Housing
and commercial. A housing company provides low income housing,
medium style housing and high-end housing schemes, while on the
commercial side it offers Multiplexes and shopping zones. The customers
of the company may be individuals or corporate clients. Draw the E-R
diagram for the company showing generalization or specialization
hierarchies and aggregations, if any. Also create 3NF tables of your design.
Ans.
38 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

B_Code
Company Has Branches

C_Code B_Address

Sells Has Name

Name
Address
Year
Construction Buys Customer
Site Phone
Generalization

Specialization
Is_a Is_a Is_a Is_a

Housing Commercial Individual Corporate

Is_a Is_a Is_a Is_a Is_a Contact Person

Generalization

Specialization
LIG MIG HIG Multiplex Shopping

Generalization / specialization are ⇒ Unionizing Housing and commercial

into CONSTRUCTION entity. Unionizing LIG, MIG and HIG entities into
HOUSING Entity (Generalization). Unionizing Individual and Corporate into
CUSTOMER entity. Unionizing Multiplex and Shopping into COMMERCIAL.
Reverse with Specialization i.e. CONSTRUCTION is specialized into Housing
and Commercial. CUSTOMER is specialized into Individual and Corporate.
HOUSING is specialized into LIG, MIG and HIG. COMMERCIAL is specialized
into Multiplex and Shopping.

If a table is in 3NF, we Leave it as it is, otherwise we break the table into more
tables to bring it into 3NF.

Company (name, address, phone, contact person)

Construction (C_Code, year, site, project, name, area, type)
Specification (type, from, squmtr area, cost)
Branch (B_Code, B_Address)
MCS-043 GPH Book 39

As all the tables are in 3 NF so no need to further breaking up.

Q3. The library is a university provides reading materials like books,

journals, etc. to its users. The faculty, staff & students are its user list.
Any user of the library has a membership card for using the library. The
card is bar coded which helps in issue and return of reading materials.
There is a maximum limit of the material to be issued. If issued material
is not returned within 30 days from the data of issue, the user should be
fined Rs. 1 per day till the day he/she returns the material. Draw the E-
R Diagram for the library specifying aggregation, generalization, or
specialization hierarchy, if any. Create 3NF tables of your design. Make
suitable assumptions if any.
Ans. Assumption : We have taken Non-teaching staff and faculty into
EMPLOYEE entity.
The first Generalization / specialization is ⇒ Unionizing Non-teaching
staff and faculty into EMPLOYEE entity. Then unionizing EMPLOYEE &
STUDENT entity into USER Entity (Generalization) USER entity can be
specialized into STUDENT & EMPLOYEE & an EMPLOYEE can be a Non-
Teaching staff or FACULTY (Specialization).
The second generalization/specialization is unionzing books and JOURNALS
into READING MATERIALS entity (Generalizing). A READING MATERIAL
can be specialized into Books & JOURNAL (Specialization). One point which
is to be noted here is that generalization and speicalization are complementary
to each other. Where there is generalization, there is specialization.
40 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Name Address Designation

Issue/Return

Name Membership#
USERS
University Date-of-Issue

HAS Is-A
HAS GETS

Generalization
Date-of-
Student Staff E-Code Return
Library

Specialization
Course S-Code Is-A
Returns
Editor

Author Non-Teaching Faculty

Staff

Name READING-MATERIALS

Number-of-Copies
Is-A
Specialization
Generalization

Books Journals

Book_Name J_Volume

Book_id J_id

In above E-R diagram, there is one Aggregations, i.e.ISSUE/RETURN

MATERIALS, GETS & RETURN. An Aggregation. ISSUE/RETURN exists
whenever an USER GETS or RETURNS a READING-MATERIAL from and
to LIBRARY.

If a table is in 3NF, we Leave it as it is, otherwise we break the table into more
tables to bring it into 3NF.

(a) STUDENT = {Name, S-Code, Address, Designation, Course-Code,

Membership#}
(b) EMPLOYEE = {Name, E-Code, Address, Designation, Membership#}
(c) READING-MATERIALS = {Name, Author, Edition, Number-of-copies#}
(d) UNIVERSITY = {Name, Address}
(e) BOOK = {Book_code, Issue_Date, Return_date, S_Code, Fine}
MCS-043 GPH Book 41

Note : in case of Employee taking books, S-code will act as E-Code

We check one-by-one whether tables used in E-R diagram are in 3NF.

The STUDENT table is in 3NF because all attributes of STUDENT table are
dependant on the prime attribute s-code i.e.
S-Code → Name Address Designation course-code Membership#
The EMPLOYEE table is in 3NF because all non-prime attributes of this table
are dependant on the prime attribute E-Code.
E-Code → Name Address Designation membership#
The READING - MATERIALS Table is also in 3NF because all non-prime
attributes of this table are dependant on prime attribute i.e. Name Author i.e.
Name Author → EDITION, Number-of-copies.
This implies all are in 3NF.

Q4. A bank offers 3 types of accounts: personal account, saving account

and debit-card account. It operates a number of branches in a city and
one can have any number of accounts. Identify the entities and show
their attributes. What relationship exists among entities? Draw the
corresponding ER diagram.
Ans. ER Diagram for Bank:
 A bank offers 3 types of Accounts:
Personal Account, Saving Account, Debit Card Account
∴ Create entity “Account”
Each Account has unique Account_number
So, Account is a strong entity.

Account_number

Account Holder_name

Open_Date
Type Balance

Each Account maintains following information

Account_number, Account Holder Name, Open Date, Balance
These three types of Accounts store distinct information as per its
42 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

characteristics.
For e.g., Saving Account provides cheque facility, Interest at fixed Rate, Saving
Account has maintained minimum balance as limit for amount withdrawal.
While Debit_Card Account allow withdrawal beyond balance but charge or
debit interest on over_draft amount.
So, create separate Entity for each this account.

Open_Date Account_number

Account

Open_Balance Tpye Account_Type

is-A
Maximum
overdraft_limit

Personal Saving Debit card

Over draft
Int Rate
Minimum Interest Cheque
Balance Rate Book Range

 Bank operates a number of branches in a city

It also keeps track of branch details.
It maintains branch information like branch_code, branch_address,
branch_contact, branch_city
Branch_code is unique for each branch
So, branch is a strong entity.

Branch_Code
Street

Branch Branch_Address City

Pin
Branch_Contact
MCS-043 GPH Book 43

Which Account opened in which Branch that Account_Branch relationship is

shown as below:

Branch Open Account

l m
A Branch can have many Accounts, while an Account is opened in one Branch
only.
• Double line indicates Each Account Entity must have been opened in branch.
(Total participation of “Account” in “Account_Open” Relationship
 System also keep track of Customer information
So, create Entity for customer
• It maintains SSM, Name, Address for each customer entity.
• SSN is unique for each customer
So, customer is strong entity
SSN

Customer
Area Name
City Address

Pin

• A customer can open many Accounts, but an account can be opened by one
customer only.

Customer Open Account

l m

• 1-to-many relationship between Customer and Account Relation

• Each Account must participate in “Open” relationship.
So, Total participation of “Account” in “Open” Relationship
44 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Open_Date Account_number
Branch_Code
Open_Balance Type
Account Open
l Branch Branch_Address
m

Branch_Contact Street City Pin

is-A

Personal Saving Debit card

Minimum
Balance
Interest Cheque
Rate Book Range
m
Open
SSN Over draft Maximum
l Int Rate overdraft_limit
Customer
Name

Address Area

Pin City

Q5. A university has many Academic Units named schools. Each school
is headed by a Director of School. The school has teaching and non-
teaching staff. A school offers many courses. A course consists of many
subjects. A subject is taught to the students who have registered for that
subject in a class by a teacher. Draw the ER diagram for the university
specifying aggregation, generalisation or specialisation hierarchy, if any.
Create 3NF tables of your design. Make suitable assumptions, if any.
Ans.
E-R Diagram of University as given below:-
 Room_No Course_code
MCS-043 GPH Book

Teaches
Designation
Time
Name Code
Salary Registration
S-Code

STAFF Works-For University Register Student

Is-A S-Name C-Code

Director
HAS
Sch_Name Address C-Name

Specialization
Headed-By
Schools

Generalization
Teaching Non-Teaching

Is-A S_Address
offers

Generalization
Specialization

Social Computer Science

Science
45
46 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

In above E-R diagram, we have shown Generalization, Specialization &

Aggregation. Generalization & Specialization are containment relationship
between a higher level entity set and one-or-more lower level entity sets.
Generalization is the result of taking the union of two-or-more disjoint entity
sets to produce a higher level entity set.
Specialization is the result of taking a subset of a higher level entity set to form
a lower level entity set.
Here in above E-R diagram, there are three Generalizations & Specializations.
The first Generalization & Specialization is:
Unionizing Teaching & Non-Teaching into Staff entity (Generalization) &
Specializing Staff into Teaching & Non-Teaching.

The second Generalization & Specialization is ⇒ Unionizing Social Science,

Computer and Science into school entity (Generalization) and specializing school
entity into Social Science, Computer and Science Specialization.
Aggregation is the abstraction in which relationship sets (along with their
entity sets) are treated as higher level entity sets, and can participate in
relationships. In above E-R diagram there is one aggregation called Registration
which is among UNIVERSITY, STUDENT & COURSE. An aggregation
registration takes place whenever a student is registered by the university in a
particular course.

The tables used in above E-R diagram:

(a) Staff = {Code, Name, Designation}
(b) School = {Sch-Name, Address}
(c) Student = {S-Name, S-Code, C-Code, C-Name, Address}
(d) Course = {C-Name, C-Code, No-of Subjects}

The staff table is in 3NF because the code is the attribute of Staff relation & all
other attributes are dependent are dependant on this i.e.
Code Name, Designation Address

The school table is in 3NF because sch-Name is the PK of school relation and
all other attributes are dependant on this

Sch-Name Address

The student table is not in 3NF because the S-Code is its PK and the attributes
S-Name, Address and C-Code are dependant upon S-Code but C-name is
dependant upon C-Code. This is transitive dependency.
S-Code S-N Address C-Code
MCS-043 GPH Book 47

but

C-Code C-Name

The course relation is in 3NF because C-Code is its PK and all other attributes
are dependant on this i.e.

C-Code C-Name No. of Subject

The schedule relation is in 3NF because all attributes of this relation form a PK
i.e. composite Primary key
This implies all relations are in 3NF.
Chapter-4
ADVANCED SQL AND SYSTEM CATALOGUE

Q1. What are Assertions? What is the utility of assertions? How are
Assertions different from Views? Describe both Assertions and Views
with the help of example. [June-07, Q1(c)]
Ans. Assertions are constraints that are normally of general nature. For example,
the age of the student in a hypothetical University should not be more than 20
years of the minimum age of the teacher of that University should be 30 years.
Such general constraints can be implemented with the help of an assertion
statement. The syntax for creating assertion is:

Syntax :

CREATE ASSERTION <Name>

CHECK (<Condition>);

Thus, the assertion on age for the University as above can be implemented as:

CREATE ASSERTION age-constraint

CHECK (NOT EXISTS)(
SELECT *
FROM STUDENT s
WHERE s.age >25
OR s.age> (
SELECT MIN (f.age)
FROM FACULTY f
));

The assertion name helps in identifying the constraints specified by the assertion.
These names can be used to modify or delete an assertion later. But how are
these assertions enforced? The database management system is responsible
for enforcing the assertion on to the database such that the constraints stated
MCS-043 GPH Book 49

in assertion are not violated. Assertions are checked whenever a related relation
changes.

An assertion for a university system that stores a database of faculty as :

FACULTY (code, name, age, basic salary, medical-allow, other benefits)

MEDICAL-CLAIM (code, data, amount, comment)

Assertion : The total medical claims made by a faulty member in the current
financial year should not exceed his/her medical allowance.

CREATE ASSERTION med-claim

CHECK (NOT EXISTS (
SELECT code, SUM (amount), MIN(medical-allow)
FROM (FACULTY NATURAL JOIN MEDICAL-CLAIM)
WHERE data >”31–01–2008”
GROUP BY code
HAVING MIN(medical-allow) < SUM(amount)
));

View Definition
Views are tables whose contents are taken or derived from other tables. View
tables do not contain data. They just act as a window through which certain
(not all) contents of a table can be displayed or seen. Also, one can manipulate
the contents of the original table through such views.

For example, suppose we want that the clerk in your office should not have
access to the details of the salaries of other employees, but he needs such
information as EMP_NAME, DESIG and DEPT_NAME. Then we can create
a view for this clerk. This view will contain only the required information and
nothing more than that.

Similarly we can create a view for the Manager, containing the information
that he needs. Hence, depending upon the requirement of different users we
can create different views, all based upon one or more than one tables. View
are created using the CREATE command. The syntax is as follows:
50 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW <VIEW NAME> AS <SELECT STATEMENT>;

For example, to create a view for a clerk need to see a part of the information,
we can design a view giving the following statement:
CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW clerk as
SELECT EMP_NAME, DESIG, DEPT_NAME
FROM EMPLOYEE , DEPARTMENT
WHERE EMPLOYEE.DEPT_ CODE
= DEPARTMENT.DEPT_CODE;

Once created, a view can be treated just as you treat any other table. You can
retrieve the records in a view using the SELECT command, delete the records
using the DELETE command and update them using the UPDATE command.
Views can also be joined to other views and / or table.

To view the records in the clerk view, the clerk user can use the following
SELECT statement:
SELECT * FROM clerk;

Uses of View
Views are used for the following purposes:
(a) Views restrict access to a database. If you want users to see some but not
all data of a table, you can create a view showing only that part of the table.
(b) Critical data in a table can be easily safe guarded using views.
(c) Views allow user to make simple queries to retrieve the required results.
For example, users can retrieve information from multiple tables without
knowing how to perform a join.
(d) Views allow the same data to be seen by different users in different ways.

Q2. Can views be used for Data Manipulations?

Ans. Views can be used during DML operations like INSERT, DELETE and
UPDATE. When you perform DML operations, such modifications need to be
passed to the underlying base table. However, this is not allowed on all the
views.

Q3. ‘’Views can be used in an attempt to implement logical data

independence.’’ Comment on the above statement. Give justification
and example in support of your answer Where can you use views for
data modifications?
MCS-043 GPH Book 51

Ans. Logical data independencies indicate that the conceptual scheme can be
changed without affecting the existing internal and conceptual levels. Logical
data independence is achieved by providing external level/user view of the
database.
The relations stored in the database are termed as base relations. Corresponding
to these relations we derive a new relation. They are important because of
1. Security Concerns.
2. Forming more than one base Table.

In short a view in SQL terminology is a single table that is derived from other
tables. These other tables could be base tables or previously defined views.
A view does not necessarily exist in physical form, it is considered as a virtual
table.

The application program or users see the database as described by their external
views. The user is provided with the abstraction of physical data and user
manipulates this abstraction. For example: We have two relations Employee
personal and employee_salary. Now for an external user we can create view
containing attributes from both the relations.
This view does not exist physically.
employee-personal (emp#, name, address)
employee-salary (emp#, post, salary)
we can define view:
employee-information (emp#, name, post, salary)
Example :- Suppose we have 3 relations as:-
EMPLOYEE:

Super
FNAME Minit LName SSN BDatte Address Sex Salary SSN DNo.

EMPLOYEE:

PNAME PNUMBER PLOCATION DNUM

WORKS-ON

ESSN PNO HOURS

we have created a view WORKS-ON 1 on the basis on above 3 Relations

The WORKS-ON 1 will look as:
52 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

WORKS-ON 1

FNAME LNAME PNAME HOURS

The view implies logical data independence in the sense that if fields are added
or deleted from the base relations and if there field name have been put into the
view then the view need not be altered. The base relations will be altered &
views will remain the same. This provides the high availability of data to the
users. Here conceptual schema can be changed without changing the external
schemas.
Thus, we can say that view implements logical data independence.

View Updation ⇒ Many commercial DBMSs disallow updates through a

view unless the view is based on a single relation & includes the primary
attributes of the relation.

The conditions under which most DBMSs determine whether an update is

allowed through a view.
• Updates are allowed through a view defined using a simple query involving
a single base relation & containing either the primary key of a candidate key of
the base relation.
• Updates are not allowed through views involving multiple relations.
• Updates are not allowed through views involving aggregation or grouping
operations.

Q4. Consider a constraint – the value of the age field of the student of a
formal University should be between 17 years and 50 years. Would you
like to write an assertion for this statement?
Ans. The constraint is a simple Range constraint and can easily be implemented
with the help of declarative constraint statement. (CHECK CONSTRAINT
statement can be used here). Therefore, there is no need to write an assertion
for this constraint.

Q5. Can the view created in previous question be used to update

subjectcode?
Ans. No, the view is using a GROUP BY clause. Thus, if we try to update the
subjectcode. We cannot trace back a single tuple where such a change needs
to take place.

Q6. Discuss the two strategies for implementing the views.

MCS-043 GPH Book 53

Ans. There are two strategies for implementing the views. These are :
- Query modification
- View materialisation

In the query modification strategy, any query that is made on the view is
modified to include the view defining experssion. For example, consider the
view STUDENT-PERFORMANCE. A query on this view may be : The teacher
of the course MCS-013 wants to find the maximum and average marks in the
course. The query for this in SQL will be :
SELECT MAX (smakrs), AVG(smarks)
FROM SUBJECT-PERFORMANCE
Since SUBJECT-PERFORMANCE is itself a view the query will be modified
automatically as :
SELECT MAX (smarks), AVG (smarks)
FROM STUDENT s, MARKS m
WHERE s.enrolement-no=m.enrolement-no AND subjectcode="MCS-013";
However, this approach has a major disadvantage. For a large database system,
if complex queries have to be repeatedly executed on a view, the query
modification will have to be done each time, leading to inefficient utilisation of
resources such as time and space.

The view materialisation strategy solves this problem by creating a temporary

physical table for a view, thus, materialising it. However, this strategy is not
useful in situations where many database updates are made on the tables,
which are used for view creation, as it will require suitable updating of a
temporary table each time the base table is updated.

Q7. What are the weaknesses of SQL? Can a host language help SQL in
overcoming these weaknesses? Justify your answer with the help of
examples.
Ans. SQL is both the data definition & data manipulation language of a number
of relational database Management systems. It is based on tuple calculus. It
resembles relational algebra in some places and tuple calculus in others

Weaknesses of SQL
1. SQL does not fully support some of the basic features of relational data
model : The concept of domains, entity & referential integrity and hence the
concept of primary key and foreign keys.
2. SQL is redundant in the sense that the same query may be expressed in
more than one way.
54 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

3. Tests with number of implementations of SQL indicate a wide variation in

response to time.
4. SQL is less orthogonal and powerful.

It is true that a host language can help SQL in overcoming its weaknesses.
SQL only provides facilities to define and retrieve data interactively. To extend
data manipulation operations of SQL. Example to separately process each
tuple of a relation - it should be used with traditional high level language,
which is called host language.

The use of database system in applications written in an HLL (High Level

Language) requires that DML Statements be embedded in the host programs.
All the statements and features that are available to an interactive user must be
available to the application programmer using HLL. The DML statements are
distinguished by means of a special symbol or are invoked by means of a
subroutine call.

Example : The program prints some information about an employee, who

earns highest salary.

#include<stdio.h>
#include<stdio.h>
VARCHAR user name [30];
VARCHAR pass word [10];
VARCHAR v_fname [15];
VARCHAR v_minit [1];
VARCHAR v_lname [15];
VARCHAR v_address [30];
char v_ssn [9];
float f_salary;
main ()
{
Strcpy (user name.arr, “Scott”);
Username.len=strlen (Username.arr);
Strcpy (password,arr,”TIGER”);
Password.len=Strlen (Password.arr);
EXEC SQL WHENEVER SQLERROR DO SQL_error();
EXEC SQL CONNECT : Username IDENTIFIED By : password;
EXEC SQL SELECT fname,minit, lname,address, salary
MCS-043 GPH Book 55

INTO: v_fname, : v_minit,: v_lname,:v_address,:f_salary

FROM EMPLOYEE
WHERE Salary = (Select max (salary) from employee);
Printf(“Employee first name, middle initial, last name, address, salary\n”);
Printf (“%s %s %s %s%f\n”, v_fname.arr, v_minit,arr, v_name.arr,
v_address,arr, f_salary);
}
SQL-error ()
{
EXEC SQL WHENEVER SQL ERROR CONTINUE;
Print )”Error detected\n”);
}

Q8. Why is the embedded SQL used? Describe an application that needs
embedded language. How are static embedded SQL different from
dynamic embedded SQL?
Ans. When an SQL statement is embedded in a source program then it is
called embedded SQL. The DBMS precompiler accepts this source code as
input and translates the SQL compiled. Basically, it is based on cursor concept
that can range over the query result.
When a job having complex calculations is to be done at different time, then it
is very easy to code the entire logic in a programming language & get the data
through the embedded SQL. Now put the program in library function call
from where it can be called as and when required.

There are two types of embedded SQL

(i) Static Embedded SQL :- This type of embedded SQL is added into the
program at the time of compilation. It is fixed. It cannot be changed.
(ii) Dynamic Embedded SQL :- When an SQL statement is constructed
during program execution then it is called dynamic embedded SQL. Generally
it happens in case of accepting a user response.
Example :- Airline Reservation system requires such type of solution.

Statically Embedded DML statements are distinguished by means of special

symbols. These statements are partially passed during the precompilation step
to look for statements and variables from the host HLL. In statically embedded
DML statements variables are optimized variables from the host HLL. In statically
embedded DML statements variables are optimized in the precompilation step,
making them domain compatible with the HLL. Whereas in Dynamically
56 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

embedded DML statements are not precompiled nor optimized. We can use
statically embedded DML where we can ascertain the data type and range of
HLL variable before execution. In this situation we will not get data type
mismatch errors. Some times we can not ascertain the data type and range of
variables produced by the HLL at run time besides we have to use these variables
in DML. In this situation we use dynamically embedded statements for example.
Let we have VB environment. We know all the variables at design time for
example these are item_code, quantity.

Example:1
Option explicit
Dim item_code, quantity
Item_code = text1.text
Quantity = Limit (text2. text)
rs. address ‘rs is opened recordset object.
rs. fields (“item_code”) = item_code
rs. fields (“quantity”) = quantity
rs. update.

Application of embedded SQL

• Converting set level operation into field level operations.
• Preparing general purpose interactive program, authorization control, access
control, grant of privilege, rights during runtime and so on.

Q9. Relational database consists of the following relations about students

in an institute :
STUDENT(ROLL NO#, STUDENT_NAME, ADDRESS, AGE)
DEPARTMENT (DEPT_NAME, COURSE#TEACHER)
TIMETABLE (COURSE#, SUBJECT_NAME, SEMESTER, TIME,
ROOM#)
PERFORMANCE(ROLLNO#, COURSE#, GRADE)
Write a program in embedded SQL to get the names of all those students
who have secured ‘A’ grade in a course offered by the Computer Science
Department in the First semester.
EXEC SRL
Ans. Declare c cursor for
Select student - name from student S,
Department D, Time Table T, performance P
Where D. course # = T. course # and P. course # =
MCS-043 GPH Book 57

T.course # and S. Roll no. # = P. Roll no. # and

Dept - name = ‘Computer Science’.
Begin
Open c;
While (SQLCA . SQL stal ! = ‘02000’)
Loop
fetch, c into : Sn;
Print :Sn;
End loop ;
Close c ;
End ;
END-EXEC

Q10. Define Dynamic SQL. Is dynamic SQL is more powerful than

embedded SQL? Explain with support of an example.
Ans. Dynamic SQL, unlike embedded SQL statements, are built at the run
time and placed in a string in a host variable. The created SQL statements are
then sent to the DBMS for processing. Dynamic SQL is generally slower than
statically embedded SQL as they require complete processing including access
plan generation during the run time.

However, they are more powerful than embedded SQL as they allow run time
application logic. The basic advantage of using dynamic embedded SQL is
that we need not compile and test a new program for a new query.
Let us explain the use of dynamic SQL with the help of an example:

Example : Write a dynamic SQL interface that allows a student to get and
modify permissible details about him/her. The student may ask for subset of
information also. Assume that the student database has the following relations.
STUDENT (enrolno, name, dob)
RESULT (enrolno, coursecode, marks)
In the table above, a student has access rights for accessing information on
his/her enrolment number, but s/he cannot update the data. Assume that user
names are enrolment number.
/*declarations in SQL*/
EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
char inputfields (50);
char tablename(10)
58 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

char sqlquery ystring(200)

EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;
printf ("Enter the fields you want to see /n");
scanf ("SELECT%s", inputfields);
printf ("Enter the name of table STUDENT or RESULT");
scanf ("FROM%s", tablename);
sqlqueryystring ="SELECT" + inputfields + " "+
"FROM" + tablename
+"WHERE enrolno + :USER"
/* Plus is used as a symbol for concatenation operator; in some DBMS it may
be ||*/ /* Assumption: the user name is available in the host language variable
USER*/
EXEC SQL PREPARE sqlcommand FROM :sqlqueryystring;
EXEC SQL EXECUTE sqlcommand;
Please note the following points in the example above.
- The query can be entered completely as a string by the user or s/he can be
suitably prompted.
- The query can be fabricated using a concatenation of strings. This is language
dependent in the example and is not a portable feature in the present query.
- The query modification of the query is being done keeping security in mind.
- The query is perpared and executed using a suitable SQL EXEC commands.

Q11. What is SQLJ? What are the requirements of SQLJ? Briefly

describe the working of SQLJ. Can SQLJ use dynamic SQL? If yes,
then how? Otherwise specify what type of SQL it can use.
[June-07, Q4(c)]
Ans. In SQLJ, a preprocessor called SQLJ translator translates SQLJ source
file to JAVA source file. The JAVA file compiled and run on the database. Use
of SQL improves the productivity and manageability of JAVA Code as:

• The code becomes somewhat compact.

• No run-time SQL syntax errors as SQL statements are checked at compile
time.
• It allows sharing of JAVA variable with SQL statements such sharing is not
possible otherwise.

SQLJ cannot use dynamic SQL. It can only use simple embedded SQL. SQLJ
provides a standard form in which SQL statements can be embedded in JAVA
MCS-043 GPH Book 59

program. SQLJ statements always begin with a #sql keyword. These embedded
SQL statements are of two categories– Declarations and Executable Statements.

Declarations have the following syntax:

#sql <modifier> context_classname;

The executable statements have the following syntax:

#sq; {SQL operation returning no output};

OR
#sql result ={SQL operation returning output};

Example:
Let us write a JAVA functions to print the student details of student table, for
the student who have taken admission in 2008 and name are like ‘Shyam’.
Assuming that the first two digits of the 9-digit enrolment number represents
year, the required input conditions may be:

• The enrolno should be more than “08000000” and

• The name contains the sub string “Shyam”.
These input conditions will not be part of the Student display function, rather
will be used in the main ( ) function that may be created separately by you.
The following display function will accept the values as the parameters supplied
by the main ( ):

Public void DISPSTUDENT (String enrolno, String name, int phone)

{
try {
if (name equals (“ “) )
name = “%”
if (enrolno equals (“ ”))
enrolno = “%”;
SelRowlter srows = null;
#sql srows = {SELECT Enrolno, name, phone
FROM STUDENT
WHERE enrolno > : enrolno AND name like :name
};
while (srows.next ( ) ) {
60 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

int enrolno = srows. enrolno ( );

String name = srows.name ( );

System.out.println (“Enrollment_No =” + enrolno);

System.out.println (“Name =”+name);
System.out.println (“phone=” +phone);
}
}Catch (Exception e) {
System.out.println (“error accessing database” +e.to_string);
}
}

Q12. Q1. A University decided to enhance the marks for the students by
2 in the subject MCS-013 in the table: RESULT (enrolno,
coursecode,marks). Write a segment of embedded SQL program to do
this processing.
Ans. /* The table is RESULT (enrolno.coursecode, marks). */
EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
char enrolno [10], coursecode[7]; /* grade is just one character */
int marks;
char SQLSTATE[6]
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;
/* The connection needs to be established with SQL */
/* program segment for the required function */
printf(“enter the course code for which 2 grace marks are to be added”)
scanf(“%s”, &coursecode);
EXEC SQL DECLARE CURSOR GRACE
SELECT enrolno, coursecode, marks
FROM RESULT
WHERE coursecode=:coursecode
FOR UPDATE OF marks;
EXEC SQL OPEN GRACE;
EXEC SQL FETCH FROM GRACE
INTO: enrolno, :coursecode, :marks;
WHILE(SQL CODE = = 0) {
EXEC SQL
UPDATE RESULT
SET marks = marks+2
MCS-043 GPH Book 61

WHERE CURRENT OF GRACE;

EXEC SQL FETCH FROM GRACE;
}
EXEC SQL CLOSE GRACE;

An alternative implementation in a commercial database management system

may be:
DECLARE CURSOR grace IS
SELECT enrolno, coursecode, marks
FROM RESULT
WHERE coursecode = ‘MCS013’;
str_enrolno RESULT.enrolno%type;
str_coursecode RESULT.coursecode%type;
str_marks RESULT.marks%type;
BEGIN
OPEN grace;
IF GRACE %OPEN THEN
LOOP
FETCH grace INTO str_enrolno, str_coursecode, str_marks;
Exit when grace%NOTFOUND;
UPDATE student SET marks = str_marks+2;
INSERT INTO resultmcs-13 VALUES (str_enrolno, str_coursecode,
str_marks);
END LOOP;
COMMIT;
CLOSE grace;
ELSE
Dbms_output.put_line (‘Unable to open cursor’);
END IF;
END;

Q13. Can you embed dynamic SQL in JAVA?

Ans. No, at present JAVA cannot use dynamic SQL.

Q14. What is stored procedure?

Ans. Stored procedure is a compiled procedure in a host language that has
been written for some purpose.
62 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Q15. Consider the following relation of a student database:

Student (enrolno, name, age)
Result (enrolno, coursecode, marks)
Course (coursecode, c_name)
Passing marks in a subject are 50.
Write a trigger that will give 3 grace marks to the students having 47
marks, 2 grace marks to the students having 48 marks and 1 grace
mark to the student having 49 marks. Another condition for triggering
is that a student’s age must exceed 30 to get grace marks.
Ans. Relations given are:
Student (enrolno, name, age)
Result (enrolno, coursecode, marks)
Course (coursecode, e_name)
Note:
Passing marks is 50
Trigger: It will give
3 grace marks to students having 47 marks.
2 grace marks to students having 48 marks.
1 grace mark to students having 49 marks.
If and only if age is above 30
CREATE TRIGGER GRACE_MARK
BEFORE INSERT ON Result
FOR EACH ROW
WHEN marks < 50
DECLARE
Stud_Age Student; student.age % type;
BEGIN
SELECT age into Stud_Age
FROM student
WHERE Student_enrolno = :NEW enrolno;
IF Stud_age > 30 Then
IF : new.marks = 47 Then
: new.marks = :new.marks + 3;
ELSE IF: new.marks = 48 Then
: new.marks = :new.marks + 2;
ELSEIF : new.marks = 49 Then
: new.marks = :new.marks + 1;
ENDIF
MCS-043 GPH Book 63

ENDIF
END;

Q16. Write a trigger that restricts updating of STUDENT table outside

the normal working hours/holiday.
Ans. The trigger in some pseudo DBMS may be written as:
CREATE TRIGGER noupdatestudent
BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE OR DELETE ON STUDENT
BEGIN
IF (DAY (SYSDATE) IN (‘SAT’, ‘SUN’)) OR
(HOURS (SYSDATE) NOT BETWEEN ’09:00’ AND 18:30’)
THEN
RAISE EXCEPTION AND OUTPUT (‘OPERATION NOT ALLOWED AT
THIS TIME/DAY’);
END IF;
END
Please note that we have used some hypothetical functions, syntax of which
will be different in different RDBMS.

Q17. Discuss about the advanced features of SQL.

Ans. SQL Interfaces : SQL also has a good programming level interfaces.
The SQL supports a library of functions for accessing a database. These
functions are also called the Application Programming Interface (API) of SQL.
The advantage of using an API is that it provides flexibility in accessing multiple
databases in the same program irrespective of DBMS, while the disadvantage
is that it requires more complex programming. The following are two common
functions called interfaces:
SQL/CLI (SQL - call level interface) is an advanced form of Open Database
Connectivity (ODBC).
Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) - allows object-oriented (JAVA to connect
to the multiple databases.
SQL support for object-orientation : The latest SQL standard also supports
the object-oriented features. It allows creation of abstract data types, nested
relations, object identifies etc.
Interaction with Newer Technologies : SQL provides support for XML
(eXtended Markup Language) and Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) for
data warehousing technologies.
64 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Q18. Define catalogue and data dictionary. How both are similar or
different?
Ans. The system catalogue is a collection of tables and views that contain
important information about a database. It is the place where a relational database
management system stores schema metadata, such as information about tables
and columns, and internal bookeeping information. A system catalogue is
available for each database. Information in the system catalogue defines the
structure of the database.

The information stored in a catalogue of an RDBMS includes :

- the relation names,
- attribute names,
- attribute domains (data types)
- descriptions of constraints (primary keys, secondary keys, foreign keys,
NULL/NOT NULL, and other types of constraints),
- views, and
- storage structures and indexes (index name, attributes on which index is
defined, type of index etc.)
Security and authorisation information is also kept in the catalogue, which
describes:
- authorised user names and passwords,
- each user's privilege to access specific database relations and views,
the creator and owner of each relation. The privileges are granted using GRANT
command.

The system catalogue can also be used to store some statistical and descriptive
information about relations. Some such information can be:
- number of tuples in each relation,
- the different attribute values,
- storage and access methods used in relation.
All such information finds its use in query processing.
In relational DMBSs the catalogue is stored as relations.

The terms system catalogue and data dictionary have been used interchangeably
in most situations.
Data dictionaries also include data on the secondary keys, indexes and views.
The above could also be extended to the secondary key, index as well as view
information by defining the secondary key, indexes and views. Data dictionaries
MCS-043 GPH Book 65

do not contain any actual data from the database, it contains only book-keeping
information for managing it. Without a data dictionary, however, a database
management system cannot access data from the database.

The Database Library is built on a Data Dictionary, which provides a complete

description of record layouts and indexes of the database, for validation and
efficient data access. The data dictionary can be used for automated database
creation, including building tables, indexes and referential constraints, and
granting access rights to individual users and groups. The database dictionary
supports the concept of Attached Objects, which allows database records to
include compressed BLOBs (Binary Large Objects) containing images, texts,
sounds, video, documents, spreadsheets, or programmer-defined data types.

Q19. Discuss the disadvantages of data dictionary?

Ans. A DDS is a useful management tool, but it also has several disadvantages.
It needs careful planning. We would need to define the exact requirements
designing its contents, testing, implementation and evaluation. The cost of a
DDS includes not only the initial price of its installation and any hardware
requirements, but also the cost of collecting the information entering it into the
DDS, keeping it up-to-date and enforcing standards. The use of a DDS requires
management commitment, which is not easy to achieve, particularly where
the benefits are intangible and long term.

Q20. What are the benefits and features of data dictionary?

Ans. A comprehensive data dictionary product will include:
- support for standard entity types (elements, records, files, reports, programs,
systems, screens, users, terminals, etc.) and their various characteristics (e.g.,
for elements, the dictionary might maintain Business name, Business definition,
name, Data type, Size, Format, Range(s), Validation criteria, etc.)
- support for user-designed entity types (this is often called the "extensibility"
feature); this facility is often exploited in support of data modelling to record
and cross-reference entities, relationships,data flows, data stores, processes,
etc.
- the ability to distinguish between versions of entities (e.g., test and production)
enforcement of in-house standards and convetions.
- comprehensive reporting facilities, including both "canned" reports and a
reporting language for user-designed reports; typical reports include :
- detail reports of entities
66 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

- summary reports of entities

- component reports (e.g., record-element structures)
- cross-reference reports (e.g., element keyword indexes)
- where-used reports (e.g., element-record-program cross-references).
- a query facility, both for administration and casual users, which includes the
ability to perform generic searches on business definitions, user descriptions,
synonyms etc.
- language interfaces, to allow, for example, standard record layouts to be
automatically incorporated into programs during the compile process.
- automated input facilities (e.g. to load record descriptions from a copy
library).
- security features
- adequate performance tuning abilities
- support for DBMS administration, such as automatic generation of DDL
(Data Definition Language).

Data Dictionary Benefits : The benefits of a fully utilised data dictionary are
substantial. A data dictionary has the potential to :
* facilitate data sharing by
- enabling database classes to automatically handle multi-user coordination,
buffer layouts, data validation, and performance optimisations,
- improving the ease of understanding of data definitions,
- ensuring that there is a single authoritative source of reference for all users.
- facilitiate application integration by identifying data redundancies,
- reduce development lead times by
- simplifying documentation
- automating programming activities.
- reduce maintenance effort by identifying the impact of change as it affects:
- users,
- database administrators,
- programmers
- improve the quality of application software by enforcing standards in the
development process.
- ensure application system longevity by maintaining documentation beyond
project completions.
- data dictionary information created under one database system can easily be
used to generate the same database layout on any of the other database systems
BFC supports (Oracle, MS SQL Server, Access, DB2, Sybase, SQL, Anywhere,
MCS-043 GPH Book 67

etc.)

Q21. List the various types of views through which access to the data
dictionary is allowed.
Ans. a) Views with the Prefix USER
b) Views with the Prefix ALL
c) Views with the Prefix DBA

Q22. What are the uses of Data Dictionary in Oracle?

Ans. Primary uses are :
• Oracle accesses the data dictionary to find information about users, schema
objects, and storage structures.
• Oracle modifies the data dictionary every time that a data definition language
(DLL) statement is issued.

Q23. What is the difference between active and passive Data Dictionary?
Ans. If a data dictionary system is used only by designers, users, and
administrators, not by the DBMS software, it is called a passive data dictionary
otherwise, it is called an active data dictionary or data directory. An active data
dictionary is automatically updated as changes occur in the database. A passive
data dictionary must be manually updated.

Q24. What are the approaches to implementing a distributed database

catalogue?
Ans. a) Centralised: Keeps one master copy of the catalogue.
b) Partitioned: Partitions and replicates the catalogue as per the demands of
the usage pattern.
c) Fully replicated: Keeps one copy of the catalogue at each site.
d) Centralised/partitioned: Combination of the above

Q25. How are Object Oriented catalogues implemented?

Ans. In addition to system catalogues that may be used in simple relational
database system, an object oriented system catalogue needs to define complex
user defined classes, inheritance hierarchy and complex inter-relationships.
Chapter-5
DBMS ADVANCED FEATURES AND
DISTRIBUTED DATABASE

Q1. With the help of a block diagram describe the phases of Query
processing. How do we optimize a Query under consideration? Does Query
optimisation contribute to the measurement of Query cost? Support
your answer with suitable explanation. [June-07, Q1(d)]
Ans.
Query in any high-level language

Query Scanning
Parsing
Checking

Intermediate Query Form

Statistics of the
QUERY OPTIMISER
database

Execution plan of query

Code can be interpreted and
CODE GENERATOR executed directly or compiled and
stored for any future execution

Code to execute query

DATABASE RUNTIME
PROCESSOR

Result of query
Figure : Query processing
In the first step Scanning, Parsing, and Validating is done to translate the query
into its internal form. This is then further translated into relational algebra (an
MCS-043 GPH Book 69

intermediate query form). Parser checks syntax and verifies relations. The
query then is optimized with a query plane, which then is compiled into a code
that can be executed by the database runtime processor.
We can define query evaluation as the query-execution engine taking a query-
evaluation plan, executing that plan, and retuning the answers to the query.
The query processing involves the study of the following concepts:

• how to measure query costs?

• algorithms for evaluating relational algebraic operations.
• how to evaluate a complete expression using algorithms on individual
operations?
A relational algebra expression may have many equivalent expressions. For
example,
σ (salary<5000) (π salary (EMP)) is equivalent to (π salary (σ salary<5000 <(EMP)).
Each relational algebraic operation can be evaluated using one of the several
different algorithms. Correspondingly, a relational-algebraic expression can be
evaluated in many ways.
An expression that specifies detailed evolution strategy is known as evaluation-
plan, for example, you can use an index on salary to find employees with
salary< 5000 or we can perform complete relation scan and discard employees
with salary ≥ 5000. The basis of selection of any of the scheme will be the
cost.

Query Optimisation: Amongst all equivalent plans choose the one with the
lowest cost. Cost is estimated using statistical information from the database
catalogue, for example, number of tuples in each relation, size of tuples, etc.
Thus, in query optimisation we find an evaluation plan with the lowest cost.
The cost estimation is made on the basic of heuristic rules.

Measure of Query Cost

Cost is generally measured as total elapsed time for answering the query.
There are many factors that contribute to time cost. These are disk accesses,
CPU time, or even network communication.
Typically disk access is the predominant cost as disk transfer is a very slow
event and is also relatively easy to estimate. It is measured by taking into
account the following activities:
70 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Number of seeks × average-seek-cost

Number of blocks read × average-block-read-cost
Number of blocks written × average-block-written-cost.

Q2. What are the various methods adopted in select operation?

Ans. Selection operation can be performed in a number of ways such as:
File Scan Index Scan
1. Linear Search 1.(a) Primary index, equality
(b) hash key
2. Binary Search 2. Primary index, Comparison
3. Equality on clustering index
4. (a) Equality on search key of secondary index
(b) Secondary index comparison

Q3. Define the algorithm for Block Nested-Loop Join for the worst-case
scenario.
Ans. For each block Br of r {
For each block tuple Bs of s {
For each tuple ti in Br {
For each tuple ti in Bs {
Test Pair (ti, si) to see if they satisfy the join condition
If they do, add the joined tuple to result
};
};
};
};

Q4. Give the method for calculating the cost of Hash-Join?

Ans. Cost of Hash-join.
(i) If recursive partitioning not required 3 (blocks of r + Blocks of s)
(ii) If recursive partitioning required then
2 (blocks of r + blocks of s ( j logm-1 (blocks of s) k - 1) + blocks of r +
blocks of s.

Q5. Define Hybrid Merge-Join.

Ans. Hybrid Merge-Join is applicable when the join is equi-join or natural join
and one relation is sorted.
MCS-043 GPH Book 71

Merge the sorted relation with leaf of B+tree.

(i) Sort the result on address of sorted relations tuples.
(ii) Scan unsorted relation and merge with previous result.

Q6. Define other operations?

Ans. There are many Other operations that are performed in database systems
which are given below :
(a) Duplicate elimination : Duplicate elimination may be implemented by using
hashing or sorting. On sorting, duplicates will be adjacent to each other thus,
may be identified and deleted. An optimised method for duplicate elimination
can be deletion of duplicates during generation as well as at intermediate merge
steps in external sort-merge. Hashing is similar - duplicates will be clubbed
together in the same bucket and therefore may be eliminated easily.
(b) Projection : It may be implemented by performing the projection process
on each tuple, followed by duplicate elimination.
(c) Aggregate functions : Aggregate functions can be implemented in a manner
similar to duplicate elimination.
d) Set Operations - can use either use a variant of merge-join after sorting, or
a variant of hash-join.

QUERY EXPRESSIONS :

Q7. Discuss the methods for evaluating an entire expression.

Ans. Methods for evaluating an entire expression are :
- Materialisation
- Pipelining

Materialisation : Evaluate a relational algebraic expression from the bottom-

up, by explicitly generating and storing the results of each operation in the
expression.
Materialised evaluation is always possible though; the cost of writing/reading
results to/from disk can be quite high.

Pipelining : Evaluate operations in a multi-threaded manner, (i.e. passes tuples

output from one operation to the next parent operation as input) even as the
first operation is being executed. In the previous expression tree, it does not
store (materialise) results instead, it passes tuples directly to the join. Similarly,
does not store result of join, and passes tuples directly to the projection. Thus,
72 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

there is no need to store a temporary relation on a disk for each operation.

Pipelining may not always be possible or easy for sort, hash-join.
One of the pipelining execution methods may involve a buffer filled by the
result tuples of lower level operation while, records may be picked up from
the buffer by the higher level operation.

Q8. For the following relations, write the SQL statement to find the
details of the student(s) who have scored grade A in MCS-031. Also
write its equivalent relationship algebraic query and form its query tree.
STUDENT (enrolno, name, age)
MARKS (enrolno, subjectcode, grade)
Ans. Relation given:
STUDENT (enrolno, name, age)
MARKS (enrolno, subjectcode, grade)
Query : To find detail of the student(s) who have scored grade A in MCS-
031.
SQL:
SELECT *
FROM Student
WHERE enrolno in
(SELECT enrolno
FROM MARKS
Where subject code = ‘MCS-031’ and grade = ‘A’);
Relational Algebra :
R1 ← σ subjectcode = 'MCS-031' ^ grade = 'A' ( MARKS)

R2 ← ∏ enrolno ( R1 )

Result ← (σ student.enrolno=R 2 .enrolno ( R 2 X Student ) )

Query tree:
Π Enrolno, name, Age

Student Π Enrolno

Subject_code = ‘MCS-031’ grade = ‘A’

Marks
MCS-043 GPH Book 73

Q9. How you define evaluation plan?

Ans. Evaluation plan defines exactly what algorithms are to be used for each
operation and the manner in which the operations are coordinated.

Q10. How you define cost based optimization?

Ans. Cost based optimisation is
a) Generalizing logically equivalent expressions using equivalence rules
b) Annotating resultant expressions to get alternative query plans.
c) Choosing the cheapest plan based on estimated cost.

Q11. Consider the following relational database :

EMPLOYEE (emp_name, street, city)
WORKS (emp_name, comp_name, salary)
COMPANY (comp_name, city)
MANAGES (emp_name, manager_name)
For each of the following queries, give the relational algebraic expression
and relational calculus expression :
(i) Find the names of all the employees who work for XYZ Bank
Corporation.
π emp_name (σ comp-name = ' xyz Bank Corporation' (WORKS))
{e [emp_name]|e ∈ works ^ e[emp-name] = ‘xyz Bank Corporation’}

(ii) Find the names of all the employees who live in the same city where
the company for which they work is located.
π emp_name ( σ EMPLOYEE.City=COMPANY.City
(EMPLOYEE WORKS COMPANY))
{e[emp_name] |e ∈ EMPLOYEE ^ ∃ c,w (c ∈ COMPANY ^ w ∈ WORKS^
e[emp_name] = w [emp_name] ^ w [comp_name] = c [comp_name] ^ e
[city] = c[city]

(iii) Find the names of those employees who earn more than every
employee of the XYZ Bank Corporation.
π emp_name (σsalary>(Jmax(salary) (σcomp_name = 'xyz Bank Corporation' (WORKS) )) (WORKS))
{e[emp_name] |e ∈ WORKS ^ ∃ w (W ∈ WORKS ^
w [comp_name] = ‘xyz Bank Corporation^ e[salary] > w [salary] }

(iv) Find the name, street and city of those employees who work for the
XYZ Bank Corporation and earn more than Rs. 2,50,000 per annum.
74 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

π EMPLOYEE.* ( σcomp_name = 'xyz Bank Corporation' ^ salary > 250000/12 ( EMPLOYEE WORKS)
{e|e ∈ EMPLOYEE ^ ∃ w (W ∈ WORKS ^ w [salary] >
250000/12 ^ w [comp_name = ‘xyz Bank Corporation’
^ e[emp_name] = w[emp_name]}
(v) Find the names of managers who work in a bank located in Delhi.
π manager_name ( σ (MANAGES
city=`Delhi’ manager_name=emp_name WORKS COMPANY))
ANY))
{e[manager_name] |e ∈ MANAGES ^ ∃ c, w (W ∈
WORKS ^ c ∈ company ^ e [manager_name] = w [emp_name] ^
w[comp_name] = c[comp_name] ^ c [city] = ‘Delhi’}

Q12. Consider the relations .

GRADE (stud_id, subject_id, grade)
SUBJECT (subject_id, s_name, teacher)
(i). Write the relational algebraic query for the following :
. List the student number, subject names and grades of the student
whose id is 100.
. List the grades of all the students in the subjects taught by teacher
“XYZ”.
πstud_id, S_name, grade ( σ stud_id=100 (GRADE SUBJECT))

π stud_id, grade ( σ teacher='XYZ' (GRADE SUBJECT))

(ii). Convert the queries above into an optimized query graph.

πstud_id,S-name,grade πstud-id,S-name,drade

σ stud_id=100
π stud-id = 100 SUBJECT
GRADE SUBJECT
GRADE
Initial Query graph Optimized Query Graph
MCS-043 GPH Book 75

πstud_id,grade π stud_id,grade

σ teachers = 'XYZ'

GRADE σ teachers = 'XYZ'

GRADE SUBJECT SUBJECT

Initial Query graph Optimized Query Graph

Q13. Optimize the following queries for the relation

R1(A, B, C), R2(B, C, D) and R3(C, D, E)
(i)

σ b =6

σ b =6 BC
σ b =6 C

ABC ABC

R1 σ b =6 R1 σ b =6

R1 R2 R1 R3
R2 R3
Initial Query Tree Optimized Query Tree

Optimized Query is:

(σ B − b ( R1) (π BC (σ B-b (R2)))  (π B-b (R1) π C (σ B-b (R3)))
(ii)

π ABC

π ABC
σ B=b π BC π AB π BC π AB π C
σ D=d
π AB R2 σ B=b R2 R1 σ D= d

R1 R1 R3 R1 R3
76 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Optimized Query is
: (π AB (σB-b (R1)) π BC (R2))-(π AB (R1) (π C (σ D=d (R3)))

TRANSACTION MANAGEMENT & RECOVERY

Q14. What are the various transaction states ? Explain each state and
state transition with the help of example(s).
Ans. Active ⇒ It is the initial state. The transaction stays in this state while
it is executed.

Partially Committed ⇒ A transaction that completes its execution

successfully said to be committed, partially committed state comes after the
final statement has been executed.

Failed ⇒ Failed state comes after the discovery that normal execution can
no longer proceed.

Aborted ⇒ This state comes after the transaction has been rolled back & the
database has been restarted to its state prior to the start of the transaction.

Committed ⇒This state comes after the successful completion of the

transaction.

The state diagram corresponding to a transaction is shown in following

figures:-

Partially
Committed
Committed

Active

Failed Aborted

Example:
Consider the following transaction:
MCS-043 GPH Book 77

T
1. Sum:=0
2. Read(A)
3. Read(B)
4. Sum = A + B
5. Write(A)
6. Write(B)
When we issue the transaction T and it is ready for execution then it will be in
the Active state. When it is in process (line 1 to 5) it will be in the Partially
Committed state. If any operation fails at any point then it will be in the Failed
state and followed by Aborted state. If the last operation is completed and
successfully communicated to physical database then it will be in the Committed
state.

Q15. What do you mean by transaction? What are the properties of a

transaction? Violation of which property causes Lost Update problem?
Justify your answer with suitable example. [June-07, Q1(e)]
Ans. A transaction may be defined as a collection of operations on the database
that performs a single logical function in a database application or it should be
an inseparable list of database operations or Logical Unit of Work (LUW). It
should not violate any database integrity.
When a transaction processing system creates a transaction, it will ensure that
the transaction has certain characteristics. These characteristics are known
as the ACID properties.
ACID is an acronym for ATOMICITY, CONSISTENCY, ISOLATION and
DURABILITY.

ACID Properties

Atomicity : The atomicity property identifies the transaction as atomic. An

atomic transaction is either fully completed, or is not begun at all.
Consistency : A transaction enforces consistency in the system state, by
ensuring that at the end of the execution of a transaction, the system is in a
valid state. If the transaction is completed successfully, then all changes to the
system will have been made properly, and the system will be in a valid state. If
any error occurs in a transaction, then any changes already made will be
automatically rolled back.
Isolation : When a transaction runs in isolation, it appears to be the only
78 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

action that the system is carrying out at a time. If there are two transactions
that are performing the same function and are running at the same time,
transaction isolation will ensure that each transaction thinks that it has exclusive
use of the system.
Durability : A transaction is durable in that once it has been successfully
completed, all of the changes it has made to the system are permanent. There
are safeguards that will prevent the loss of information, even in the case of
system failure.
Violation of durability causes lost update problem.
Suppose the 2 transactions T3 and T4 run concurrently and they happen to be
interleaved in the following way (assume the initial value of X as 10000).

T3 T4 Value of X
T3 T4
Read X 10000
Read X 10000
Sub 5000 5000
Add 3000 13000
Write X 5000
Write X 13000

After the execution of both the transactions the value X is 13000 while the
semantically correct value should be 8000. The problem occurred as the update
made by T3 has been over written by T4. The root cause of the problem was
the fact that both the transactions had read the value of X as 10000. Thus one
of the two update has been lost and we say that a lost update has occurred.

Q16. Why we use lock based protocol? What are the pitfalls of lock
based protocol?
Ans. Lock based protocols are one of the major techniques to implement
concurrent transaction execution. These protocols try to ensure serialisability.
The pitfalls of such protocols can be:
• Overheads due to locking
• Locking may lead to deadlocks.
• We may either restrict concurrency – strict 2 PL or allow uncommitted data
to be seen by other transactions.

Q17. How do you define transaction processing methods? Also list the
MCS-043 GPH Book 79

advanced transaction methods.

Ans. The transaction processing methods can be:
Batch-combining jobs in batches
Online-the effects are known immediately
Advanced methods may include real time transaction, weak consistency levels
etc.

Q18. What is timestamp? What is the need of time stamping protocol?

Ans. A timestamp is a label that is allotted to a transacting when it starts. This
label is normally generated as per some time unit so that transactions may be
identified as per time order. They allow concurrency control but without letting
transaction wait for a lock. Thus, problems such as deadlocks may be avoided.

Q19. How are insert and delete operations performed in a tree protocol?
Ans. The main problems of Insert and Delete are that it may result in
inconsistent analysis when concurrent transactions are going on due to phantom
records. One such solution to this problems may be locking the index while
performing such an analysis.

Q20. Define multiple granularity?

Ans. Multiple granularity defines object at various levels like database, file,
record, fields, etc.

Q21. Why does deadlock occur in concurrent execution of transactions

where locking scheme is followed? How can you detect deadlock in
database system? How is the problem of deadlock resolved? Explain
with the help of an example.
Ans. Deadlock, is a situation of the system, when each transactions waits for
some resources, which are hold by some of the resources.
This occurs in the system where locking scheme is allowed, because the
locked item can not released by other transaction, but by the locked transaction
itself.
Example:-
80 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

T1 T2

1. read-lock (Y) 3. read-lock (X); T1 T2

Time 2. read-item (Y); 4. read-item (X);
6. write-lock (Y);
5. write-lock (X); Fig. (b)
(a wait-for graph)
Fig.(a)

The Fig(a) show the schedule of transactions T1 & T2 where both are in
deadlock state, as T1 is waiting for X and T2 is waiting for Y Neither T1 nor T2
nor any other transaction can access items X and Y1 and X and Y are locked.

Detection of Deadlock ⇒ Deadlock detection algorithm examines the state

of the system to decide whether deadlock has occurred. Such algorithms are
invoked periodically. To implement this algorithm, the system must do the
following things:
• Maintain Information about the current allocation of data items to transactions
as well as any outstanding data item request.
• Provides an algorithm that uses this information to determine whether the
system has entered a deadlock state.
• Recovers from the deadlock when the detection algorithm determines that
deadlock exists.

Wait -for-Graph ⇒ Wait-for-Graph is used by deadlock detection algorithm

to decide whether deadlock occurs.
This graph describes the deadlock. This graph consists of a pair G = (V, E)
where V is a set of vertices & E is a set of Edges. The set of vertices consists
of all the transactions in the system. Each element in the set E of edges is an
ordered pair Ti →| Tj. If Ti → Tj is in E, then there is a directed edge from
transactions Ti to Tj implying that transactions Ti is waiting for transactions
Tj to release a data item that it needs.
When transaction Ti requests a data item currently being held by transaction
Tj, then the edge Ti →| Tj is inserted in the Wait-For-Graph. This edge is
removed only when transaction Tj is no longer holding a data item needed by
transaction Ti.
A deadlock exists in the system if & only if the wait-for-graph contains a
cycle. Each transaction involved in the cycle is said to be deadlocked. To
detect deadlocks, the system needs to maintain the wait-for-graph & periodically
to invoke an algorithm that searches for cycle in the graph.
MCS-043 GPH Book 81

Following figure illustrates the concept in which a deadlock is detected through.

Wait-for-Graph.

T3

T2

T1

T4

In the above figure, transaction T1 is requesting an item held by transaction

T2. Transaction T1 is again requesting an item which is held by transaction T4.
Transaction T2 is requesting for an item which is held by transaction T4 &
transaction T4 is requesting for an item which is held by transaction T3.

T2 → T4 →| T3 →| T1 is a cycle and transaction T1 , T2, T3, T4 are deadlocked.

To resolve deadlock situations two actions are taken:
(i) To determine a transaction which has caused the deadlock situation and the
cost of rolling back of such transaction should be minimum. Many
factors may determine the cost of rolling back of a transaction.
→| How long the transaction has computed, & how much
longer the transaction will compute before it completes its designed
task.
→| How many data items the transaction has used.
→| How many transactions will be involved in the roll back.

(ii) Once we have decide that a particular transaction must be rolled back, we
must determine how far this transaction should be rolled back : There are two
choices :
• Total rollback means abort the transaction & restart it.
• Partial rollback means rollback the transaction only as far as necessary to
break the deadlock.
The transaction must be capable to resume execution after a partial rollback.

Deadlock Avoidance :- In a deadlock avoidance scheme, case is taken to

ensure that a circular chain of processes holding some resources & waiting
82 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

for additional ones held by other transactions in the chain never occurs. The
two phase locking protocol ensures serializability but does not ensure a deadlock
free situation. There are various approaches for avoiding deadlocks. Some of
them are as follows:
(i) One simplest Method for avoiding deadlock into lock all data items at the
beginning of a transaction.
This has to be done in atomic manner otherwise there could be a deadlock
situation again. Disadvantages of this approach are:
(a) Degree of concurrency is covered considerably.
(b) Locking all data items for the entire duration of a transaction makes there
data items inaccessible to other concurrent transactions.

(ii) Another approach for the avoidance of Deadlock is to decide whether to

wait or abort or roll back a transaction if the transaction has requested a data
item that is locked in an incompatible mode by another transaction. The decision
for abort or roll back or wait is controlled by time-stamp values. Aborted or
rolled back transactions retain their time-stamp values & hence their seniority
so that in subsequent sections they would eventually get a higher priority. We
examine two such approaches which is as follows:

(a) Wait-Die :-
• If the requesting transaction is elder that the transaction that holds the lock
on the requested data item the requesting transaction is allowed to wait.
• If the requesting transaction is younger that the transaction that holds the
lock on the requested data item, the requesting transaction is aborted or rolled
back.

(b) Wound-Wait :- this is just the opposite of wait-die scheme.

• If a younger transaction holds data-item requested by an older one, the
younger transaction is the one that would be aborted and rolled back.
• If a young transaction requested a data item held by an older transaction the
younger transaction is allowed to wait.

Q22. Define multi-version scheme?

Ans. Multi-version technique allows the creation of multi-version of each data
items as it gets updated. It also records the timestamp of updating transaction
for that data. This protocol tries to make available correct data as per transaction
timestamp.
MCS-043 GPH Book 83

Q23. Define weak level of consistency in SQL?

Ans. Weak level of consistency in SQL allows transaction to be executed at a
lower level. In such cases the programmer need to ensure that there is no
concurrency related problems. SQL provides the following weak consistency
levels. Read committed, and Repeatable Read.

Q24. Define dead locks? How can dead locks be avoided?

Ans. Deadlock is a situation when two or more transactions are waiting for
each other to release locks held by others. A deadlock can be detected when a
cycle is detected in the wait for graph. The basic procedure of deadlock
avoidance may be to roll back certain transaction as per some rule such as
wound-wait or allow the transaction a maximum time to finish after which it
may be rolled back.

Q25. How is stable storage implemented?

Ans. It can only be implemented with more secondary storage, which are
placed at different locations to take care of natural disasters or catastrophic
events.

Q26. Compare and contrast the features of simple locking, intention

mode locking and time stamping mechanisms from the viewpoint of
transaction control under concurrent transitions.
Ans.
Simple Locking Intention Mode Locking Time Stamping
1. Transaction have to hold Intention mode provides Does not allow any data item,
onto the lock on a data item greater flexibility and transactions are ordered in the
atleast until it needed that item efficiency than Simple order they were submitted.
and may have to hold beyond Locking
the need of the data item

2. It has to modes exclusive It has five modes Each data item has two
and shared S, X, IS, IX SIX stamps write time stamp and
record time stamp.
3. It causes less overhead than It creates more overhead in Optimum overhead
IM Locking maintenance of locks

4. Less costly in terms of time Costly in terms of time as a No time overhead

transaction has to search a
data item's previous locks and
modes and it ascertains if a
request for a lock can be
granted

5. May cause deadlock. Prone to deadlock ensure serilizability but causes

transaction to be rolled back.
84 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Q27. Define recovery algorithms.

Ans. Recovery algorithms are techniques to ensure database consistency and
transaction atomicity and durability despite failures. Recovery algorithms have
two parts:
(1) Actions taken during normal transaction processing is to ensure that enough
information exists to recover from failures,
(2) Actions taken after a failure to recover the database contents to a state that
ensures atomicity, consistency and durability.
While modifying the database, without ensuring that the transaction will
commit, amy leave the database in an inconsistent state. Let us consider an
example transaction Ti that transfers Rs. 1000/- from account X to account Y;
goal is either to perform all database modifications made by Ti or none at all. Ti
modifies x by subtracting Rs. 1000/- and modifies Y by adding Rs. 1000/-. A
failure may occur after one of these modifications has been made, but before
all of them are made. To ensure consistency despite failures, we have several
recovery mechanisms.

Q28. Describe four major threats to database security and integrity.

Ans. Four major threats to database security and integrity : Database security
usually refers to protection from unauthorized access, whereas integrity refers
to the avoidance of accidental loss of consistency. To protect the database we
must take security & integrity measures at several levels :
(1) Physical and Human : In physical, the site or sites containing the computer
systems must be physically secured against armed or surreptitious entry be
intruders. In human, users must be authorized carefully to reduce the chance
of any such user giving access to an intruder in exchange for a bribe or other
favours.
(2) Operating system : No matter how secure the database system is,
weakness in operating system security may serve as a means of unauthorized
access to the database.
(3) Network : Since almost all database systems allow remote access through
terminals or network, software level security within the network software is
as important as physical security, both on the internet and in network private
to an enterprise.
(4) Database system : Some database system users may be authorized to
access only a limited portion of the database, other users may be allowed to
issue queries, but may be forbidden to modify the data. It is the responsibility
of the database system to ensure that these authorization restrictions are not
MCS-043 GPH Book 85

violated.

Q29. What is a log file? What does it contain? How can a log file be used
for recovery? Describe this with the help of an example that includes all
recovery operations (UNDO, REDO, etc)
Ans. Log ⇒ contains the redundant data, which will be used in case of
recovery. Log information is kept on stable storage. In case of a system crash
losing volatile information. The modified data in buffers and log information in
buffers will be lost. The transactions having commit marker will be redone
and the transactions which have missing commit marker will be undone. It
means that longer the system operates without a crash the longer it will take to
recover from the crash. The recovery operation after a system crash will have
to reprocess all transactions from the time of start up of the system. These
problems can be avoided by using a means to propagate volatile information to
stable storage at regular intervals. This scheme is called check pointing check
pointing is used to limit the volume of log information to be processed in case
of a system failure.
We will prefer log based recovery over check pointing where we have low
traffic to database and it has high cost to checkpoint frequently such as in an
EMI calculation application. Check pointing scheme will used where so many
transactions are running per second and changing data. Such as in an online
reservation system.

Immediate update, or UNDO/REDO, is another algorithm to support ABORT

and machine failure scenarios.
• While a transaction runs, changes made by that transaction can be written to
the database at any time. However, the original and the new data being written
must both be stored in the log BEFORE storing it on the database disk.
• On a commit:
• All the updates which has not yet been recorded on the disk is first stored in
the log file and then flushed to disk.
• The new data is then recorded in the database itself.
• On an abort, REDO all the changes which that transaction has made to the
database disk using the log entries.
• On a system restart after a failure, REDO committed changes from log.

Example :
Using immediate update, and the transaction TRAN1 again, the process is:
86 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Time Action LOG

t1 START -
t2 read(A) -
t3 write(10,B) Was B == 6, now 10
t4 write(20,C) Was C == 2, now 20
t5 COMMIT COMMIT

Before During After

DISK B = 6 B = 10 B = 10
A=5 C= 2 A=5 C=2 A = 5 C = 20

If the DMBS fails and is restarted:

• The disks are physically or logically damaged then recovery from the log is
impossible and instead a restore from a dump is needed.
• If the disks are OK then the database consistency must be maintained. Writes
to the disk which was in progress at the time of the failure may have only been
partially done.
• Parse the log file, and where a transaction has been ended with ‘COMMIT’
apply the ‘new data’ part of the log to the database.
• If a log entry for a transaction ends with anything other than COMMIT,
apply the ‘old data’ part of the log to the database.
• flush the data to the disk, and then truncate the log to zero.

Q30. Suppose the write ahead Log Scheme is being used. Give the REDO
and UNDO processes in the strategy of writing the partial update made
by a transaction to the database, as well as in the strategy of delaying all
writes to database till the commit. 5
Ans. In write-ahead log strategy the transaction updates the physical database
and the modified record replaces the old record in the database on nonvolatile
storage. The log information about the transaction modifications are written
before the corresponding put(x) operation, initiated by the transaction, is
performed. The write-ahead log strategy has the following requirements:
1. Before a transaction is allowed to modify the database, at lest the undo
portion of the transaction log record is written to the stable storage.
2. A transaction is committed only after both the undo and the redo portion of
the log are written to stable storage.

In the strategy of delaying all writes to database till the commit : the
MCS-043 GPH Book 87

sequence of operations for transaction T and the actions performed by the

database are shown below :
Time Transaction Step Log Operation Database Operation
t0 Start of T Write(start Transaction T)
t1 get(X) Read(X)
t3 modify(X)
t4 put(X) Write(record X modified,
old value of X,
new value of X)
t4 write(X)
t5 get(Y) Read(Y)
t6 modify(Y)
t7 put(Y) Write(record Y modified,
old value of Y,
new value of Y)
t8 write(Y)
t9 Start Commit Write(Commit Transaction);
t10 End of T

The initiation of a transaction causes the start of the log of its activities; a start
transaction along with the identification of the transaction is written out to the
log. During the execution of the transaction, any output is preceded by a log
output to indicate the modification being made to the database. This output to
the log consists of the record(s) being modified, old values of the data items in
the case of an update, and the values of the data item. The old values will be
used by the recovery system to undo the modifications made by a transaction
in case a system crash occurs before the completion of the transaction. When
a system crash occurs after a transaction commits, the new values will be
used by the recovery system to redo the changes made by the transaction and
thus ensure that the modifications made by a committed transaction are
correctly reflected in the database.
The transaction shown in before consists of reading in the value of some data
item X and modifying it by a certain amount. The transaction then reads in the
value of another data item Y and modifies it by an equal but opposite amount.
The transaction may subtract, let us say, a quantity n from the inventory for
part Px and add this amount to quantities of that item shipped to customer Cy.
For consistency this transaction must be completed atomically. A system crash
occurring at any time before time t9 will require that the transaction be undone.
88 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

A system crash occurring after t9, when the commit transaction marker is
written to the log, requires that we redo the transaction to ensure that all of the
changes made by this transaction are propagated to the physical database.
According to the write-ahead log strategy, the redo portion of the log need not
be written to the log until the commit transaction is issued by the program
performing the transaction.

In the strategy of writing partial updates : If the crash occurs just during
or after t4, the recovery process, when it examines the log, find that the commit
transaction marker is missing and, hence will undo the partially completed
transaction. To do this it will use the old value for the modified field. And
restore the database to the consistent state that existed before the crash and
before transaction was started. If the crash occurs after step t9 is completed,
the recovery system will find an end-of-transaction in the log.
However, since the log was written before the database, all modifications to
the database may not have been propagate d to the database. Thus to ensure
that all modifications made by transaction are propagated to the database, the
recovery system will redo the committed transaction. To do this it uses the
new values of the appropriate fields of the records.

Q31. What are the steps one must take with its database management
system, in order to ensure disaster recovery? Define the process of
recovery in case of disaster.
Ans. Disasters refers to circumstances that result in the loss of the physical
database stored on the nonvolatile storage medium.
The data stored in stable storage consists of the archival copy of the database
and the archival log of the transactions on the database represented in the
archival copy.
The disaster recovery process requires a global redo. In this case the changes
made by every transaction in the archival log are redone using the archival
database as the initial version of the current database.

• As the order of redoing the operation must be same as the original order,
hence the archival log must be chronology ordered.
• Since the archival database should be consistent, it must be a copy of the
current database in a quiescent stage.
The recovery operation consists of redoing the changes made by committed
transactions from the archive log on the archive database. A new consistent
MCS-043 GPH Book 89

archive database copy can be generated during this recovery process.

Q32. Compare and contrast the features of log based recovery mechanism
versus check pointing based recovery. Suggest applications where you
will prefer log based recovery scheme over check pointing. Give an
example of check pointing based recovery scheme.
Ans. Log contains the redundant data, which will be used in case of recovery.
Log information is kept on stable storage. In case of a system crash losing
volatile information. The modified data in buffers and log information in buffers
will be lost. The transactions having commit marker will be redone and the
transactions which have missing commit marker will be undone. It means that
longer the system operates without a crash the longer it will take to recover
from the crash. The recovery operation after a system crash will have to
reprocess all transactions from the time of start up of the system. These
problems can be avoided by using a means to propagate volatile information to
stable storage at regular intervals. This scheme is called check pointing check
pointing is used to limit the volume of log information to be processed in case
of a system failure.
We will prefer log based recovery over check pointing where we have low
traffic to database and it has high cost to checkpoint frequently such as in an
EMI calculation application. Check pointing scheme will used where so many
transactions are running per second and changing data. Such as in an online
reservation system.
Recovery is a process of restoring database to the consistent state that existed
before the failure. It is an integral part of the database. The recovery scheme
must minimize the time for which the database is not usable after a crash.
The most widely used structure for recording database modifications is the
log. The log is a sequence of log records all the update activities in the database.
The log contains redundant data required to recover database to a consistent
state. The log is generally stored on stable storage.

For each transaction, the following data is recorded on the log:-

• A start-of-transaction Marker.
• The transaction identifier, which includes the who & where information.
• The record identifies, which includes identifiers for record occurrences.
• The operation (Insert, Delete, Modify) performed on the records.
• The previous value(s) of the Modified data. This information is required for
undoing the change mode by a partially completed transaction.
90 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

• A Commit transaction marker of the transaction is committed otherwise an

abort or rollback transaction marker.
The log is written before any update is made to he database. This is called
write ahead-log strategy.

Checkpoints ⇒ A scheme called checkpoint is used to limit the volume to

volume of log information that has to be handled and processed in the event of
a system failure involving the loss of volatile information. The checkpoint
scheme is an additional component of the loging scheme described above.
In the case of a system crash, the log information being collected in buffers
will be lost. A checkpoint operation, performed periodically, copies log
information on to stable storage. The information and operations performed at
each checkpoint consist of the following:
• A start-of-checkpoint record giving the identification that it is a checkpoint
along with the time and data of the checkpoint is written to the log on a stable
storage device.
• All log information from the buffers in the volatile storage is copied to the log
on stable storage.
• All database updates from the buffers in the volatile storage are propagated
to the physical database.
• An end-of-checkpoint record is written and the address of the checkpoint
record is saved on a file accessible to the recovery routine on start-up after a
system crash.

Example : Let us consider a set of transactions with the checkpoint and

system crash time, as shown below:-

T0
T1
T2
T3
Ti
T4 T i+1 T i+2

Ti+3

T i+3
t0 tc tx

Time Checkpoint System Crash

MCS-043 GPH Book 91

A checkpoint is taken tc time Tc, which indicates that at that time all log and
data buffers were propagated to storage.
The transactions T0, T1, T2, T4 were committed and their modifications are
reflected in the database. With the checkpoint scheme, these transactions are
not required to be redone after the system crash.
The transactions Ti and Ti+3 are to be redone at the point of checkpoint, where
the transaction Ti+2 has to be undo, as no log has been written for this
transaction.

Q33. Assume that the Railway reservation system is implemented using

an RDBMS. What concurrency control measures would you take in order
to avoid concurrency related problems in the system above? Also suggest
two measures to avoid deadlock in this system.
Ans. In the Railway Reservation system the following concurrency control
measures would be required in order to avoid concurrency related problems :
1. A seat can not be reserved to more than one person
2. The PNR number issued must be unique in the entire system.

Measures to avoid deadlock in the above system.

1. Request grant of the resources must not form a cycle.
2. Time stamp_Based ordering can be used.

Q34. Explain working of the multiversion technique in the case of

concurrency control, with the help of an example.
Ans. Multi-version concurrency control (MVCC) is a standard technique for
avoiding conflicts between reads and writes of the same object. MVCC
guarantees that each transaction sees a consistent view of the database by
reading non-current data for objects modified by concurrent transactions.
MVCC is a fairly common technique in database implementation. For example
PostgreSQL uses MVCC.
For data-item x the database could keep the multiversion is the form of a set of
triples costing the values, the tune entered and the time modified as shown
below:
Variable: { { value, time entered, time modified, { }, ................}
x : {{x , t , t ,}, {x , t , t }....... {x , t . tp3}
0 0 1 1 1 2 n n

When a transactions needs to read a data-item such as x for which multiple

92 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

version exit, the DBMS selects one of the version of the data-item. The value
read by a transaction must be consistent with some serial execution of the
transaction with a single version of the database. Thus the concurrency control
problem is transferred into the selection of the correct version from the multiple
version of a data item. With the multiversion technique, write operations can
occur concurrently.

Example : Assume X1, X2, …, Xn are the version of a data item X created by
a write operation of transactions. With each Xi a read_TS (read timestamp)
and a write_TS (write timestamp) are associated.
read_TS(Xi) : The read timestamp of Xi is the largest of all the timestamps of
transactions that have successfully read version Xi.
write_TS(Xi) : The write timestamp of Xi that wrote the value of version Xi.
A new version of Xi is created only by a write operation.

Q35. Define triggers.

Ans. DBMS allow you to define procedures that are implicitly executed when
an INSERT, UPDATE or DELETE statement is issued against the associated
table. These types of procedures are called database trigger.
Use :
(i) And it data modification
(ii) Log event transparently
(iii) Enforce complex business rules
(iv) Desire column values automatically
(v) Implement complex security authorizations
(vi) Maintain replicate tables.

Q36. What are Triggers, Cursors and Alerts? What is their requirement
in DBMS? How are Triggers different from stored procedures?
Ans. Trigger : A trigger is a statement that the system executes automatically
as a side effect of a modification to the database.
To design a trigger mechanism, we must meet two requirements
(a) Specify when a trigger is to be executed: That is broken up into an
event that causes the trigger to be checked and a condition that must be
satisfied for trigger execution to proceed.
(b) Specify the actions to be taken when the trigger executes : The above
model of triggers is referred to as the event condition action model for triggers.
The database stores triggers as they are regular data, so that they are persistent
MCS-043 GPH Book 93

and are accessible to all database operations. Once trigger is stored in the
database, the database system takes on responsibility of executing it whenever
the specified events occurs and corresponding condition is satisfied.
Use: Triggers have many uses, such as implementing business rules, audit
logging and even carrying out actions outside the database.
Trigger as supportive for integrity constraints : E.g., in a banking system,
instead of allowing negative balances, the bank create a loan in the amount of
overdraft and set balance to 0.
To do this,
Condition for executing trigger is: update to account relation that results in
a negative value.
Actions to be taken are:
(i) Insert a new record/tuple/row in the load relation with
s[loan-number] = t[account-number]
s[branch-name] = t[branch-name]
s[amount] = -(t[balance])
(ii) Insert a new record/row/tuple in borrower relation with
u[customer-name] = t[customer-name]
u[loan-number] = t[loan-number]
(iii) Set t[Balance] to 0
Define in SQL
CREATE TRIGGER overdraft-trigger AFTER UPDATE OF balance ON
account
REFERENCING NEW ROW AS nrow
FOR EACH ROW
WHEN nrow.balance < 0
BEGIN ATOMIC
INSERT INTO loan values
(nrow.account-number, nrow.branch_name, -(nrow.balance));
INSERT INTO borrower
(select customer-name, account-number
from depositor
where nrow.account-number = depositor.account-number);
UPDATE ACCOUNT set balance = 0
where account.account-number = nrow.account-number;
END
Cursor: A cursor basically is a pointer to a query result and is used to read
attribute values of selected tuples into variables.
94 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Use: Another important feature of PL/SQL is that it offers a mechanism to

process query results in a tuple-oriented way, that is, one tuple at a time. For
this, cursors are used. A cursor typically is used in combination with a loop
construct such that each tuple read by the cursor can be processed individually.
Example: A cursor declaration specifies a set of tuples (as a query result)
such that the tuples can be processed in a tuple-oriented way (i.e., one tuple at
a time) using the fetch statement. A cursor declaration has the form
cursor <cursor name> [(<list of parameters>)] is <select statement>;
The cursor name is an undeclared identifier, not the name of any PL/SQL
variable. A parameter has the form <parameter name> <parameter type>.
Possible parameter types are char, varchar2, number, date and Boolean as
well as corresponding subtypes such as integer.
Parameters are used to assign values to the variables that are given in the
select statement.
Example: We want to retrieve the following attribute values from the table
EMP in a tuple oriented way: the job title and name of those employees who
have been hired after a given date and who have a manager working in a given
department.
cursor employee cur (start date date, dno number) is
select JOB, ENAME from EMP E where HIREDATE > start date
and exists (select * from EMP
where E.MGR = EMPNO and DEPTNO = dno);
If (some) tuples selected by the cursor will be modified in the PL/SQL block,
the clause for update [(<column(s)>)] has to be added at the end of the
cursor declaration. In this case selected tuples are locked and cannot be
accessed by other users until a commit has been issued.
Alert: The Database Alert sends an alert message with a description of the
problem as a record to a SQL database. You can then use database tools to
provide more advanced recording, sorting and reporting on your monitoring
data.

Difference Between Trigger and stored procedure:

1. Stored Procedures are to be invoked/run explicitly while Trigger gets
executed by system implicitly as side effect of some transaction.
2. Stored procedures are used to execute frequently required transactions
while Triggers are used to provide Integrity constraints of database system
3. When users create a trigger used have to identify event and action of users
trigger but when user create Stored Procedure user don’t identify event and
MCS-043 GPH Book 95

action.
4. Trigger is run automatically if the event is occurred but Stored Procedure
don’t run automatically but user have to run it manually.
5. Within a trigger user can call specific Stored Procedure but within a Stored
Procedure user can’t call a trigger.
6. Stored Procedure can pass the parameters which is not a case with Triggers.
7. A Trigger can call the specific Stored Procedure in it but the reverse is not
true.

Q37. How are remote back up recovery process helpful in transaction

processing methods?
Ans. They increase the availability of the system. Also provides a situation
through which we may avoid natural disaster or catastrophic failures.

Q38. Define log based recovery process.

Ans. All recovery process requires redundancy. Log based recovery process
records a consistent state of database and all the transaction logs after that on
a stable storage. In case of any failure the stable log and the database states are
used to create the consistent database state.

Q39. Elaborate the dual paging problem.

Ans. When a page buffer under an operating system control is written back to
disk swap space by operating system and is required by DBMS, this require
two block transfer, hence the name dual paging problem.

DATABASE SECURITY

Q40. Write the syntax for ‘Revoke Statement’ that revokes with grant
option.
Ans. REVOKE GRANT OPTION FOR <permissions>
ON <table>
FROM <user/role>

Q41. What does DENY command do?

Ans. It creates a ‘NOT PERMITTED’ condition in the database Access control.

Q42. The most secure database is found in ....................

Ans. Second graded Bunkers.
96 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Q43. ……………….. is the process of limiting Access to the Database

Server.
Ans. Server Security

Q44. What are the different ways of preventing open access to the
Internet?
Ans. Trusted IP address.
Server Account Disabling
Special Tools, Example: Real source by ISS.

Q45. Write the syntax for granting permission to alter database.

Ans. GRANT ALTER DATABASE TO Dinesh

Q46. On what systems does the security of a Database Management

system depend?
Ans. Operating system,
Application that use the database.
Service that interact, and
The Web Server.

Q47. List the different types of security threats. Explain three major
defence mechanisms required to be built into the database management
system.
Ans. Security threats can be categorised into two categories :
1. Accidental Security Threats – It includes :
(i) Improper Recovery Procedures
(ii) Concurrent usage anomalies.
(iii) System error.
(iv) Improper authorisation .
(v) Hardware failures.

2. Malicious or Intentional Security Threats – It includes :

(i) An operator or system programmer can intentionally
(ii) bypass normal security mechanisms.
(iii) An unauthorized user can get access to secure terminal.
(iv) Authorized users could pass on sensitive information on duress.

Defence Mechanisms
MCS-043 GPH Book 97

1. Human factors – It is the outer most level which encompass the ethical,
legal, and social environments.
2. Physical security - physical security mechanisms include appropriate locks
and keys and entry logs to computing facility and terminals.
3. Administrative controls – These determine what information will be
accessible to what class of users, and the type of access that will be allowed
to this class.

Q48. How can views be useful in enforcing security? What are the types
of updates that are allowed through views?
Ans. View Mechanism – The architecture of most of the database models is
divided into three levels: The external level, the conceptual level, and the internal
level. How we see the data at these levels is called view at the particular level.
How these all views are mapped with each other is called view mechanism.

External level
User/application View View View
view Defined A B Z
by user or
application
programmer in
consultation
with DBA

Mapping supplied by DBMS

Conceptual level
Defined by DBA Conceptual View

Mapping supplied by DBMS

Internal level
DBA defined for Internal View
optimization

External or User view – Only that portion of database is supplied to the user
that is relevant to that particular user. External view is defined by the DBA by
considering the requirements and authorities of the user. External view is
generated by extracting the objects from conceptual view.
98 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Conceptual View – Conceptual view represents the entire database. It internal

methods of deriving the objects in conceptual view from the internal view.
The data description at this level is in a format, independent of its physical
representation.

It also contains methods to check data integrity and consistency.

Internal View ⇒ Indicates how the data will be stored. It describes the data
structures and access methods.

Example which illustrate the use of view to enforce security :-

Let’s create a view for use by the departmental secretary consisting of the
attributes. Employee-name, Room and Phone-no.
The tuples accessible are limited to the employees in the secretary’s department.
Create view EMP-ADDRESSES (Name, Room - No, Phone) as
(Select (e.Employee_Name, e.Room, e.Phone-No)
From EMPLOYEE e
where e.Department = (Select (department) from HEAD
where Secretary = ‘secretary - name’)).
Having created this view, the secretary is granted appropriate access rights to
any tuple of this relation and is allowed to update Room - No, phone by means
of the appropriate grant statement.
Update are allowed through a view defined using a simple query involving a
single base relation and containing either the primary key or a candidate key of
the base relation.

Q49. Assuming that you are the data security administrator of a public
sector bank, what are the different security and privacy measures that
you will propose for its customer’s data?
Ans. Here the question has a situation of a data security administration of a
bank. The Data security Administrator has to implement security & privacy
measures on Bank database. This is important because a large number of
customers are allowed to access the database to prevent unauthorized access
of data of one user from others. The implementation of various security &
privacy measures on database is necessary to save the customers data from
malicious manipulation. Keeping in view the need for security privacy Measures,
we can use two types of security mechanisms:
(a) Security Mechanisms involving Access protection, user accounts & database
MCS-043 GPH Book 99

audits.
(b) Security mechanisms involving granting & Revoking of privileges.

Q50. How can you recover from media failure on which your database
was stored? Describe the mechanism of such recovery.
Ans. Media failure is the biggest threat to your data. A media failure is a
physical problem that occurs when a computer unsuccessfully attempts to
read from or write to a file necessary to operate the database. Common types
of media problems include:
• A disk drive that holds one of the database files experiences a head crash.
• A datafile, online or archieved redo log, or control file is accidentally deleted,
overwritten, or corrupted.
The technique you use to recover from media failure of a database file depends
heavily on the type of media failure that occurred. For example, the strategy
you use to recover from a corrupted datafile is different from the strategy for
recovering from the loss of the control file.
The basic steps for media recovery are:
• Determine which files to recover.
• Determine the type of media recovery required: complete or incomplete,
open database or closed database.
• Restore backups or copies of necessary files: datafiles, control files, and the
archived redo logs necessary to recover the datafiles.

Note :
If you do not have a backup, then you can still perform recovery if you have
the necessary redo logs and the control file contains the name of the damaged
file. If you cannot restore a file to its original location, then you must relocate
the restored file and rename the file in the control file.
• Apply redo records to recover the datafiles. (When using Recovery Manager,
apply redo records or incremental backups, or both.)
• Reopen the database. If you perform incomplete recovery or restore a backup
control file, then you must open the database with the RESETLOGS option.

The following techniques are used to recover from storage media failure.
(i) Data Base Backup – The whole database and the log are periodically
copied on to a cheap storage media, like tape in case of failure, the latest
backup copy is reloaded from the tape to the worky disk.
(ii) Volatile Storage – For avoiding failure of volatile storage media, we
100 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

should provide continuous power supply by using batteries.

(iii) Mirroring – A shadow of all transaction is maintained in a separate disk,
so in case of failure, immediately service can be provided by making mirror
disk as the primary disk.
(iv) Use of RAID Technology – A redundancy array of disk is maintained to
recover from such catastrophic failure.
(v) System Log Backup – To avoid losing all the effects of transactions that
have been executed since the last backup, backup of the system log is taken at
more regular intervals then full database backup.

Q51. What are the several forms of authorising database users ? Can a
user pass his authorisation to another user ? How can you withdraw an
authorisation ?
Ans. Keeping in view the need for security privacy measures, we can use
two types of security mechanisms :-
(a) Security Mechanism involving access protection, user accounts and database
audits.
(b) Security mechanisms involving granting and revoking of privileges.

(a) Security Mechanism involving access protection, user accounts and

database audits – Following measures are adopted under this category :
(i) Account Number and Password – Whenever a person or a group of
person needs to access a database system, the DBA creates a new account
number and password for the user if there is a legitimate need to access the
database. The user must log into the DBMS by entering the account number
and password whenever database access is needed. The DBMS checks that
the account number and password are valid. If they are, the user is permitted
to use the DBMS and to access the database.
(ii) Log-in Session – The database system must also keep track of all operations
on the database that are applied by a certain user throughout each database
interactions that a user performs from the time of logging to the time of
logging-off. It is particularly important to keep track of updated operations
that are applied to the database so that if the database if tampered with, the
DBA can find out which user did the tampering.

(b) Security mechanisms involving granting and revoking of privileges:

The typical method of enforcing discretionary access control in a database
system is based on granting and revoking of privileges.
MCS-043 GPH Book 101

Informally, there are two levels of assigning privileges for the user of database
system :
(i) The Account Level – At this level the DBA Specifies privileges to a particular
account. The privileges can be Insert, Delete etc.
(ii) The Relational (table) level – Privileges at the relational level specifies
for each user the individual relation on which each type of command can be
applied. The relation can be base relation or virtual relation (view). Some
privileges also refer to individual columns of relation.
The granting and revoking privileges generally follows an authorization model
for discretionary privileges known as access matrix model where the rows of
a matrix M represent subjects (users, accounts, programs) and the columns
represents objects (relations, records, columns, views and operations). Each
position (i, j) in the matrix represents the type of privileges (read, write, update)
that subject i holds on object j.

To control the granting and revoking of relation privileges each relation r in a

database is assigned an owner account which is typically the account that was
used when the relation was created at first place. The owner of the relation is
given all privileges on that relation. The owner account holder can pass privileges
on any of the owned relation to other users, by granting privileges to other
accounts.

Passing Authorization from one user to another ⇒ PROPAGATE ACCESS

CONTROL is an additional right that determines if this subject is allowed to
propagate the right over the object of other subjects. Thus a subject S may be
assigned an access right R over an object O and in addition the right grant this
access right to another subject. The right R may include the right the
PROPAGATE ACCESS CONTROL.
When the subject user has the PROPAGATE ACCESS CONTROL right over
an object he can pass all or part of his right to another subject, for instance, to
another user including PROPAGATE ACCESS CONTROL right. This leads to
Authorization Grant Tree.

Authorization Grant Tree ⇒ The needs of authorization Grant Tree are the
users. The Tree includes an edges Ui → Uj if user Ui grant rights to user Uj
the root of the graph is database Administrator.
In the following figure.
102 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

U1 U4

DBA U2 U5

U3

User U5 is granted authorization by both U1 & U2, U4 is grant authorization by

only user U1.

Withdrawal of Authorization ⇒ Authorization can be withdrawn by the

DBA, suppose a Database Administrator decides to revoke the authorization of
user U1, since U4 has authorization through U1, that authorization should also
be revoked as well.
Since user U5 has been granted authorization by both U1 & U5 since DBA
doesn’t revoke the rights from U2, user U5 retains the rights.

Q52. Write two ways of protecting against inference attacks.

Ans. a) Control to the Queries.
b) Control individual items that are being displayed.

Q53. With ............... sensitive data values are not provided; the query
is rejected without response.
Ans. Suppression.

Q54. Write a sequence of queries that would disclose the name of the
person who scored the highest marks.
Ans.

Subject Neha Richa Neelam

Maximum
Marks = 100
Maths 50 70 90
Science 60 80 50
Total 110 150 140
MCS-043 GPH Book 103

Ans. The highest marks can be found as:

Find the total marks
Find the max. marks
Find the names of student whose total is the set of maximum marks.

Q55. ................ & .................. currently relies on the logon security

present in the Web Server.
Ans. Sybase and Informix

Q56. For user Authentication, Microsoft provides its ....................

mechanism.
Ans. Tried-and-true challenge/response .

Q57. What is multilevel Sensitive Database?

Ans. The database with more than one i.e., various levels of security.

Q58. Name the different techniques for multilevel security.

Ans. i) Partitioning
ii) Encryption

Q59. .................... while providing SSL & S-HTTP security, its using
java as a basic component of its security model.
Ans. Oracle

Q60. What is Audit trail? Give four benefits provided by Audit trail to
DBMS. [June-07, Q5(b)]
Ans. An audit trail tracks and reports activities around confidential data. Many
companies have not realised the potential amount or risk associated with
sensitive information within database unless they run an internal audit which
details who has access to sensitive data and have assessed it. Consider the
situation that a DBA who has complete control of database information may
conduct a security breach, with respect to business details and financial
information. This will cause tremendous loss to the company.

(1) In such a situation database audit helps in locating the source of the problem.
The database audit process involves a review of log files to find and examine
all reads and writes to database items during a specific time period, to ascertain
mischief if any, banking database is one such database which contains very
104 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

critical data and should have the security feature of auditing.

(2) An audit trail is a log that is used for the purpose of security auditing
(3) Database auditing is one of the essential requirements for security especially,
for companies in possession of critical data. Such companies should define
their auditing strategy based on their knowledge of the application or databases
activity. Auditing need not be of the type “all or nothing.
(4) One must do intelligent auditing to save time and reduce performance
concerns. This also limits the volume of logs and also causes more critical
security events to be highlighted.

Q61. What do you mean by Multilevel Security? Discuss the techniques

involved in support of multilevel security. [June-07, Q5(c)]
Ans. In certain applications data items can be classified under various levels
of security. Some such security levels may be Secret, Classified, etc. The
database system that supports such security features are known as Multilevel
Sensitive Databases. Such systems may have the following three security
features:

• Security of different objects may be different from the other attribute values
of that tuple or security may be different from the other values of the attributes.
• Thus, every individual element is the micro items for security.
• In addition, security against statistical queries may also need to be provided.
• A number of security level needs to be defined for such security.
There are many techniques to support multi-level security. Two important
methods are:

(i) Partitioning
In this approach the original database is divided into partitions. Each of the
partitions has a different level of security.
However, the major drawback of this approach is that the database looses the
advantage of a relation.

(ii) Encryption
Encryption of critical information may help in maintaining security as a user
who accidentally receives them cannot interpret the data. Such a scheme may
be used when a user password file is implemented in the database design.
However, the simple encryption algorithms are not secure, also since data is
available in the database it may also be obtained in response to a query.
MCS-043 GPH Book 105

There are may more schemes to handle such multi-level database security.

Q62. An airline reservation allows many customers to book tickets

simultaneously. What are the basic concurrency related problems that
you may encounter, in case no concurrency control mechanism is in
place? What is the solution proposed by you to overcome the concurrency
related problem as above?
Ans. In airline reservation system a number of transactions are running and
accessing the database. Transactions are reading and modifying data item
concurrently. In this environment we will have to tackle following problems:
(1) Lost update problem :- Consider a transaction T1 changes availability of
seats initially 30 to 29. Below 30 seats tariff changes T2 reserves two more
seats with the changed tariff. Assume T2 runs earlier than T1 than T2 will
change the tariff and T1 will lose it’s advantage.
(2) inconsistent read problem :- Arises when only one transaction modifies
a set of data while that set of data is being used by other transactions. Consider
transaction T1 change available seats to a level where tariff changes while T2
calculate the tariff. It means while T1 has changed the available seats still T2 is
showing old tariff, creating confusion.
(3) The phantom phenomenon :- This problem arises when a transactions
is using a record from a table. That particular record is locked but table is not
locked it means another transaction T2 may add new records to the table that
will tell a lie about the factor stated by T1 There new records will be called a
phantom records.

Now the solutions to these problems can be concurrency control mechanisms.

These mechanisms can be broadly categorized into two categories.
(i) Locking
(ii) Time-stamping
Locking : Is a concurrency control mechanism which locks the data item to
prevent multiple transactions from accessing the item concurrently. A lock is
a variable associated with each data item that describes the status (busy or
free) with respect to possible operations that can be applied to it.
In time stamp based methods, a serial order is created among the concurrent
transactions by assigning to each transaction a unique non-decreasing number.
The usual value assigned to each transaction is the system clock value at the
start of the transaction, hence the name time stamp ordering.
The value can then be used in deciding the order in which the conflict between
106 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

two transactions in resolved. A transaction with a smaller time-stamp value is

considered to be an ‘order’ transaction than another transaction with a larger
time-stamp value.

Q63. Design a database security scheme for a library issue and return
system.
(Hint: you may define security levels for database access and external
schema)
Ans. A library issue & return system will issue the books to the valid members
& also take return of the books.
Here this system will keep information about members. Their renewals, number
of books, due date of return etc.
The security mechanism is needed for such database system so that any invalid
member could not take the book.
Besides any member whose membership needs to be renewed could not take
the books. Issued books should be returned on due dates and if they are kept
after the due date of return by the members, then fine should be charged.

The database security mechanisms can be divided into two categories :-

(i) Discretionary Security Mechanisms used to grant privileges to users including
the capability to access specific datafiles records in a specified mode such as
read, insert, delete, update.
(ii) Mandatory Security Mechanisms are used to enforce multilevel security
by classifying data & users into various security classes. Typical security
classes are:
• TS (Top Secret)
• Secret (S)
• Confidential (C)
• Unclassified (U)
Besides the above security classes, four levels of defence are generally
recognized for database security :
(a) Human Factors
(b) Physical Security
(c) Administrative Control
(d) DBMS & O/S Security Mechanisms

(a) Human Factors : It encompasses ethical, legal and social environments.

An organization depends on these factors to provide a certain degree of
MCS-043 GPH Book 107

protection. An organization usually performs some type of clearance procedure

for a personal who is going to be dealing with the sensitive information, including
that contained in the database. This clearence procedure can be very informal
one, in the form of reliability & trust that an employee has entered in the eye of
management or the clearence procedure could be formal one.
(b) Physical Security : Physical Security mechanisms include appropriate
locks & keys and entry logs to computing facility & terminals.
(c) Administrative Control : Administrative control includes security and
access control policies that determine what information will be accessible to
what class of users & the type of access that will be allowed to this class.
(d) DBMS & O/S Security Mechanisms : The database depends upon some
of the protection features of the O/S for security. Among the O/S features
required are:-

The proper mechanisms for the identification and verification of users

Each user is assigned an account number and a password. The O/S ensures
that access to the system is denied unless the account number and password
are valid. In addition, the DBMS could also require a number & password
before allowing the users to perform any database operations.
The protection of data & program both in primary & secondary memories
This is usually done by the O/S to avoid direct access to the data in primary
memory or to online files.

Q64. What is a distributed database management system? What are

four advantages and two disadvantages of a DDBMS? Why must a
distributed database system be relational?
Ans. A distributed database is a database that is under the control of a
central database management system in which storage devices are not all
attached to a common CPU. It may be stored in multiple computers located in
the same physical location, or may be dispersed over a network of
interconnected computers.
Collections of data (e.g.: in a database) can be distributed across multiple
physical locations. A distributed database is distributed into separate partitions
/ fragments. Each partition / fragment of a distributed database may be replicated
(i.e.: redundant fallovers, RAID like). Besides distributed database replication
and fragmentation, there are many other distributed database design technologies.
For example, local autonomy, synchronous and asynchronous distributed
database technologies. These technologies’ implementation can and does
108 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

definitely depend on the needs of the business and the sensitivity/confidentiality

of the data to be stored in the database. And hence the price the business is
willing to spend on ensuring data security, consistency and integrity.

Site 4 Site 1

DB Communications DB
Network

Site 3 Site 2

DB DB

Distributed database Architecture

Advantages of distributed databases:

• Reflects organizational structure – Database fragments are located in the
departments they relate to.
• Local autonomy – A department can control the data about them (as they
are the ones familiar with it.)
• Improved availability – A fault in one database system will only affect one
fragment, instead of the entire database.
• Improved performance – Data is located near the site of greatest demand,
and the database systems themselves are parallellized, allowing load on the
databases to be balanced among servers. (A high load on one module of the
database won’t affect other modules of the database in a distributed database.)
• Economics – It costs less to create a network of smaller computers with
the power of a single large computer.
• Modularity – Systems can be modified, added and removed from the
distributed database without affecting other modules (systems).

Disadvantages of distributed databases :

• Complexity – Extra work must be done by the DBA’s to ensure that the
distributed nature of the system is transparent. Extra work must also be done
to maintain multiple disparate systems, instead of one big one. Extra database
design work must also be done to account for the disconnected nature of the
database – for example, joins become prohibitively expensive when performed
MCS-043 GPH Book 109

across multiple systems.

• Economics – Increased complexity and a more extensive infrastructure
means extra labour costs.
• Security – Remote database fragments must be secured, and they are not
centralized so the remote sites must be secured as well. The infrastructure
must also be secured (e.g.: by encrypting the network links between remote
sites).
• Difficult to maintain integrity – In a distributed database enforcing integrity
over a network may require too much networking resources to be feasible.
• Inexperience – Distributed databases are difficult to work with, and as a
young field there is not much readily available experience on proper practice.

Q65. How does the architecture of DDBMS differ from that of a centralised
DBMS?
Ans. Reference architecture shows data distribution, which is an extension of
the ANSI/SPARC three level architecture for a centralised DBMS. The reference
architecture consists of the following :
• A set of global external schemas to describe the external view for the entire
DBMS,
• A global conceptual schema containing the definition of entities, relationships,
constraints and security and integrity information for the entire system,
• A fragmentation and allocation schema, and
• A set of schemas for each local DBMS a per ANSI/SPARC architecture.

Q66. What additional functions does a Distributed Database System

have over a centralised database system.
Ans. (i) Access to remote sites, transfer of queries and data through a network,
(ii) A System catalogue for a distributed system having data distribution details,
(iii) Distributed query processing including query optimisation and remote
data access,
(iv) Concurrency control to maintain consistency of replicated sites,
(v) Proper security control for proper authorization/access privileges of the
distributed data, and
(vi) Recovery services to check the failures of individual sites and
communication links.

Q67. List the basic objectives of concurrency control mechanism in a

distributed database.
110 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Ans. The basic objectivs of concurrency control mechanism in a distributed

database are :
(1) to ensure that various data items and their replications are in a consistent
state, when concurrent transactions are going on at the same time, and
(2) to ensure that all the concurrent transactions get completed in finite time.
The objectives as above should be fulfilled by the concurrency control
mechanism under the following:
- failure of a site or communication link,
- strict performance guidelines supporting parallelism of queries, and minimal
storage and computational overheads, and
- dealing with the communication delays of the networked environment.
Despite the above considerations it should support atomicity.

Q68. Discuss the problem faced by distributed database system.

Ans. A distributed database system has to deal with the following two types of
problems that occur due to distributed concurrent transactions:
- Concurrent transactions related problems that occur in a centralised database,
(namely, lost updates, read uncommitted and inconsistent analysis).
- In addition, concurrency related problems arise due to data distribution and
replication. For example, the need to update a data item that is located at
multiple locations. Such data item require to be updated at all the locations or
on none at all.

Q69. Why can we not detect deadlocks in a distributed database with a

simple wait for graph?
Ans. Same set of transactions at different sites may have locked certain
resources for which they may be waiting although locally it may seem that T1
is waiting for T2 on site 1 and T2 is waiting for T1 at site 2, but only on
combining these two we know that both transactions cannot proceed. Hence,
a deadlock occurs.

Q70 What are the issues of query processing in a distributed database?

Ans. A query may be answered by more than one site, in such a case, we
would, require that the communication cost among sites should be minimum.
You may do data processing at the participant this communication cost.

Q71. What are the serialisability requirements for a distributed database?

Ans. If transaction are distributed at different sites then they should be executed
MCS-043 GPH Book 111

in exactly the same sequence at all the sites.

Q72. Define 2PC.

Ans. In a DDBMS since a transaction is being executed at more than one site,
the commit protocol may be divided into two phases. The basic objective of
this two-phase commit protocol is to make sure that a transaction and all its
sub-transactions commit together or do not commit at all. A two-phase commit
protocol ensures integrity and handles remote prcedure calls and triggers.
A 2PC consists of two phases :
- voting phase and
- decision phase.
For each transaction, there is a coordinator who controls the 2 PC. The sub-
transasction sites act as participants. The logical steps of 2PC are :
- coordinator asks its participants whether they are prepared to commit the
transaction, or not.
- participants may votes to commit, abort or fail to respond within a time-out
period,
- the coordinator makes a decision to commit if all participants say commit or
abort even if one participant says so or, even if, one of the participant does not
respond.
- global decision is communicated to all the participants.
- if a participant votes to abort, then it is free to abort the transaction immediately
as the result of this voting will definitely be abort. This is known as a unilateral
abort,
- if a participant votes to commit, then it waits for the coordinator to send the
global commit or global abort message,
- each participant maintains its local log so that it can commit or rollback the
local sub-transaction reliably. In 2PC participants wait for messages from
other sites, thus, unnecessarily blocking the participating processes, even
though a system of timeouts is used.

Q73. Discuss the need for 3PC. Also define 2PC.

Ans. The 2PC is a good protocol to be implemented in a DDBMS. However,
it has a small disadvantage-it can block participants in certain circumstances.
For example, processes that encounter a timeout after voting COMMIT, but
before receiving the global commit or abort message from the coordinator, are
waiting for the message and doing nothing or in other words are blocked.
Practically, the probability of blocking is very low for most existing 2PC
112 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

implementations. Yet an alternative non-blocking protocol- the three-phase

commit (3PC) protocol exits. This protocol does not block the participants
on site failures, except for the case when all sites fail. Thus, the basic conditions
that this protocol requires are :
- no network partitioning,
- at least one available site,
- at most K failed sites (called K-resilient).
Thus, the basic objective of the 3PC is to remove the blocking period for the
participants who have voted COMMIT, and are thus, waiting for the global
abort/commit message from the coordinator. This objective is met by the 3PC
by adding another phase-the third phase. This phase called pre-commit is
introduced between the voting phase and the global decision phase.
If a coordinator receives all the commit votes from the participants, it issues a
global PRE-COMMIT message for the participants. A participant on receiving
the global pre commit message knows that this transaction is going to commit
definitely.
The coordinator on receiving the acknowledgement of PRE-COMMIT message
from all the participants issues the global COMMIT. A Global ABORT is still
handled the same way as that of in 2PC.

Q74. Why do we need replication servers?

Ans. We need replication servers because they help in:
• High availability
• Low communication overheads due to local data availability,
• Disaster recovery, and
• Distribution of functions of a system across organisation, etc.

Q75. What are the steps of two phase commit protocol?

Ans.
COORDINATOR PARTICIPANTS
Prepare Listen to Coordinator
Wait for vote Vote
Collect vote if all COMMIT Wait for Global Decision
Send Global COMMIT and ABORT Receive decision acts accordingly
to all participant and send acknowledgement
Waits for acknowledgement from all TRANSACTION OVER
participant
TRANSACTION OVER
Chapter-6
ENHANCED DATABASE MODELS

Q1. What are Object Oriented Design (OOD) techniques? Explain the
OOD process.
Ans. OOD techniques are useful for development of large, complex systems.
It has been observed that large projects developed using OOD techniques
resulted in a 30% reduction in development times and a 20% reduction in
development staff effort, as compared to similarly sized projects using traditional
software development techniques.
Although object oriented methods have roots that are strongly anchored back
in the 60s, structured and functional methods were the first to be used. This is
not very uncommon, since functional methods are inspired directly by computer
architecture (a proven domain, well known to computer scientists). The
separation of data and program as exists physically in the hardware was
translated into functional methods. This is the reason why computer scientists
got into the habit of thinking in terms of system functions. Later it was felt
that hardware should act as the servant of the software that is executed on it
rather than imposing architectural constraints on system development process.
Moving from a functional approach to an object oriented one requires a
translation of the functional model elements into object model elements, which
is far from being straightforward or natural. Indeed, there is no direct
relationship between the two sets, and it is, therefore, necessary to break the
model elements from one approach in order to create model element fragments
that can be used by the other. In the initial phases of OO design a mixed
approach was followed computer scientist tend to use functional approach in
analysis phase and OO approach in design phase. The combination of a functional
approach for analysis and an object-oriented approach for design and
implementation does not need to exist today, as modern object-oriented methods
cover the full software lifecycle.

An object-oriented design process :

1. Define the context and modes of use of the system
114 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

2. Designs the system architecture

3. Identifies the principal system objects
4. Identifies concurrency in the problem
5. Handling boundary conditions
6. Develops design models
7. Specifies object interfaces

Object oriented design is concerned with developing OO model of software

systems to implement the identified requirement during the analysis phase.

System Object
Requirements Analysis Design Design Implementation Testing

Problem Solution Source

Use Case Sub Code Test cases
Model Domain System Domain
Objects Object in OO
Language

Software life cycle activity

Software developers, data base administrators (DBAs), need to be familiar
with the basic concepts of object-orientation. The object-oriented (OO)
paradigm is a development strategy based on the concept that systems should
be built from a collection of reusable components called objects. Instead of
separating data and functionality as is done in the structured paradigm, objects
encompass both. While the object oriented paradigm sounds similar to the
structured paradigm, as you will see in this course material it is actually quite
different. A common mistake that many experienced developers make is to
applying similar software-engineering principles to OO design. To succeed
one must recognize that the OO approach is different than the structured
approach.

Q2. Differentiate between Relational DB and OO Databases.

Ans.
MCS-043 GPH Book 115

Relational Databases Object-Oriented Databases

(1) Based on mathematical principles (1) Supports all fundamental object
called relational algebra. modeling concepts: Classes, Attributes,
Methods, Associations, Inheritance
(2) Data are represented by a two (2) Support for complex objects
dimensional table with columns and rows
(3) Implements standard query language (3) Provides for mapping an object
called SQL model to an OO-database
(4) Most RDBMS supports various (4) Determine which objects are persistent
constraints, like referential integrity. (5) Perform normal requirement
analysis and object design
(6) Create single attribute indices to
reduce performance bottlenecks.

Q3. Give advantages and disadvantages of OO Database.

Ans.
Advantages of OO Database Disadvantages OO Database
(1) Supports all fundamental object (1) Strong opposition from the
modeling concepts like Classes, established players of relational
Attributes, Methods, Associations, database.
Inheritance. (2) Lacks rigorous theoretical
(2) Maps an object model to an OO- foundation.
databases. (3) Retrogressive to the old pointer
(3) Determine which objects are systems.
Persistent (4) Lacks standard ad hoc query
(4) Performs normal requirement language like SQL.
analysis and object design (5) Lack of standards affects OO
(5) Creates single attribute indices to database design
reduce performance bottlenecks. (6) Lack of business data design
(6) Supports complex objects. and management tools
(7) Extensibility of data types. (7) Steep learning curve.
(8) Improves performance with
efficient caching.
(9) Versioning
(10) Faster development and easy
maintenance through inheritance and
reusability.

Q4. What is the need for object – oriented databases?

Ans. The object oriented databases are needed for:
• Representing complex types.
• Representing inheritance, polymorphism
• Representing highly interrelated information
116 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

• Providing object oriented solution to databases bringing them closer to OOP.

Q5. Represent and address using SQL that has a method for locating
pin-code information.
Ans. CREATE TYPE Addrtype As
houseNo CHAR (8),
street CHAR (10),
colony CHAR (10),
state CHAR (8),
pincode CHAR (6),
);
METHOD pin ( ) RETURNS CHAR (6);
CREATE METHOD pin ( ) RETURNS CHAR (6);
FOR Addrtype
BEGIN
. . . . .
END

Q6. How will you represent a complex data type?

Ans. Primarily by representing it as a single attribute. All its components should
also be referenced separately.

Q7. How can you establish a relationship with multiple tables?

Ans. The relationship can be established with multiple tables by specifying the
keyword “SCOPE. For example:
Create table my library
{
mybook REF (Book) SCOPE library;
myStudent REF (Student) SCOPE student;
mySupplier REF (Supplier) SCOPE supplier;
};

Q8. Create a table using the type created in question 3 above.

Ans. CRATE TABLE address OF Addrtype
(
REF IS added SYSTEM GENERATED,
PRIMARY KEY (houseNo, pincode)
};
MCS-043 GPH Book 117

Q9. List the major considerations while converting ODL designs into
relational designs.
Ans. The major considerations while converting ODL designs into relational
designs are as follows :
(a) It is not essential to declare keys for a class in ODL but in Relational design
now attributes have to be created in order for it to work as a key.
(b) Attributes in ODL could be declared as non-atomic whereas, in Relational
design, they have to be converted into atomic attributes.
(c) Methods could be part of design in ODL but, they can not be directly
converted into relational schema although, the SQL supports it, as it is not the
property of a relational schema.
(d) Relationships are defined in inverse pairs for ODL but, in case of relational
design, only one pair is defined.
For example, for the book class schema the relation is :
Book (ISBNNO, TITLE, CATEGORY, fauthor, sauthor, tauthor)
Thus, the ODL has been created with the features required to create an object
oriented database in OODBMS.

Q10. What is OQL?

Ans. Object Query Language (OQL) is a standard query language which takes
high-level, declarative programming of SQL and object-oriented features of
OOPs.

Q11. Create a class staff using ODL that also in the Book class which is
given below
class Book
{
attribute string ISBNNO;
attribute string TITLE;
attribute enum CATEGORY
{text, reference, journal} BOOKTYPE;
attribute struct AUTHORS
{string fauthor, string sauthor, string tauthor}
AUTHORLIST;
};
Ans. class staff
{
attribute string STAFF_ID;
118 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

attribute string STAFF_NAME;

attribute string DESIGNATION;
relationship set <Book> issues
inverse Book : : issuedto;
};

Q12. Find the list of books that have been issued to “Dinesh”.
Ans. SELECT DISTINCT b.TITLE
FROM BOOK b
WHERE b.issuedto.NAME = “Dinesh”

Q13. What modifications would be needed in the Book class because of

the table created by the above query?
Ans. The Book class needs to represent the relationship that is with the staff
class.
This would be added to it by using the following commands:
RELATIONSHIP SET < Staff > issuedto
INVERSE :: issue Staff

Q14. What is persistency? Explain with an example, how persistent data

are identified.
Ans. All computer programs operate on data. If you require data that persists
beyond the lifetime of a single program execution, then you will need to use a
permanent data store. There are various reasons for waiting persistent data:
• Persistent data allows the same program to resume processing at a later
data.
• Data stores are often useful for historical or archival purposes.
• There are several approaches of providing past steno data services: Files,
special purpose hardware some new object oriented data bases are especially
convenient in their data storage services. To a large extent, such as advanced
object oriented data bases looks like an object oriented language, except that
the orthogonal property of persistence may be specified for data structures.

Example:
define class department:
type set (department);
operations add dept (d: department): boolean;
/* adds a department to the department set object */
MCS-043 GPH Book 119

remove _ dept (d: department): boolean;

/* removes a department from the department set object */
create _ dept _ set: department set;
destroy_dept_set: boolean;
end department set
……….
persistent name All departments: Departments;

/*All departments is a persistent named object of type department set */

d:= create_dept;
….. /* create a new department object in variable d */
b:= All departments.add_dept(d);
/* make d: persistent by adding it to the persistent set all department */
……….

Q15. What is XML?

Ans. XML stands for Extensible Markup language. It is used to describe
documents and data in standardised, text-based format, easily transportable
via standard Internet protocols, XML, is based on the mother of all markup
languages-Standard Generalised Markup Language (SGML).
SGML is remarkable inspiration and basis for all modern markup languages.
The first popular adaptation in SGML was HTML, primarily designed as a
common language for sharing technical documents. The advent of the Internet
facilitated document exchange, but not document display. Hypertext Markup
Language (HTML) standardises the description of document layout and display,
and is an integral part of every Web site today.

Although SGML was a good format for document sharing, and HTML was a
good language for describing the document layout in a standardised way,
there was no standardised way of describing and sharing data that was stored
in the document. For example, an HTML page might have a body that contains
a listing of today's share prices. HTML can structure the data using tables,
colour etc., once they are rendered as HTML; they no longer are individual
pieces of data to extract the top ten shares. You may have to do a lot of
processing.

Thus, there was a need for a tag-based markup language standard that could
describe data more effectively than HTML, while still using the very popular
120 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

and standardised HTTP over the Internet. Therefore, in 1998 the World Wide
Web Consortium (W3C) came up with the first Extensible Markup Language
(XML) Recommendations. Now, the XML (eXtended Markup Language) has
emerged as the standard for structuring and exchanging data over the Web.

Please note : XML is case sensitive whereas HTML is not. So, you may see
that XML and databases have something in common.

Q16. Define DTD.

Ans. A DTD is used to define the syntax and grammar of a document, that is,
it defines the meaning of the document elements. XML defines a set of key
words, rules, data types, etc to define the permissible structure of XML
documents. In other words, we can say that you use the DTD grammar to
define the grammar of your XML documents. The form of DTD is :
<! DOCTYPE name >
Or
<! DOCTYPE name [a_dtd_definition_or_declaration]>
The name, while not necessarily the document name, must be the same name
as that of the document root node.
The second point of interest with DOCTYPE is that after the name you can
declare your Document Type Definition (DTD), the assembling instruction
for the document.

Q17. What is semi-structured data?

Ans. Semi-structured data is that has some structure, but the structure may
not be rigid, regular or complete and generally the data does not conform to a
fixed schema. Sometimes the term schema-less or self-describing is used to
describe such data.

Q18. What is XML? How does XML compare to SGML and HTML?
Ans. Most document on Web are currently stored and transmitted in HTML.
One strength of HTML is its simplicity. However, it may be one of its weaknesses
with the growing needs of users who want HTML document to be more
attractive and dynamic. XML is a restricted version of SGML, designed
especially for Web documents. SGML defines the structure of the document
(DTD), and text separately. By giving documents a separately defined structure,
and by giving web page designers ability to define custom structures, SGML
has and provides extremely powerful document management system but has
MCS-043 GPH Book 121

not been widely accepted as it is very complex. XML attempts to provide a

similar function to SGML, but is less complex. XML retains the key SGML
advantages of extensibility, structure, and validation. XML cannot replace HTML.

Q19. Why is XML case sensitive, whereas SGML and HTML are not?
Ans. XML is designed to work with applications that might not be case sensitive
and in which the case folding (the conversion to just one case) cannot be
predicted. Thus, to avoid making unsafe assumptions, XML takes the safest
route and opts for case sensitivity.

Q20. Why is it possible to define your own tags in XML but not in HTML?
Ans. In HTML, the tags tell the browser what to do to the text between them.
When a tag is encountered, the browser interprets it and displays the text in
the proper form. If the browser does not understand a tag, it ignores it. In
XML, the interpretation of tags is not the responsibility of the browser. It is
the programmer who defines the tags through DTD or Schema.

Q21. Is it easier to process XML than HTML?

Ans. Yes, for two reasons. The first is that you normally model your data
better with XML than with HTML. You can capture the hierarchical structure
giving meaning to your information. The second reason is that XML files are
well formed. You have a much better idea what comes in the data stream.
HTML files, on the other hand, can take many forms and appearances.

Q22. Discuss the advantages of XML?

Ans.
1. Simplicity
2. Open standard and platform/vendor-independent
3. Extensibility
4. Reuse
5. Separation of content and presentation
6. Improved load balancing
7. Support for integration of data from multiple sources
8. Ability to describe data from a wide variety of applications.

Q23. Which three attributes can appear in an XML declaration?

Ans. The attributes you can use in an XML document are: version (required;
the XML version), encoding (optional; the character encoding), and standalone
122 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

(optional; “yes” if the document does not refer to any external document or
entities, “no” otherwise).

Q24. What is an XML element? What is an XML attribute?

Ans. An XML element is the basic data-holding construct in an XML document.
It starts with an opening tag, can contain text or other elements, and ends with
a closing tag, like this: <greeting> hi </greeting>. An attribute gives you more
information, and is always assigned a value in XML. Here’s how you might
add an attribute named language to this element:
<greeting language= “en”>hi</greeting>.

Q25. What are two XML constructs that let you specify an XML
document’s syntax so that it can be checked for validity?
Ans. Document Type Definitions (DTDs) and XML schemas.

Q26. What are some of the requirements for an XML document to be

well-formed?
Ans. 1. An XML document must contain one or more elements.
2. One element, the root element, must contain all the other elements.
3. Each element must nest inside any enclosing elements correctly.

Q27. What is the difference between a well formed XML document and
a valid XML Document?
Ans. XML document that conforms to structural and notational rules of XML
is considered well-formed. XML Validating processor checks that an XML
document is well-formed and conforms to a DTD, in which case the XML
document is considered valid. A well formed xml document may not be a valid
document.

Q28. Why is the following XML document not well-formed?

<?xml version = “.10” standalone = “yes”?>
<employee>
<name> dinesh </name>
<position> Professor</position>
</employee>
<employee>
<name> vikas </name>
<position> Clerk </position>
MCS-043 GPH Book 123

</employee>
Ans. In a well-formed XML document, there must be one root element that
contains all the others.

Q29. Where do you see problem with this XML document?

<?xml version = “1.0” encoding= “UTF-8” standalone= “yes”?>
<!DOCTYPE document[
<!ELEMENT document (employee)*>
<!ELEMENT employee (name, hiredate)>
<!ELEMENT NAME (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT hiredate (#PCDATA)>]>
<document>
<employee>
<hiredate>February 25, 2008</hiredate>
<name>
Sanya Mittal
</name>
</employee>
</document>
Ans. The <hiredate> and <name> elements appear in the wrong order.

Q30. What’s wrong with this XML document?

<?xml version= “1.0” encoding= “UTF-8” standlone= “yes”?>
<!DOCTYPE document[
<!ELEMENT document (employee)*>
<!ELEMENT employee (hiredate, name)>]>
<document>
<employee>
<hiredate>February 25, 2008</hiredate>
<name>
Sanya Mittal
</name>
</employee>
</document>
Ans. The <hiredate> and <name> elements are not declared in the DTD.

Q31. Describe the differences between DTD and the XML Schema?
Ans.
124 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

1. It is written in a different (non-XML) syntax;

2. It has no support for namespaces;
3. It only offers extremely limited data typing.

Q32. How can you use an XML schema to declare an element called
<name> that holds text content?
Ans. You can declare the element like this:
<xsd:element name = “name” type= “xsd:string”/>

Q33. Which namespace uses XML schemas?

Ans. The namespace that is used by XML schemas is www.w3.org/2001/
XMLSchema.

Q34. What is XSL Transformation (XSLT)?

Ans. XML Stylesheet Language (XML) is specifically used to define how an
XML document’s data is rendered and to define how on XML document can
be transformed into another document. XSLT, A subset of XSL, is a language
in both the markup and programming sense, providing a mechanism to
transform XML structure into either another XML structure, HTML, or any
number of other text-based formats (such as SQL). XSLT’s main ability is to
change the underlying structures rather than simply the media representations
of those structures, as with Cascading Style Sheet (CSS).

Q35. What is the difference between DOM & SAX APIs?

Ans. Document Object Model (DOM) & Simple API for XML (SAX) are two
popular models to interpret an XML document programmatically. DOM
(Document Object Mode) is a tree-based API that provides object-oriented
view of data. It describes a set of platform and language-neutral interfaces
that can represent any well-formed XML/HTML document. While SAX is an
event based, serial-access API for XML that uses callbacks to report parsing
events to the application. Unlike tree-based APIs do not build an in memory
tree representation of the XML document.

Q36. What is the difference between X path & X link?

Ans. X Path is declarative query language for XML that provides a simple
syntax for addressing parts of an XML document. It is designed for use with
XSLT (for pattern matching). With X Path, collections of elements can be
retrieved by specifying a directory-like path, with zero or more conditions
MCS-043 GPH Book 125

placed on the path. While X Link allows elements to be inserted into XML
Documents to create and describe links between resources. It uses XML
syntax to create structures that can describe links similar to simple unidirectional
hyperlinks of HTML as well as more sophisticated links.

Q37. How can you store an XML document in any relational database?
Ans. 1. XML data can be stored as strings in a relational database.
2. Relations can represent XML data as tree.
3. XML data can be mapped to relations in the same way that E-R schemes are
mapped to relational schemas.

Q38. What is XQuery?

Ans. Data extraction, transformation, and integration are well-understood
database issues that rely on a query language. SQL does not apply directly to
XML because of the irregularity of XML data. W3C recently formed an XML
Query Working Group to produce a data model for XML documents, set of
query operators on this model, and query language based on query operators.
Queries operate on single documents or fixed collections of documents, and
can select entire documents or subtrees of documents that match conditions
based on document content/structure. Queries can also construct new
documents based on what has been selected.

Introducing to Data Warehousing

Q39. Describe the architecture of Datawarehouse with the help of a

block diagram. Briefly discuss the role of each component of the
datawarehouse architecture. [June-07, Q2(b)]
Ans. A data warehouse is defined as subject-oriented, integrated, nonvolatile,
time–variant collection.

The Basic Components of a Data Warehouse

A data warehouse basically consists of three components:
The Data Sources
The ETL and
The Schema of data warehouse including meta data.

Figure defines the basic architecture of a data warehouse. The analytical reports
are not a part of the data warehouse but are one of the major business application
126 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

areas including OLAP and DSS.

The Data Warehouse

Data Reports
The ETL Process
Sources
The data of
Extraction: Data
Databases of Data Cleaning
the organisation Warehouse
Data Profiling
at various sites Transformation: The Reports are
Data generated using the
Aggregating Warehouse
Data in Filtering query and analysis
Worksheet, XML Schema along tools
Joining with meta
format Sorting data
Loading:
Data in EEP loading data in (The data can
and other data the data be used for
resources warehouse analysis)
schema

Figure : The Data Warehouse Architecture

The data Sources

The data of the data warehouse can be obtained from many operational systems.
A data warehouse interacts with the environment that provides most of the
source data for the warehouse. By the term environment, we mean, traditionally
developed applications. In a large installation, hundreds or even thousands of
these database systems or files based system exist with plenty of redundant
data.
The warehouse database obtains most of its data from such different forms of
legacy systems – files and databases. Data may also be sourced from external
sources as well as other organisational systems, for example, an office system.
This data needs to be integrated into the warehouse.

Data of Data Warehouse

A data warehouse has an integrated, “subject-oriented”, “time-variant” and
“non-volatile” collection of data. The basic characteristics of the data of a data
warehouse can be described in the following way:
(i) Integration : Integration means bringing together data of multiple, dissimilar
operational sources on the basis of an enterprise data model. The enterprise
data model can be a basic template that identifies and defines the organisation’s
MCS-043 GPH Book 127

key data items uniquely. It also identifies the logical relationships between
them ensuring organisation wide consistency in terms of:

Data naming and definition: Standardizing for example, on the naming of

“student enrolment number” across systems.
Encoding structures : Standardizing on gender to be represented by “M” for
male and “F” for female or that the first two digit of enrolment number would
represent the year of admission.
Measurement of variables: A Standard is adopted for data relating to some
measurements, for example, all the units will be expressed in metric system or
all monetary details will be given in Indian Rupees.

(ii) Subject Orientation : The second characteristic of the data warehouse’s

data is that its design and structure can be oriented to important objects of the
organisation. These object such as STUDENT, PROGRAMME, REGIONAL
CENTERS etc., are in contrast to its operational systems, which may be
designed around applications and functions such as ADMISSION,
EXAMINATION and RESULT DECLARATIONS (in the case of a University).

Operational Data Data Warehouse:

Application Oriented Subject Oriented

Admission Student

Examination Programme

Results Regional Centre

Operations system data orientation vs. Data warehouse data orientation

128 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

(iii) Time-Variance : The third defining characteristic of the database of data

warehouse is that it is time-variant, or historical in nature. The entire data in
the data warehouse is/was accurate at some point of time. This is, in contrast
with operational data that changes over a shorter time period. The data
warehouse’s constrains data that is data-stamped, and which is historical data.

(iv) Non–volatility (static nature) of data : Data warehouse data is loaded

on to the data warehouse database and is subsequently scanned and used, but
is not updated in the same classical sense as operational system’s data which
is updated through the transaction processing cycles.

Decision Support and Analysis Tools

A data warehouse may support many OLAP and DSS tools. Such decision
support applications would typically access the data warehouse database
through a standard query language protocol; an example of such a language
may be SQL. These applications may be of three categories: simple query and
reporting, decision support systems and executive information systems.

The meta data directory component defines the repository of the information
stored in the data warehouse. The meta data can be used by the general users
as well as data administrators. It contains the following information.

(i) the structure of the contents of the data warehouse database,

(ii) the source of the data,
(iii) the data transformation processing requirements, such that, data can be
passed from the legacy systems into the data warehouse database,
(iv) the process summarization of data,
(v) the data extraction history, and
(vi) how the data needs to be extracted from the data warehouse.

The first step in data warehousing is, to perform data extraction, transformation,
and loading of data into the data warehouse. This is called ETL that is Extraction,
Transformation, and Loading. ETL refers to the methods involved in accessing
and manipulation data available in various sources and loading it into a target
data warehouse. Initially the ETL was performed using SQL programs,
however, now there are tools available for ETL processes. The manual ETL
was complex as it required the creation of a complex code for extracting data
from many sources. ETL tools are very powerful and offer many advantages
MCS-043 GPH Book 129

over the manual ETL. ETL is a step-by-step process. As a first step, it maps
the data structure of a source system to the structure in the target data
warehousing system. In the second step, it cleans up the data using the process
of data transformation and finally, if loads the data into the target system.

Q40. List some uses of data warehousing in Banking, Airline, Hospital

and Investment & Insurance.
Ans. (1) Banking - Creating new schemes for loans and other banking products,
helps in operations, identities information for marketing.
Strategic Uses : Finding trends for customer service, service promotions,
reduction of expenses.

(2) Airline : Operations, marketing

Strategic Uses : Crew assignment, aircraft maintenance plans, fare
determination, analysis of route profitability, frequent-flyer program design.

(3) Hospital : Operation optimisation

Reduction of operational expenses, scheduling of resources.

(4) Investment and Insurance : Insurance product development, marketing

Risk management, financial market analysis, customer tendencies analysis,
portfolio management.

Q41. List the advantages and characteristics of data warehouses.

Ans. 1) It provides historical information that can be used in many different
forms of comparative and competitive analysis.
2) It enhances the quality of the data and tries to make it complete.
3) It can help in supporting disaster recovery although not alone but with
other backup resources.

Characteristics of Data Warehouses : Data warehouses have the following

important features :
(1) Multidimensional conceptual view : A data warehouse contains data of
many operational systems, thus, instead of a simple table it can be represented
in multidimensional data form also.
(2) Unlimited dimensions and unrestricted cross-dimensional operations:
Since the data is available in multidimensional form, it requires a schema that
is different from the relational schema.
130 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

(3) Dynamic sparse matrix handling : This is a feature that is much needed
as it contains huge amount of data.
(4) Client/server architecture : This feature helps a data warehouse to be
accessed in a controlled environment by multiple users.
(5) Accessibility and transparency, intuitive data manipulation and
consistent reporting performance : This is one of the major features of the
data warehouse. A data warehouse contains, huge amounts of data, however,
that should not be the reason for bad performance or bad user interfaces.
Since the objectives of data warehouse are clear, therefore, it has to support
the following easy to use interfaces, strong data manipulation, support for
applying and reporting of various analyses and user-friendly output.

Q42. What is a dimension, how is it different from a fact table?

Ans. A dimension may be equated with an object. For example in a sales
organisation the dimensions may be salesperson, product and period of a
quarterly information. Each of these is a dimension. The fact table will represent
the fact relating to the dimensions. For the dimensions above, a fact table may
include sale (in rupees) made by a typical sales person for the specific product
for a specific. This will be an actual date, thus is a fact. A fact, thus, represents
an aggregation of relational data on the dimensions.

Q43. What are the key concerns when building a data warehouse?
Ans. Following are the key concerns when building a data warehouse:
• How will the data be acquired?
• How well it be stored?
• The type of environment in which the data warehouse will be implemented?

Q44. How is snowflake schema different from other schemes?

Ans. The primary difference lies in representing a normalized dimensional
table.

Q45. What are the major issues related to data warehouse

implementation?
Ans.
• Creation of proper transformation programs
• Proper training of development team
• Training of data warehouse administrator and end users
• Data warehouse maintenance.
MCS-043 GPH Book 131

Q46. What are OLAP, MOLAP and ROLAP?

Ans. OLAP refers to the statistical processing of multidimensional such that
the results may be used for decision-making. MOLAP and ROLAP are the two
implementations of the OLAP. In MOLAP the data is stored in the
multidimensional form in the memory whereas in the ROLAP it is stored in the
relational database form.

Q47. Define the terms: DSS and ESS.

Ans. The DSS is a decision support system and not a decision-making system.
It is a specific class of information system that supports business and
organisational decision-making activities. A DSS is an interactive software-
based system that helps decision makers compile useful information from raw
data or documents, personal knowledge, etc. This information helps these
decision makers to identify and solve problems and take decisions.
An Executive Information System (EIS) facilitates the information and decision
making needs of senior executives. They provide easy access to relevant
information (both internal as well as external), towards meeting the strategic
goals of the organisation. These are the same as for the DSS.

Q48. How does data warehouse differ from materialized views?

Ans. The difference may be:
• Data warehouse has a multi-dimensional schema whereas views are relational
in nature.
• Data warehouse extracts and transforms and then stores the data into its
schema that is not true for the materialized views.
• Materialized views needs to be upgraded on any update, whereas, a data
warehouse does not need updation.
• Data warehouse data is time-stamped, thus, can be differentiated from older
versions that is not true for the materialized views.

Q49. How is data mart different from data warehouse?

Ans. The basic constructs used to design a data warehouse and a data mart
are the same. However, a Data Warehouse is designed for the enterprise, while
Data Marts may be designed for a business division/department level. A data
mart contains the required subject specific data for local analysis only.

Q50. What do you mean by Data mining? How does Database processing
differ from Data mining processing? [June-07, Q1(c)]
Ans. Data is growing at a phenomenal rate today and the users expect more
sophisticated information from this data. There is need for new techniques
and tools that can automatically generate useful information and knowledge
132 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

from large volumes of data. Data mining is one such technique of generating
hidden information from the data. Data mining can be defined as : “an automatic
process of extraction of non-trivial or implicit or previously unknown but
potentially useful information or patterns from data in large databases, data
warehouses or in flat files”.
Data mining is related to data warehouse in this respect that, a data warehouse
is well equipped for providing data as input for the data mining process. The
advantages of using the data of data warehouse for data mining are many
some of them are listed below:

• Data quality and consistency are essential for data mining, to ensure, the
accuracy of the predictive models. In data warehouses, before loading the
data, it is first extracted, cleaned and transformed. We will get good results
only if we have good quality data.
• Data warehouse consists of data from multiple sources. The data in data
warehouses is integrated and subject oriented data. The data mining process
performed on this data.
• In data mining, it may be the case that, the required data may be aggregated
or summarised data. This is already there in the data warehouse.
• Data warehouse provides the capability of analysing data by using OLAP
operations, Thus, the result of a data mining study can be analyzed for hirtherto,
uncovered patterns.

Database Processing Vs. Data Mining Processing

Let us, first, differentiate between database processing and data mining
processing: The query language of database processing is well defined and it
uses SQL for this while, the data mining, the query is poorly defined and there
is no precise query language. The data used in data processing is operational
data, while, in data mining, it is historical data i.e., it is not operational data.
The output of the query of database processing is precise and is the subset of
the data, while, in the case of data mining the output is fuzzy and it is not a
subset of the data.

Data Processing Data Mining

Query • Well defined • Poorly defined
• SQL • No precise query language
Data • Uses Operational data • Does not use Operational data
Output • Precise • Fuzzy
• Subset of database • Not a subset of database

Some of the examples of database queries are as follows:

MCS-043 GPH Book 133

• Find all credit card applicants with the last name Veenu.
• Identify customers who have made purchases of more than Rs. 10,000/-in
the last month.
• Find all customers who have purchased shirt(s).

Some data mining queries may be:

• Find all credit card applicants with poor or good credit risks.
• Identify the profile of customers with similar buying habits.
• Find all items that are frequently purchased with shirt (s).

Q51. What is the difference between the following :

(i) Database processing and data Mining processing.
(ii) Data Mining and KDD.
Ans. (i) The query language of database processing is well defined and it
uses SQL for this, while, the data mining, the query is poorly defined and there
is no precise query language. The data used in data processing is operational
data, while, in data mining, it is historical data i.e., it is not operational data.
Example of database query are as follows : Identify customers who have
made purchase of more than Rs.20,000/- in the last month.
Example of data mining query may be : Find all credit card applicants with
poor or good credit risks.
(ii) Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) is the process of finding useful
information, knowledge and patterns in data while data mining is the process
of using of algorithms to automatically extract desired information and patterns,
which are derived by the Knowledge Discovery in Databases process.

Q52. What are different data mining tasks?

Ans. The different data-mining tasks are: Classification, Clustering and
Association Rule Mining.

Q53. What is the difference between data mining and OLTP?

Ans. The Query language of OLTP is well defined and it uses SQL for it,
while, for data mining the query is poorly defined and there is no precise query
language. The data used in OLTP is operational data while in data mining it is
historical data. The output of the query of OLTP is precise and is the subset of
the data while in the case of data mining the output is fuzzy and it is not a
subset of the data.
134 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Q54. How is clustering different from classification?

Ans. In classification, the classes are predetermined, but, in search for
interesting relationships the groups are not predetermined. The number of
clusters has to be given by the user.

Q55. What is the classification of data? Give some examples of

classification.
Ans. The classification task maps data into predefined groups or classes. The
class of a tuple is indicated by the value of a user-specified goal attribute.
Tuples consists of a set of predicating attributes and a goal attribute. The task
is to discover some kind of relationship between the predicating attributes and
the goal attribute, so that the discovered knowledge can be used to predict the
class of new tuple(s).
Some of the examples of classification are: Classification of students grades
depending upon their marks, classification of customers as good or bad
customer in a bank.

Q56. What do you mean by clustering? Briefly describe the concept of

Hierarchical clustering. How is clustering related to Data mining?
[June-07, Q3(a)]
Ans. Clustering is grouping thing with similar attribute values into the same
group. Given a database D={t1, t2,…,tn}of tuples and an integer value k, the
clustering problem is to defined a mapping where each tuple ti is assigned to
one cluster kj, 1<=j<=k.
A Cluster, Kj, contains precisely those tuple mapped to it. Unlike the
classification problem, clusters are not known in advance. The user has to
enter the value of the number of clusters k.
In other words a Cluster can be defined as the collection of data objects that
are similar in nature, as per certain defining property, but these objects are
dissimilar to the objects in other clusters.
Some of the clustering examples are as follows:
• To segment the customer database of a department store based on similar
buying patterns.
• To identify similar Web usage patterns etc.
Clustering is a very useful exercise specially for identifying similar groups
from the given data. Such data can be about buying patterns, geographical
locations, web information and many more. Clustering is related to data mining.
Data mining problems are solved by clustering.
MCS-043 GPH Book 135

Some of the clustering issues are as follows:

• Outlier handling: How will outlier be handled? (outliers are the objects that
do not comply with the general behaviour or model of the data) Whether it is
to be considered or it is to be left aside while calculating the clusters?
• Dynamic data: How will you handle dynamic data?
• Interpreting results: How will the result be interpreted?
• Evaluating results: How will the result be calculated?
• Number of clusters: How many clusters will you consider for the given
data?
• Data to be used: Whether you are dealing with quality data or the noisy
data? If, the data is noisy how is it to be handled?
• Scalability : Whether the algorithm that is used is to be scaled for small as
well as large data set/database.
There are many different kinds of algorithm for clustering.

Hierarchical Clustering
In this method, the clusters are created in levels and depending upon the
threshold value at each level the clusters are again created.
An agglomerative approach begins with each tuple in a distinct cluster and
successively merges clusters together until a stopping criterion is satisfied.
This is the bottom up approach.

A divisive method beings with all tuples in a single cluster and performs splitting
until a stopping criterion is met. This is the top down approach.

A hierarchical algorithm yields a dendrogram representing the nested grouping

of tuples and similarity levels at which grouping change. Dendrogram is a tree
data structure which illustrates hierarchical clustering techniques. Each level
shows cluster for that level. The leaf represents individual cluster while the
root represent one cluster.

Q57. List some applications data mining.

Ans. Following are the some applications data mining :
(1) Marketing and sales data analysis : A company can use customer transactions
in their database to segment the customers into various types. Such companies
may launch products for specific customer bases.
(2) Investment analysis : Customers can look at the areas where they can get
136 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

good returns by applying the data mining.

(3) Loan approval : Companies can generate rules depending upon the dataset
they have. On that basis they may decide to whom, the loan has to be approved.
(4) Fraud detection : By finding the correlation between faults, new faults can
be detected by applying data mining.
(5) Network management : By analysing pattern generated by data mining for
the networks and its faults, the faults can be minimised as well as future needs
can be predicted.
(6) Risk Analysis : Given a set of customers and an assessment of their risk-
worthiness, descriptions for various classes can be developed. Use these
descriptions to classify a new customer into one of the risk categories.
(7) Brand Loyalty : Given a customer and the product he/she uses, predict
whether the customer will be changing their products.
(8) Housing loan prepayment prediction : Rule discovery techniques can be
used to accurately predict the aggregate number of loan prepayments in a
given quarter as a function of prevailing interest rates, borrower characteristics
and account data.

Q58. List the example of problems which can be solved by data mining
and also discuss briefly the approaches to data mining problems.
Sample Data Mining Problems : problems that can be solved through the
data mining process.
(1) Mr. Suraj Gupta manages a supermarket and the cash counters, he adds
transactions into the database. Some of the questions that can come to
Mr. Gupta’s mind are as follows:
(a) Can you help me visualize my sales?
(b) Can you profile my customers?
(c) Tell me something intersecting about sales such as, what time sales will be
maximum etc.
He does not know statistics, and he does not want to hire statisticians.
The answer of some of the above questions may be answered by data mining.
(2) Mr. Avinash Arun is an astronomer and the sky survey has 3 tera-bytes
(1012) of data, 2 billion objects. Some of the questions that can come to the
mind of Mr. Arun are as follows:
(a) Can you help me recognize the objects?
(b) Most of the data is beyond my reach. Can you find new/unusual items in
my data?
(c) Can you help me with basic manipulation, so I can focus on the basic
MCS-043 GPH Book 137

science of astronomy?
He knows the data and statistics, but that is not enough. The answer to some
of the above questions may be answered once again, by data mining.
Please note : The use of data mining in both the questions given above lies in
finding certain patterns and information. Definitely the type of the data in both
the database as given above will be quite different.

Approaches to Data Mining Problems: The approaches to data mining

problems are based on the type of information/knowledge to be mined. We
will emphasis on three different approaches:
(a) Classification
(b) Clustering
(c) Association Rules
The classification task maps data into predefined groups or classes. The class
of a tuple is indicated by the value of a user-specified goal attribute. Tuples
consists of a set of predicating attributes and a goal attribute. The task, is to
discover, some kind of relationship between the predicating attributes and the
goal attribute, so that, the discovered information/knowledge can be used to
predict the class of new tuple(s).
The task of clustering is to group the tuples with similar attribute values into
the same class. Given a database of tuples and an integer value k, the Clustering
is to define a mapping, such that, tuples are mapped to different cluster.
The principle is to maximize intra-class similarity and minimize the interclass
similarity. In clustering, there is no goal attribute. So, classification is supervised
by the goal attribute, while clustering is an unsupervised classification.
The task of association rule mining is to search for interesting relationships
among items in a given data set. Its original application is on “market basket
data”. The rule has the form X ® Y , where X and Y are sets of items and
they do not intersect. Each rule has two measurements, support and
confidence. Given the user-specified minimum support and minimum
confidence, the task is to find, rules with support and confidence above,
minimum support and minimum confidence.

Q59. What is association rule mining?

Ans. The task of association rule mining is to search for interesting relationships
among items in a given data set. Its original application is on “market basket
data”. The rule has the form X → y, where X and Y are sets of items and they
do not intersect.
138 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Q60. Explain Apriori Algorithm.

Ans. Apriori is used for finding frequent itemsets : The apriori algorithm
applies the concept that if an itemset has minimum support, then all its subsets
also have minimum support. An itemset having minimum sopport is called
frequent itemset or large itemset. So any subset of a frequent itemset must
also be frequent.
Apriori algorithm generates the candidate itemsets to be counted in the pass,
by using only the large item set found in the previous pass - without considering
the transactions in the database.
It starts by finding all frequent 1-itemsets (itemsets with 1 item); then consider
2 -itemsets from these 1-itemsets, and so forth. During each iteration only
candidates found to be frequent in the previous iteration are used to generate a
new candidate set during the next iteration. The algorithm terminates when
there are no frequent k-itemsets.
Notations that are used in Apriori algorithm are given below :
k-itemset An itemset having k items
Lk Set of frequent k-itemset (those with minimum support)
Ck Set of candidate k-itemset (potentially frequent itemsets)
Apriori algorithm function takes as argument L k-1 and returns a superest of
the set of all frequent k-itemsets. It consists of a join step and a prune step.

The Apriori algorithm is given below :

APRIORI
1. k = 1
2. Find frequent set L k from Ck of all candidate itemsets
3. Form C k+1 from L k ;k = k + 1
4. Repeat 2-3 untill Ck is empty
Details about steps 2 and 3

Step 2: S
Can the data set D and count each itemset in Ck , if it is greater than minimum
support, it is frequent.

Step 3: i) For k = 1, = all frequent 1-itemsets. (all individual items).

ii) For k >1, generate Ck from Lk–1 as follows:
The join step
Ck = k–2 way join of L k-1 with itself
If both {a1, ...,ak-2 ,ak-1} & {a1, ...,ak-2 ,ak } are in L k-1 ,then
MCS-043 GPH Book 139

add {a1, ...,ak-2 , ak-1, ak } to Ck

( We keep items sorted).
The prune step
Remove {a1, ...,ak-2 , ak-1, a k } if it contains a non-frequent (k-1) subset.
In the prune step, delete all itemsets c ∈ Ck such that some (k-1)-subset of C is
not in Lk-1}

Q61. Apply the Apriori algorithm for generating large itemset on the
following dataset:

Transaction ID Items purchased

T100 A1a3a4
T200 A2a3a5
T300 A1a2a3a5
T400 A2a5

Ans. The dataset D given for the problem is:

Transaction ID Items purchased

T100 A 1a 3a 4
T200 A 2a 3a 5
T300 A 1a 2a 3a 5
T400 A 2a 5

Assuming the minimum support as 50% for calculating the large item sets. As
we have 4 transaction at least 2 transaction should have the data item.
1. scan D → C1; a1:2, a2:3, a3:3, a4:1, a5:3
→ L1: a1:2, a2:3, a3:3, a5:3
→ C2 : a 1 a 2 , a 1 a 3 , a 1 a 5 , a 2 a 3 , a 2 a 5 , a 3 a 5
2. scan D → C2: a1a2:1, a1a3:2, a1a5:1, a2a3:2, a2a5:3, a3a5:2
→ L2: a1a3:2, a2a3:2, a2a5:3, a3a5:2
→ C3: a1a2a3, a1a2a5, a2a3a5
→ Pruned C2: a2a3a5
3. scan D → L3: a2a3a5;2
Thus L= {L1,L2,L3}
Chapter-7
EMERGING TRENDS AND EXAMPLE
DBMS ARCHITECTURES

Q1. Explain the need and features for the following advanced database
application systems:
Ans. (i) Multimedia Database
A Multimedia Database Management System (MMDBMS) provides support
for multimedia datatypes required for digital images, audio, video, animation
and graphics along with textual data.
Main application or need of Traditional Database Management System is to
store frequently used data, represent data in various layout/forms which are
stored once. In revolutionary world of Technology, the huge amount of data
in different multimedia-related application need consistency, concurrency,
integrity, security and high availability of data. For example, application like
digital signature authentication, eye ratina authentication, speech recognition,
text to speech conversion, speech to text conversion, animation in movie etc.
require processing, retrieval, searching like database operation or multimedia
type of data. Thus, Multimedia and its application have experience tremendous
growth of Multimedia database experience tremendous growth of Multimedia
database.

Features :
- Provides features of traditional database.
- Provide homogeneous framework for storing, processing, retrieving,
transmitting and presenting wide variety of multimedia data types.
- Provide large volume of formats for variety of multimedia data types.
- Huge size of MMDBMS.
- Manage different type of input, output and storage devices.
- Size of multimedia data is larger than traditional text data. So, it should
provide variety of data compression and storage formats for various types of
data.
- It consists of information about sampling rate, resolution, frame rate, encoding
scheme etc. of various media data.
MCS-043 GPH Book 141

- It comprise additional information like keywords to make retrieval rapidly.

- It needs to synchronise multiple media types relating to one single multimedia
object.

(ii) Geographic databases :

Need for Geographic database : In modern era of information and
communication Network technology, Electronic device and GIS (Geographic
Information System) related application provide Geographical information on
computer devices.
Application like country map, space map, weather forecasting, global positioning
system, space aircraft designing or planning, site map etc. require geographic
information.
Thus, Geographic Database is aimed to provide Geographic information.
Every time processing to convert Geographic information as digital
representation of land, elevation or top view of earth surfaces require lots of
time. Geographic Database can help to reduce this processing time.

Features of Geographic database :

- Provide Geographic information as elevation, top plan of part of earth surface.
- The data of GIS are represented in graphical form.
- Geographical data can be stored in any format like vector data, raster data or
combination of both.
- It stores and or provides Geographic information in either 2-dimensional or
3-dimensional.
- It provides information as collection of layers.
- Most of accesses to the database would be read only.

(iii) Knowledge databases :

Need : Knowledge based systems get their power from the expert knowledge
that has been coded into facts, rules heuristics. The knowledge is stored in a
knowledge base separate from the control and inferencing components. This
makes it possible to add new knowledge or refine existing knowledge without
recompiling the control inferencing programs. This simplifies the construction
and maintenance of knowledge based systems.
A knowledge base system may defined as an extension of the database concept
containing not only data but also facts, rules heuristics and procedures. The
knowledge base is created by or for the end-user using the shell. Here, the
knowledge is stored in a knowledge base separate from the control and
142 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

inferencing components to make it possible to add new knowledge and

inferencing programs. This greatly simplifies the construction and maintenance
of knowledge base systems.
Features :
1) Has information at a higher level of obstruction.
2) Significantly smaller than database and changes are gradual.
3) By logic or rules or frames or semantics.
4) Updation performed by domain experts.
5) Correctness in a sense is very exclusive.
6) Has the power of in facing.
7) Used for data-analysis.
8) How to have a correction with the system and provide needed data to
obtain the solution.

Q2. What are the reasons for the growth of multimedia data? What are
the contents of multimedia database?
Ans. Reasons for the growth of multimedia data
(a) Advanced technology in terms of devices that were digital in nature and
support capture and display equipment.
(b) High speed data communication network and software support for
multimedia data transfer.
(c) Newer application requiring multimedia support.

Content of multimedia database which can be of two basic types:

(a) Media Content
(b) Meta data, which includes media, format data, media keyword data and
media feature data.

Q3. List four application areas of multimedia databases.

Ans. Four application areas of multimedia databases are listed below as:
Medical media databases
Bio-informatics
Home media
News etc.

Q4. List the challenges in designing multimedia databases.

Ans. Challenges in designing multimedia databases are the following:
(a) Support for different types of input/output
MCS-043 GPH Book 143

(b) Handling many compressions algorithms and formats

(c) Differences in OS and hardware
(d) Integrating to different databases models
(e) Support for queries for a variety of media types
(f) Handling different kinds of indices
(g) Data distribution over the world etc.

Q5. What is GIS? What are its applications?

Ans. GIS is a spatial database application where the spatial and non-spatial
data is represented along with the map. Some of the applications of GIS are:
• Cartographic applications
• 3-D Digital modeling applications like land elevation records.
• Geographic object applications like traffic control system.

Q6. What are the database requirements for Genome?

Ans. The data may need to be organised for the following three levels:
• Geonomics: Where four different types of data are represented. The physical
data may be represented using eight different fields.
• Gene expression: Where data is represented in fourteen different fields
• Proteomics: Where data is used for five research problems.

Q7. List the requirements of a GIS.

Ans. Following are the requirements of a GIS:
• Data representation through vector and raster
• Support for analysis of data
• Representation of information in an integrated fashion
• Capture of information
• Visualization of information
• Operations on information

Q8. What are the features of deductive databases?

Ans. Following are the features of deductive databases:
(i) They represent information using facts and rules
(ii) New facts and rules an be deduced
(iii) Used in expert system type of applications.

Q9. What is a good knowledge base?

Ans. A good knowledge database will have good information, good classification
144 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

and structure and an excellent search engine.

Q10. Define the term Mobile Database? Also discuss about the future
scope of Mobile Databases.
Ans. A mobile database is a database that can be connected to by a mobile
computing device over a mobile network. The client and server have wireless
connections. A cache is maintained to hold frequent data and transactions so
that they are not lost due to connection failure.

The use of laptops, mobiles and PDAs is increasing and likely to increase in
the future with more and more applications residing in the mobile systems. It
is clear that a large percentage of mobile users will require the use of a database
of some sort. Many applications such as databases would require the ability to
download information from an information repository and operate on this
information even when “out of range” or disconnected.

An example of this is a mobile workforce. In this scenario user would require

to access and update information from files in the home directories on a server
or customer records from a database. This type of access and work load
generated by such users is different from the traditional workloads seen in
client server systems of today. With the advent of mobile databases, now
users can load up their smart phones or PDAs with mobile databases to exchange
mission-critical data remotely without worrying about time or distance. Mobile
databases let employees enter data on the fly. Information can be synchronized
with a server database at a later time.

Q11. What are the characteristics of Mobile Database. Also discuss in

brief about major drawbacks of mobile databases.
Ans. The mobile environment has the following characteristics :
(1) Communication Latency.
(2) Intermittent wireless connectivity.
(3) Limited battery life.
(4) Changing location of the client.

Major drawback of mobile databases.

Major drawback of mobile databases - is the limitation of power and available
size of the display unit has found newer technologies like use of flash, power-
saving disks, low-powered and power saving displays. However, the mobile
devices since are normally smaller in size requires creation of presentation
standards. One such protocol in the areas of wireless networking is the Wireless
Access Protocol (WAP).
MCS-043 GPH Book 145

Q12. List the steps required to create a web database?

Ans. The following steps are required to create a web database:
• Create a database and put it on a database server.
• Create a connection string to connect to the server through a valid username
and password
• Open the connection to bring in the required data based on the suitable query
interactions
• Format and display the data at the client site.

Q13. What are the advantages of using wireless LAN?

Ans. Wireless LANs may allow low cost communication between two mobile
units the are located in the same LAN area. Thus, it may result in reduced cost
of operation.

Q14. List the different characteristics of mobile databases?

Ans. The following are the characteristics of mobile databases:
• Mobile database relies on the broadcast of data
• Mobile stations may be working in standalone mode most of the time
• The data on a mobile workstation may be inconsistent
• Mobile database may be made scalable
• Mobile database are closer to distributed database technology
• A mobile unit may be changing its physical location. It is to be reached at all
locations.

Q15. Discuss the need for ODBC?

Ans. ODBC allows using standard SQL commands to be used on any database
on any DBMS. It gives application designer freedom from learning the features
of individual DBMS, or OS etc. Thus, it simplifies the task of database
programmers.

Q16. Why do you need JDBC? What happens when a DBMS does not
have a JDBC driver?
Ans. JDBC is an API that allows Java programmers to access any database
through the set of its standard API. In case a JDBC driver is not available for
a DBMS then the ODBC-JDBC bridge can be used to access data.

Q17. List the components required for implementing ODBC?

Ans. The following three components are required to implement ODBC:
• The application
• The core ODBC library
• The database driver for ODBC
146 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Q18. List the basic functions of a digital library?

Ans. A digital library supports
• Content management
• Search
• License management
• Link management
• Meta data storage

Q19. List the different types of hardware and software required for
digital libraries?
Ans. Digital libraries require:
• Very large secondary storage
• Distributed array of powerful servers
• Large bandwidth and data transfer rate
• A reliable library software.

Q20. What is Datagrid? What is the requirement of datagrid (give at

least 3 requirements)? Describe the structure of datagrid with the help
of a block diagram. [June-07, Q3(c)]
Ans. A data grid can be seen as the process of creating a virtual database
across hardware of almost the entire data that exists in some form. Thus, the
key concept is Virtual Database. The basic concept behind a data grid is that
an application need not know either the place or the DBMS where the data is
stored; rather the application is only interested in getting the correct results.
Figure shows a typical structure for a data grid.

Application Application

Data Grid
Structure

Placement and Data Policy manager

Virtual Database
Database Database Database
Figure : A Data Grid
A data grid should address the following issues:
• It should allow data security and domain specific description of data. Domain
MCS-043 GPH Book 147

specific data helps in the identification of correct data in response to a query.

• It should have a standard way of representing information. [The possible
candidates in this category may be XML].
• It should allow simple query language like SQL for accessing information.
• The data requirements should be fulfilled with a level of confidence, (that is
there has to be a minimum quality of service in place).
• There needs to be a different role assigned to the data administrator. The
data administrators should not be concerned with what the data represent.
Data domain specification should be the role responsibility of the data owner.
Unfortunately, this does not happen in the present database implementations.
• The separation of the data administration and the data manager will help the
database administrator to concentrate on data replication and query performance
issues based on the DBMS statistics.

Thus, a data grid virtualizes data. Many DBMSs today, have the ability to
separate the roles of the database administrator and the data owner from the
application access. This needs to be extended to the grid across a heterogeneous
infrastructure.

Some of the major requirements of a data grid are:

• Handling of failure of a data source: A grid may have replicas and caches,
but grid applications tend to access a data resource. A data grid is flexible and
it should have a middleware that automatically moves the operations to either
another data resource with a similar data set or to multiple data resources each
with a subset of the data.
• Parallel access for local participant: some organisations may have very
large data, thus, a query on that would take longer and such a query could be
beyond the performance criteria set for the grid. Therefore, it may be a good
idea to use a “virtual distributed” database to fetch data in parallels and keep
processing it.
• Global access through SQL : A data grid would require dynamic selection
of data sources. Therefore, it requires a complete SQL query transformation
and optimisation capability.
• A data grid application may need to access data sources such as content
management systems, Excel files, or databases not yet supported.

Q21. What are the advantages of Data Grid?

Ans. Data Grid is helpful in the sharing of large amount of information on a
148 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

particular topic. Thus, allowing a worldwide repository of information, while,

on the other hand, still giving full control of information to the creator.

PostgreSQL

Q22. What are the basic features of PostgresSQL?

Ans. PostgreSQL supports the following features:
• ANSI SQL 2 compliance,
• Support for transactions, triggers, referential integrity and constraints,
• High level language support,
• Inheritance, complex data types and polymorphism,
• Built in complex data types like IP address,
• Aggregate functions, collections and sequences,
• Portability, and
• ODBC and JDBC drivers.

Q23. What are the different types of interfaces in PostgresSQL?

Ans. PostgreSQL supports both the terminal monitor interfaces and program
driven interfaces.

Q24. What are the basic processes in PostgresSQL?

Ans. PostgreSQL has the following three processes:
• Postmaster
• Server process
• Client processes

Q25. How are the transactions supported in PostgreSQL?

Ans. Each SQL statement is treated as a transaction. It also has provision for
multi statement transactions.

Q26. List the add-on non-standard types in PostgreSQL?

Ans. Some of these types are: complex; domains, cstring, record, trigger,
void etc.

Q27. How does PostgreSQL perform storage and indexing of tables?

Briefly discuss the type of indexes involved in PostgreSQL?
[June-07, Q4(a)]
Ans. PostgreSQL defines a number of system columns in all tables. These
MCS-043 GPH Book 149

system columns are normally invisible to the user, however, explicit queries
can report these entries. These columns, in general, contains meta–data i.e.,
data about data contained in the records of a table.

Thus, any record would have attribute values for the system-defined columns
as well as the user-defined columns of a table. The following table lists the
system columns.
Column Name Description
oid (object identifier) The unique object identifier of a record.
It is automatically added to all records.
It is a 4-byte number.
It is never re-used within the same table.
tableoid (table object identifier) The oid of the table that contains a row.
The pg_class system table relates the name
and oid of a table.
xmin (transaction minimum) The transaction identifier of the inserting
transaction of a tuple.
Cmin (command minimum) The command identifier, starting at 0, is
associated with the insetting transaction of
a tuple.
xmax (transaction maximum) The transaction identifier of a tuple’s
deleting transaction.
If a tuple has not been deleted then this is
set to zero.
cmax (command maximum) The command identifier is associated with
the deleting transaction of a tuple. Like
xmax, if a tuple has not been deleted then
this is set to zero.
ctid (tuple identifier) This identifier describes the physical
location of the tuple within the database.
A pair of numbers are represented by the
ctid: the block number, and tuple index
within that block.
Figure : System Columns
If the database creator does not create a primary key explicitly, it would become
difficult to distinguish between two records with identical column values. To
avoid such a situation PostgreSQL appends every records with its own object
identifier number, or OID, which is unique to that table. Thus, no two records
in the same table will ever have the same OID, which, also mean that no two
records are identical in a table. The oid makes sure of this.
150 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Internally, PostgreSQL stores data in operating system files. Each table has its
own file, and data records are stored in a sequence in the file. You can create
an index on the database. An index is stored as a separate file that is sorted on
one or more columns as desired by the user.

Indexes
Indexes allow fast retrieval of specific rows from a table. For a large table
using an index, finding a specific row takes fractions of a second while non-
indexed entries will require more time to process the same information.
PostgreSQL does not create indexes automatically. Indexes are user defined
for attributes or columns that are frequently used for retrieving information.

For example, you can create and index such as:

mydb => CREATE INDEX stu_name ON Student (first_name);

PostgreSQL supports many types of index implementations. These are:

• B-Tree Indexes: These are the default type index. These are useful for
comparison and range queries.
• Hash Indexes: This index uses linear hashing. Such indexes are not preferred
in comparison with B-tree indexes.
• R-Tree Indexes : Such index are created on built-in-spatial data types such
as box, circle for determining operations like overlap etc.
• GiST Indexes: These indexes are created using Generalised search trees.
Such indexes are useful for full text indexing, and are thus useful for retrieving
information.

Q28. What are system columns?

Ans. System columns are added by PostgrSQL to all the tables. These are oid
(object identifier), tableoid, xmin, xmax, ctid.

Q29. What are the different steps for query evaluation?

Ans. The steps are:
• Query submission, the
• Parsing by the parser to query tree,
• Transformation of query by rewrite system
• Creation of query evaluation plan by the optimiser, and
• Execution by executor.
Chapter-8
ORACLE

Q1. What is Oracle ?

Ans. The Oracle Database (commonly referred to as Oracle RDBMS or simply
as Oracle), a relational database management system (RDBMS) software
product released by Oracle Corporation, has become a major factor in database
computing.

Q2. Explain about the Physical and logical structuring of Oracle.

Ans. An Oracle database system comprises at least one instance of the
application, along with data storage. An instance comprises a set of operating-
system processes and memory-structures that interact with the storage.

The Oracle RDBMS stores data logically in the form of tablespaces and physically
in the form of data files. Tablespaces can contain various types of memory
segments; for example, Data Segments, Index Segments etc. Segments in
turn comprise one or more extents. Extents comprise groups of contiguous
data blocks. Data blocks form the basic units of data storage. At the physical
level, data-files comprise one or more data blocks, where the block size can
vary between data-files.

Oracle database management keeps track of its computer data storage with
the help of information stored in the SYSTEM tablespace. The SYSTEM
tablespace contains the data dictionary — and often (by default) indexes and
clusters. (A data dictionary consists of a special collection of tables that contains
information about all user-objects in the database). Since version 8i, the Oracle
RDBMS also supports "locally managed" tablespaces which can store space
management information in bitmaps in their own headers rather than in the
SYSTEM tablespace (as happens with the default "dictionary-managed"
tablespaces).

If the Oracle database administrator has instituted Oracle RAC (Real Application
Clusters), then multiple instances, usually on different servers, attach to a
152 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

central storage array. This scenario offers numerous advantages, most

importantly performance, scalability and redundancy. However, support
becomes more complex, and many sites do not use RAC. In version 10g, grid
computing has introduced shared resources where an instance can use (for
example) CPU resources from another node (computer) in the grid.

The Oracle DBMS can store and execute stored procedures and functions
within itself. PL/SQL (Oracle Corporation's proprietary procedural extension
to SQL), or the object-oriented language Java can invoke such code objects
and/or provide the programming structures for writing them.

Q3. Discuss about Schemas in Oracle.

Ans. Oracle database conventions refer to defined groups of ownership
(generally associated with a "username") as schemas.

Most Oracle database installations traditionally come with a default schema

called SCOTT. After the installation process has set up the sample tables, the
user can log into the database with the username scott and the password tiger.
The name of the SCOTT schema originated with Bruce Scott, one of the first
employees at Oracle (then Software Development Laboratories), who had a
cat named Tiger.

The SCOTT schema has seen less use as it uses so few of the features of a
modern release of Oracle. Most recent examples reference the default HR or
OE schemas.

Other default schemas include:

SYS (essential core database structures and utilities)
SYSTEM (additional core database structures and utilities, and privileged
account)
OUTLN (utilized to store metadata for stored outlines for stable query-optimizer
execution plans 3).
BI, IX, HR, OE, PM, and SH (expanded sample schemas containing more
data and structures than the older SCOTT schema)

Q4. Define the term Tablespaces in the context of Oracle RDBMS.

Ans. default tablespaces include:
SYSTEM (essential core database structures and utilities)
MCS-043 GPH Book 153

SYSAUX (extra/extended data to supplement the SYSTEM schema)

TEMP (temporary tablespace)
UNDOTBS1 (undo tablespace)
USERS (default users tablespace created by the Database Configuration
Assistant - but replaceable by the DBA)

Q5. Discuss about the Memory architecture of Oracle.

Ans. Oracle Memory architecture consists of the following :
(i) System Global Area
Each Oracle instance uses a System Global Area or SGA — a shared-memory
area — to store its data and control information.

Each Oracle instance allocates itself an SGA when it starts and de-allocates it
at shutdown time. The information in the SGA consists of the following
elements, each of which has a fixed size, established at instance startup:
* the database buffer cache: this stores the most recently-used data blocks.
These blocks can contain modified data not yet written to disk (sometimes
known as "dirty blocks"), unmodified blocks, or blocks written to disk since
modification (sometimes known as clean blocks). Because the buffer cache
keeps blocks based on a most-recently-used algorithm, the most active buffers
stay in memory to reduce I/O and to improve performance.
* the redo log buffer: this stores redo entries - a log of changes made to the
database. The instance writes redo log buffers to the redo log as quickly and
efficiently as possible. The redo log aids in instance recovery in the event of a
system failure.
* the shared pool: this area of the SGA stores shared-memory structures
such as shared SQL areas in the library cache and internal information in the
data dictionary. An insufficient amount of memory allocated to the shared pool
can cause performance degradation.

(ii) Library cache

The library cache stores shared SQL, caching the parse tree and the execution
plan for every unique SQL statement.

If multiple applications issue the same SQL statement, each application can
access the shared SQL area: this reduces the amount of memory needed and
reduces the processing-time used for parsing and execution planning.
154 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

(iii) Data dictionary cache

The data dictionary comprises a set of tables and views that map the structure
of the database.

Oracle stores information here about the logical and physical structure of the
database. The data dictionary contains information such as the following:

(a) User information, such as user privileges

(b) Integrity constraints defined for tables in the database
(c) Names and datatypes of all columns in database tables
(d) Information on space allocated and used for schema objects

The Oracle instance frequently accesses the data dictionary in order to parse
SQL statements. The operation of Oracle depends on ready access to the data
dictionary: performance bottlenecks in the data dictionary affect all Oracle
users. Because of this, database administrators should make sure that the data
dictionary cache has sufficient capacity to cache this data. Without enough
memory for the data-dictionary cache, users see a severe performance
degradation. Allocating sufficient memory to the shared pool where the data
dictionary cache resides precludes these particular performance problems.

(iv) Program Global Area

The Program Global Area or PGA memory-area contains data and control-
information for Oracle's server-processes.

The size and content of the PGA depends on the Oracle-server options installed.
This area consists of the following components:

stack-space: the memory that holds the session's variables, arrays, and so on.
session-information: unless using the multithreaded server, the instance stores
its session-information in the PGA. (In a multithreaded server, the session-
information goes in the SGA.)

(v) Process architecture

The Oracle RDBMS typically relies on a group of processes running
simultaneously in the background and interacting to further and monitor database
operations. Such processes (and their standard abbreviations) can include:
MCS-043 GPH Book 155

archiver processes (ARCn)

checkpoint process (CKPT)
database writer processes (DBWn)
dispatcher processes (Dnnn): multiplex server-processes on behalf of users
memory-manager process (MMAN): used for internal database tasks such as
Automatic Shared Memory Management
job-queue processes (CJQn)
log-writer process (LGWR)
logical standby coordinator process (LSP0): controls Data Guard log-application
media-recovery process (MRP): detached recovery-server process
memory-monitor process (MMON)
memory-monitor light process (MMNL): gathers and stores Automatic Workload
Repository (AWR) data
process-monitor process (PMON)
process-spawner (PSP0): spawns Oracle processes
queue-monitor processes (QMNn)
recoverer process (RECO)
remote file-server process (RFS)
shared server processes (Snnn): serve client-requests
system monitor process (SMON)

Q6. What are Data Definition statements in Oracle?

Ans. These statements create, alter, maintain and drop schemes objects.

Q7. Name the main ORACLE tools for Application Development.

Ans. ORACLE forms Developer
ORACLE Reports Developer
ORACLE Designer
ORACLE J Developer
ORACLE Discoverer Administrative Edition
ORACLE Portal.

Q8. What are the in-built data types of ORACLE?

Ans.
a) Character
b) Numeric
c) DATE data type
d) LOB data type
156 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

e) RAW and LONGRAW

f) Rowed and UNROWID data type

Q9. What are the advantages of B+ tree structure?

Ans.
a) All leaf Block have same depth,
b) B-Tree indexes are balanced,
c) Blocks of the B+ tree are 3 quarters full on the average,
d) B+ tree have excellent retrieval performance,
e) Inserts, updates and deletes are all efficient, and
f) Good Performance,

Q10. What are the different files used in ORACLE?

Ans.
a) Data files
b) Redo log files
c) Control files

Q11. What does a data Dictionary store?

Ans.
a) Valid users of data types,
b) Information about integrity Constraints defined for the tables, and
c) The Amount of space Allocated for a scheme object.

Q12. Expand the following:

a) LGWR
b) ARC
c) RECO.
Ans.
a) Log writers,
b) Archiver,
c) Recover.

Q13. What is a process in Oracle?

Ans. A Process is a thread of control or a mechanism in an operating system
that can run a series of steps.

Q14. Discuss about backup & recovery in Oracle.

MCS-043 GPH Book 157

Ans. As every database administrator knows, backing up a database is rather

mundane but necessary task. An improper backup makes recovery difficult, it
is not possible. Unfortunately, people often realise the extreme importance of
this everyday task only when it is too late - usually after losing critical business
data due to the failure of a related system.
Recovery Manager : Typical backups include complete database backups
(the most common type), tablespace backups, datafile backups, control file
backups, and archived redo log backups. Oracle8 introduced the Recovery
Manager (RMAN) for serve-managed backup and recovery of the database.
Previously, Oracle's Enterprise Backup Utility (EBU) provided a similar solution
on some platforms. However, RMAN, with its Recovery Catalogue we stored
in an Oracle database, provides a much more complete solution. RMAN can
automatically locate, back up, restore, and recover datafiles, control files, and
archived redo logs, RMAN, since Oracle9i, can restart backups, restore and
implement recovery window policies when backups expire. The Oracle
Enterprise Manager Backup Manager provides a GUI-based interface to RMAN.
Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g introduces a new improved job scheduler that
can be used with RMAN and other scripts, and that can manage automatic
backups to disk.

Incremental Backup and Recovery : RMAN can perform incremental

backups of Enterprises Edition databases. Incremental backups, backup only
the blocks modified since the last backup of a datafile, tablespace or database;
thus, they are smaller and faster than complete backups. RMAN can also
perform point-in-time recovery, which allows the recovery of data until just
prior to an undesirable event (such as the mistaken dropping of a table).

Oracle Storage Manager and Automated Disk Based Backup and

Recovery : Various media-management software vendors support RMAN.
Since Oracle8i, a Storage Manager has been developed with Oracle to provide
media-management services, including the tracing of tape volumes, for up to
four devices. RMAN interfaces automatically with the media-management
software to request the mounting of tapes as needed for backup and recovery
operations.
Oracle Database 10g introduces Automated Disk Based Backup and Recovery.
The disk acts as a cache, and archives and backups can then be copied to
tape. The disk 'cache' can also serve as a staging area for recovery.
158 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Q15. What are the three basic steps involved in SQL tuning?
Ans.
(a) Identifying high load on top of SQL Statements.
(b) Verifying that the execution plans perform reasonably, and
(c) Implementing corrective actions to generate better execution plans.

Q16. What is Parsing?

Ans. Translating a SQL statement and verifying it to be a valid statement.

Q17. What are heterogeneous services?

Ans. It allows no–oracle data and services to be accessed from an Oracle
database through generic connectivity.

Q18. Name the basic technology used to move data from are ORACLE
database to another.
Ans.
a) Basic replication,
b) Advanced replication
c) Transportable replication,
d) Advanced queuing and streams, and
e) Extraction, transformation, loading.

Q19. What are the different types of backup?

Ans.
a) Complete database,
b) Tablespace,
c) Data file
d) Control file, and
e) Achieved Redo Log.

Q20. What is Oracle Enterprise manager?

Ans. A complete interface for enterprise wide application development.

Q21. What is Parallel Execution?

Ans. The process of making multiple processes run together.

Q22. What is ETL?

Ans. ETL means extraction, transformation and loading. It is basically the
MCS-043 GPH Book 159

process of extracting data from source systems and transferring it to the data
warehouse.

Q23. What does system security include?

Ans. It includes the mechanisms that control access and use of the database
at the system level.

Q24. How does Oracle manage database security?]

Ans. Oracle manages database security using:
• Authentication,
• Authorisation,
• Access restrictions,
• Security policies, and
• Database Auditing.

Q25. What are the different integrity constraints supported by Oracle.

• NOT NULL
• UNIQUE KEY
• PRIMARY KEY
• FOREIGN KEY
• CHECK

Q26. What is a trigger?

Ans. It is a event driven procedure.

Q27. Name the different types of keys.

Ans.
• Primary
• Unique
• Foreign
• Referenced
Question Papers
 MCS-043 : ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
December, 2006

Note : Question number 1 is compulsory. Attempt any three questions from

the rest.

1. (i) Define multi-valued dependencies. Which multi-valued

dependencies (MVDs) hold for the following relation? Explain. 5

P_No Colour Size

P1 Red Large
P1 Green Large
P1 Red Medium
P1 Green Medium
P1 Red Small
P1 Green Small
P2 Black Large
P2 Black Small

In this relation each product comes in the range of colours and sizes.
Ans. multivalued dependency: A multivalued dependency is a full constraint
between two sets of attributes in a relation.
In contrast to the functional dependency, the multivalued dependency requires
that certain tuples be present in a relation. Therefore, a multivalued dependency
is also referred to as a tuple-generating dependency. The multivalued
dependency plays a role in the 4NF database normalization.
Formal definition
Let R be a relation schema and let α ⊆ R and β ⊆ R. The multivalued
dependency α → β holds on R if, in any legal relation r(R), for all pairs of
tuples t1 and t2 in r such that t1[ α ] = t2[ α ], there exist tuples t3 and t4 in r
such that
t1[ α ] = t2[ α ] = t3[ α ] = t4[ α ]
t3[ β ] = t1[ β ]
t3[R - β ] = t2[R - β ]
t4[ β ] = t2[ β ]
162 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

t4[R - β ] = t1[R - β ][1]

The given relation holds – two

MVDS
P_No →→ colour
P_No →→ size

(ii) How is the checkpoint information used in the recovery operation

following a system crash? 5
Ans. A scheme called checkpoint is used to limit the volume of information
that have to be handled and processed in the event of a system failure involving
the loss of volatile information.
Check Point Scheme ⇒ In the case of a system crash the log information
being collected in buffers will be lost. A checkpoint operation performed
periodically, copies log information into stable storage. The information and
operations performed at each checkpoint consist of the following :
• A start of checkpoint record giving the identification that it is checkpoint
along with the time and date of the checkpoint written to the log in a stable
storage device.
• All log information from the buffers in the volatile storage is copied to the
log on stable storage.
• All database update from the buffers in the volatile storage are propagated
to the physical database.

Example : Let us consider a set of transactions with the checkpoint and

system crash time, as shown below :-
T0
T1
T2
T3
Ti
T4 T i+1 T i+2

Ti+3

T i+3
t0 tc tx

Time Checkpoint System Crash

MCS-043 GPH Book 163

A checkpoint is taken at time tc, which indicates that at that time all log and
data buffers were propagated to storage.
The transactions T0, T1, T2, T4, were committed and their modifications are
reflected in the database. With the checkpoint scheme, these transactions are
not required to be redone after the system crash.
The transaction Ti and Ti+3 are to be redone at the point of checkpoint, where
the transaction Ti+2 has to be undo, as no log has been written for this
transaction.

(iii) Show the cost calculation for a simple hash-join operation. Make
the necessary assumptions, if any. 6
Ans. Cost calculation for Simple Hash-Join
(i) Cost of partitioning r and s: all the blocks of r and s are read once and after
partitioning written back, so cost 1 = 2 (blocks of r + blocks of s).
(ii) Cost performing the hash-join using build and probe will require at least
one block transfer for reading the partitions
Cost 2 = (blocks of r + blocks of s)
(iii) There are a few more blocks in the main memory that may be used for
evaluation, they may be read or written back. We ignore this cost as it will be
too less in comparison to cost 1 and cost 2.
Thus, the total cost = cost 1 +cost 2.
= 3 (blocks of r + blocks of s)

Cost of Hash –Join requiring recursive partitioning :

(i) The cost of partitioning in this case will increase to number of recursion
required, it may be calculated as:
Number of iteration required = ([log M-1 (blocks of s] –1)
Thus, cost 1 will be modified as :
= 2 (blocks or r + blocks of s) × ([log M-1 (block of s)] –1])

The cost for step (ii) and (iii) here will be the same as that given in steps (ii)
and (iii) above.

Thus, total cost = 2 (blocks of r + blocks of s) ([log M-1

(locks of s ) –1]) +
(blocks of r + blocks of s).

Because s is in the inner term in this expression, it is advisable to choose the

smaller relation as the build relation. If the entire build input can be kept in the
164 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

main memory, n can be set to 1 and the algorithm need not partition the
relations but may still build an in-memory index, in such cases the cost estimate
goes down to (Number of blocks r + Number of blocks of s).

(iv) A company database needs to store information about employees,

departments and children of employees. Employees work in department
each department is managed by an employee, we are not interested in
information about a child once the parent leaves the company. Draw an
E-R diagram that captures this informations. 5
Ans.

Mname
Fnam e
Lname
ees
employ name
Name No_of_ Dept_ Dept_id
Emp_id n
Address Locatio

Do Birth
Salary 1
N
Employee Works_is DEPARTMENT

Gender

1 1
Manages

has
dependents

N
DEPENDENT
Birthdate
Name Gender

(v) How is UML related to E-R diagram? 4

Ans. Entity relationship model is a high level conceptual data model. It allows
us to describe the data involved in a real world enterprise in terms of objects
and their relationship. It is widely used to develop an initial design of a database.
MCS-043 GPH Book 165

Data models like E-R model still persists but systems built using object modeling
techniques like UML are now preferred. Both UML and ER model focus on
object as an implicit way to analyze, conceive and observe user requirements.
Since UML is accepted by the objects management group (OMG) as the
standard modeling object-oriented programme it becomes one of the automatic
choices.

(vi) In timestamp-based concurrency control, transactions are assigned

a timestamp at startup; how is it used to ensure serializability? How
does the Thomas Write rule improve concurrency? 6
Ans. Each transaction is issued a timestamp when it enters a system. If an old
transaction Ti has a time-stamp TS(Ti), a new transaction T j is assigned
time-stamp TS(T j) such that TS( Ti) < TS(T j). This protocol manages
concurrent execution in such a manner that the time-stamps determine the
serialisability order. In order to ensure such behavior, the protocol needs to
maintain for each data Q two time-stamp values.
• W- time-stamp (Q) is the largest time-stamp of any transaction that executed
write (Q) successfully.
• R- time-stamp (Q) is the largest time-stamp of any transaction that executed
read (Q) successfully.
The timestamp ordering protocol executes any conflicting read and write
operations in timestamp order. Suppose a transaction Ti issues a read (Q).
1) If TS ( Ti) <W –timestamp (Q) ,-> Ti needs to read a value of Q that was
already overwritten. Action: reject read operation and rolled back Ti.
2) If TS ( Ti) =W –timestamp (Q) ,-> It is OK. Action: Execute read operation
and set R- timestamp (Q) to the maximum of R-timestamp (Q) and TS ( Ti).

Suppose that transaction Ti. , issues write (Q) :

1) If TS (Ti) < R – timestamp (Q), -> the value of Q that Ti. is writing was
used previously, this value should have never been produced. Action: reject
the write operation. Roll back Ti.
2) If TS (Ti) < W – timestamp (Q), -> Ti is trying to write an obsolete value
of Q. Action :Reject write operation and roll back Ti.
3) Otherwise, execute write operation and set W- timestamp (Q) to TS (Ti).
Thomas ‘Write Rule: Modified versions of the timestamp- ordering protocol in
which obsolete write operations may be ignored under certain circumstances.
When Ti. Attempts to write data item Q, if TS( Ti) < W – timestamp(Q) , then
Ti is attempting to write an obsolete value of {Q}. Hence , rather than rolling
back Ti. as the timestamp ordering protocol would have done, this { write}
operation can be ignored. Otherwise this protocol is the same as the timestamp
166 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

ordering protocol. Thomas ‘Write Rule allows greater potential concurrency’.

(vii) What is XML and how does XML compare to HTML? 4

Ans. The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a general-purpose markup
language. Its primary purpose is to facilitate the sharing of data across different
information systems, particularly via the Internet. It is a simplified subset of
the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), and is designed to be
relatively human-legible. By adding semantic constraints, application languages
can be implemented in XML. These include XHTML, RSS, MathML, GraphML,
Scalable Vector Graphics, MusicXML, and thousands of others. Moreover,
XML is sometimes used as the specification language for such application
languages. XML is recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium. It is a
fee-free open standard. The W3C recommendation specifies both the lexical
grammar, and the requirements for parsing.
HTML XML
1. HTML only provides predefined 1. XML does not have predefined
tags, such as header, paragraph, tags and tags can be defined using a
heading etc. In other words, users Document Type Definition (DTD).
cannot add to this predefined list of It is possible to define tags for a
tags. particular domain or application.
2. HTML is mainly designed to 2. XML is basically designed to
represent a presentation structure of represent the logical structure of
a document. It enables a browser to documents. The tag names give
interpret and display the document abstract semantics to the associated
to humans. This makes HTML, data. Hence XML can be used more
more suitable for machine-human effectively for machine-machine
interaction rather than machine- interaction.
machine interaction. 3. In XML, the content and
3. In traditional HTML, the content presentation format/style are
and presentation format/style are separated. The former is written into
mixed (i.e. not separated). an XML document, while the latter
4. Search ing for and retrieval of is specified in style sheers using
specific information based on XSL or CSS.
semantic content is difficult and is 4. Searching and retrieval of
sensitive to minor alternative in the information is greatly simplified
document, such as adding blank and not particularly sensitive to
lines, etc. document layout and minor changes
5. In general, HTML searches to it.
returns large amounts of data 5. XML searches return data more
because of its poorly defined logical precisely associated with the query
structure. because of its well-defined logical
structure.
MCS-043 GPH Book 167

6. In HTML, links are unidirectional, 6. In XML, with Xlink, one can use
i.e., it connects only two resources bi-directional links, link up more
and a link has no semantics. than two resources and specify a
“role” to the link by associating
semantics with it.
7. Compared with XML, HTML has 7. The syntax for XML is strictly
a relatively loose syntax. For defied.
example, some syntactical errors
may be acceptable (i.e., the
document may still be processed
even if a syntactical error occurs).

(viii) What is an integrity constraint? How are integrity constraints

supported by Oracle? Briefly describe. 5
Ans. An integrity constraint is a declarative way to define a business rule for
a column of a table. An integrity constraint is a statement about table data that
is always true and that follows these rules:
• If an integrity constraint is created for a table and some existing table data
does not satisfy the constraint cannot be enforced.
• After a constraint is defined, if any of the results of a DML statement violate
the integrity constraint, then the statement is rolled back, and an error is returned.

Integrity constraints are defined with a table and are stored as part of the
table’s definition in the data dictionary, so that all database applications adhere
to the same set of rules. When a rule changes, it only need to be changed once
at the database level and not for each application.

The following integrity constraints are supported by Oracle:

• NOT NULL : Disallows nulls (empty entries) in a table’s column.
• UNIQUE : Disallows duplicate values in a column or set of columns.
• PRIMARY KEY : Disallows duplicate values and nulls in a column or set of
columns.
• FOREIGN KEY : Requires each value in a column or set of columns to
match a value in a related table’s UNIQUE or PRIMARY KEY. FOREIGN Key
integrity constraints also define referential integrity actions that dictate what
Oracle should do with dependent data if the data references are altered.
• CHECK : Disallows values that do not satisfy the logical expression of the
constraint.
168 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

2.(i) Briefly describe the architecture of distributed databases with the

help of a diagram. 10
Ans. The architecture of distributed databases may be looked at as, an extension
of ANSI SPARC three level architecture. The ANSI SPARC architecture has
been defined for the centralized system and can be extended for the distributed
database system with various level defined for data distribution as well.
Architecture defines the following additional schema for distributed database
systems :
1) A set of global schemas that would define application interface. Thus, a
global schema can be further divided into
• Global external schema, and
• Global conceptual schema

2) Fragmentation and allocation schema will determine various fragments and

their allocation to various distributed database sites.

3) Finally, it would require basic schemas as proposed by ANSI / SPARC

architecture for local databases.

I. (a) Global External Schema : The basic objective of providing a global

external schema is to define the external application interface for a distributed
database application. This level is similar to the external schema as defined for
the ANSI SPARC architecture. Thus, this interface must support the concept
of data independence.

(b) Global Conceptual Schema : It defines logical database application as if

there is, no distribution of data. Conceptually, this schema is almost similar to
the conceptual level of ANSI / SPARC architecture. Thus, this schema defines
the entities, relationship, and constraints including security and integrity
constraints for global database application. This level is responsible for ensuring
physical data independence between an application and the distribution
environment where it is to be implemented.
MCS-043 GPH Book 169

Global External Schema Global External Schema Global External Schema

Global Conceptual Schema

Fragmentation Schema

Allocation Schema

Local Mapping Schema Local Mapping Schema Local Mapping Schema

Local Conceptual Schema Local Conceptual Schema Local Conceptual Schema

Global Internal Schema Global Internal Schema Global Internal Schema

Database
on disk

Architecture for DDBMS

II. Fragmentation and allocation schema : It is required to describe the

data fragments that have been created for the distributed database, along with,
their replicas that have been allocated to various database sites. This, schema,
thus, basically is for the identification of data distribution among the distributed
sites.

III. Local schemas : The local schema at each site can consists of conceptual
and internal schema. However, to map the fragmentation and allocation schema
to local external objects may require local mapping schema. It is this schema
(i.e. local mapping schema), that hides the details of various DBMSs, thus
170 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

providing the DBMS independence.

(ii) How does the architecture of DDBMS differ from that of centralized
DBMS? 5
Ans. If the data of an organization is stored at the single location under the
strict control of the DBMS, then, it is termed as a centralized database system.
A centralized system has the advantage of controlling data under a control
authority, so, the chances of integrity failure less, inaccuracy are very low. In
such a system it is easier to enforce business, rules and the system can also be
made very secure.

A distributed database system consist of a collection of sites, each of which

may participate in the execution of transactions, which access data at one site
or several sites. The main difference between centralized and distributed
database systems is that in the former, the data resides in one single centralized
control, while in the latter, the data resides in several sites under the control of
local distributed DBMS components which are under the control of one DBMS.

In a centralized system, the readability and availability is dependent on one

system only and on the communication links. The load on the central system
may be very high if multiple transactions are going on and results in delay.

In a DDBMS, all the above problems are solved to an extent, as most of the
data access can new be local, however, it adds overhead on part of maintaining
databases at several sites. The sites must coordinate if global query is to be
handled. Thus, it will increase the overall complexity of the system.

(iii) Identify the functional dependencies which hold for the following
relation: 5
P_No Warehouse
Factory
P1 F1 WH1
P1 F2 WH1
P2 F2 WH1
P3 F2 WH2
P4 F2 WH2
The above relation indicates where each product is made and where it is
stored. Each product may be produced at a number of different factories,
but may only be stored at one warehouse.
MCS-043 GPH Book 171

Ans. P_No, factory → warehouse

3.(i) Make a comparison between OODBMS and object relational

database. 10
Ans. An object oriented database management system is created on the basis
of persistent programming paradigm whereas, a object relational is built by
creating object oriented extensions of a relational system. In fact both the
products have clearly defined objectives. The following table shows the
difference among them:
Object Relational DBMS Object Oriented DBMS
The features of these DBMS include: The features of these DBMS include:
Support for complex data types Supports complex data types,
Powerful query languages support Very high integration of database
through SQL. with the programming language.
Good protection of data against Very good performance.
programming errors But not as powerful at querying as
relational.
One of the major asset here is SQL. It is based on object oriented
Although, SQL is not as powerful as a programming languages, thus, are very
Programming Language, but it is none- strong in programming, however, any
the-less essentially a fourth generation error of a data type made by a
language, thus, it provides excellent programmer may effect many users.
protection of data from the
Programming errors.
The relational model has a very rich These databases are still evolving in
foundation for query optimization, this direction. They have reasonable
which helps in reducing the time taken systems in place.
to execute a query.
These databases make the querying as The querying is possible but somewhat
simple as in relational even, for difficult to get.
complex data types and multimedia
data.
Although the strength of these DBMS Some applications that are primarily
is SQL, it is also one of major run in the RAM and require a large
weaknesses from the performance number of database accesses with high
point of view in memory applications. performance may find such DBMS
more suitable. This is because of rich
programming interface provided by
such DBMS. However, such
application may not support very
strong query capabilities. A typical
example of one such application is
database required for CAD.
172 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

(ii) Describe an application scenario (in brief) for which you would choose
an ORDBMS and explain why. 6
Ans. A relational database management system (RDBMS) that supports object
classes as data types is called object-relational database management. The
term “object relational” is also applied imprecisely by the database industry to
any number of products (especially SQL-based ones) that have some object-
oriented and pseudo-relational features. There is no formal definition for this
commercial usage of the term.
An object-relational database (ORD) or object-relational database management
system (ORDBMS) is a relational database management system that allows
developers to integrate the database with their own custom data types and
methods. The term object-relational database is sometimes used to describe
external software products running over traditional DBMSs to provide similar
features; these systems are more correctly referred to as object-relational
mapping systems.
Whereas RDBMS or SQL-DBMS products focused on the efficient
management of data drawn from a limited set of data types (defined by the
relevant language standards), an object-relational DBMS allows software
developers to integrate their own types and the methods that apply to them
into the DBMS. The goal of ORDBMS technology is to allow developers to
raise the level of abstraction at which they view the problem domain.
In an RDBMS, it would be fairly common to see SQL statements like this:
CREATE TABLE Customers (
Id CHAR(12) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
Surname VARCHAR(32) NOT NULL,
FirstName VARCHAR(32) NOT NULL,
DOB DATE NOT NULL
);
SELECT InitCap(Surname) || ‘, ‘ || InitCap(FirstName)
FROM Customers
WHERE Month(DOB) = Month(getdate())
AND Day(DOB) = Day(getdate())

Most current SQL databases allow the creation of custom functions,

which would allow the query to be expressed as:

SELECT Formal(Id)
FROM Customers
MCS-043 GPH Book 173

WHERE Birthday(Id) = Today()

In an object-relational database, one might see something like this,

where the data types and expressions such as BirthDay() are user-defined.
CREATE TABLE Customers (
Id Cust_Id NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
Name PersonName NOT NULL,
DOB DATE NOT NULL
);
SELECT Formal( C.Name )
FROM Customers C
WHERE BirthDay ( C.DOB ) = TODAY;

Another advantage to the object-relational model is that the database

can make use of the relationships between data to easily collect related
records. In an address book application, an additional table would be
added to the ones above to hold zero or more addresses for each user.
Using a traditional RDBMS, collecting information for both the user
and their address requires a “join”:

SELECT InitCap(C.Surname) || ‘, ‘ || InitCap(C.FirstName), A.city

FROM Customers C, Addresses A
WHERE A.Cust_Id=C.Id — the join
AND A.city=”New York”

The same query in an object-relational database is much simpler:

SELECT Formal( C.Name )

FROM Customers C
WHERE C.address.city=”New York” — the linkage is ‘understood’

Many of the ideas of early object-relational database efforts have largely been
added to SQL:1999. In fact, any product that adheres to the object-oriented
aspects of SQL:1999 could be described as an object-relational database
management product. For example, IBM’s DB2, Oracle database, and Microsoft
SQL Server, make claims to support this technology and do so with varying
degrees of success.
Applications scenario for an ORDBMS is better choice are :
174 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Some application requires large volume of data to be handled. These application

even requires that proper user should only be provided with proper data. If we
have constructed a data structure then it should be shared whenever required.
The following application normally requires that object oriented concepts to
improve performance.
Engineering Design Databases : Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing
applications use engineering design databases. The complex objects can be
recursively partitioned into smaller objects. These objects posses different
levels of data abstraction. This could be easily handled by object oriented
approach.
Multimedia Databases : Now a days the office application uses various
kinds of data such as text, video and sound etc. These data are called multimedia
data. These multimedia data are stored as a sequence of bytes with variable
length, and segments of data are linked together for easy reference. Thus
object oriented approach supports up to a great extent to handle these data.
Expert System : The Artificial Intelligence and Expert system uses knowledge
base. The data are in the form of knowledge. The representation of knowledge
can be done using various techniques. The data to be stored are more complex.
The rules are inserted into the knowledge bases. These knowledge bases can
easily be handled by using object oriented approach.

(iii) Consider the following relations:

Society (S_id, S_name, S_cause, S_date,S_address)
Member (M_id, M_name, M_phone ,M_address )
Event (E_id, E_desc, S_id, M_id, E_date)
Write the relational algebraic queries for the following ; 4
(a) List the event details by the societies for the cause of “AIDS”
Ans. π E_dosc ( σ s_cause = 'AIDS' (Society Event)).

(b) Show the details of all the members who have been involved in any
event organized by the society whose name is “XYZ”.
σ
Ans. π M_id, M_name M_phone, M_addres ( s_name = 'xyz' (society Event
Member))

4.(a) What is clustering in data mining and how is it different from

classification? Briefly describe the Nearest Neighbour Clustering
algorithm. 15
Ans. Clustering is grouping things with similar attribute values into the
MCS-043 GPH Book 175

same group. Given a database D={ t1,t2,…….,tn} of tuples and an integer

value K, the clustering problem is to defined as mapping where each tuple ti is
assigned to one cluster Kj, 1<=j<=k.
A cluster Kj , contains precisely those tuples mapped to it. Unlike the
classification problem, clusters are not known in advance. The user has to
enter the value of the number of clusters k.
In other words a cluster can be defined as the collection of data objects that
are similar in nature, as per certain defining property, but these objects are
dissimilar to the objects in other clusters.
However , classification task maps data into predefined groups or classes.
Given a database D={ t1,t2,…….,tn} and a set of classes C={ C1,…..,Cm},
the classification problem is to define a mapping f:D->C where each ti, is
assigned to one class, that is , it divides database D into classes specified in the
Set C.

Examples of classification :
• Teachers classify students marks data into a set of grades as A, B, C, D, or
F.
• Classification of the height of a set of persons into the classes tall, medium,
or short.
Clustering is a very useful exercise especially for identifying similar groups
from the given data. Such data can be about buying patterns, geographical
locations, web information and many more.

Examples of Clustering :
• To segment the customer database of a departmental store based on similar
buying patterns.
• To identify similar web usage patterns etc.

Nearest Neighbour Clustering

In this approach, items are iteratively merged into the existing clusters that are
closest.
It is an incremental method the threshold , t , used to determine if items are
added to existing clusters or a new cluster is created. This process continues
until all patterns are labeled or no additional labeling occurs.

Algorithm of Nearest Neighbour Clustering is as follows

Input :
176 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

D = { t1,t2,…….,tn} //set of elements

A //adjacency matrix showing distance between elements
k //number of desired clusters
Output :
K //set of clusters
Nearest Neighbour Clustering :
K1={ ti };
K={ K1};
k=1;
for i=2 to n do
Find the tm in some cluster Km in K such that distance (ti , tm) is the smallest;
If dis(ti , tm) <= t then
Km= Km U ti ;
Else
k=k+1;
kk={ti};

(b) What is a mechanism for deadlock detection ? Explain with the help
of a diagram. 5
Ans. Deadlock Detection
Deadlocks can be described precisely in terms of a directed graph called a
wait for graph. This graph consists of a pair G = (V, E), where V is a set of
vertices and E is a set of edges. The set of vertices consists of all the transaction
in the system. Each element in the set E of edges is an ordered pair Ti → Tj . If
Ti → Tj is in E, then there is a directed edge from transaction Ti to Tj, implying
that transaction Ti is waiting for transaction Tj to release a data item that it
needs.
When transaction Ti requests a data item currently being held by transaction Tj
then the edge Ti → Tj is inserted in the wait-for graph. This edge is remove
only when transaction Tj is no longer holding a data item needed by transaction
Ti.
A deadlock exists in the system if and only if the wait-for graph contains a
cycle. Each transaction involved in the cycle is said to be deadlocked. To
detect deadlocks, the systems needs to maintain the wait-for graph, and
periodically to invoke an algorithm that searches for a cycle in the graph.

To illustrate these concepts, consider the wait-for graph in figure (1), which
depicts the following situation:
MCS-043 GPH Book 177

T26 T28

T25

T27

Wait-for graph with no cycle

• Transaction T25 is waiting for transactions T26 and T27.

• Transaction T27 is waiting for transactions T26.
• Transaction T26 is waiting for transactions T28.
Since the graph has no cycle, the system is not in a deadlock state.
Suppose now that transaction T28 is requesting an item held by T27. The edge
T28 → T27 is added to the wait-for graph, resulting in the new system state in
figure (2). This time, the graph contains the cycle.
T26 → T28 → T27 → T26
implying that transactions T26, T27 and T28 are all deadlock.

T26 T28

T25

T27

Wait-for graph with a cycle

If deadlocks occur frequently, then the detection algorithm should be invoked

more frequently than usual. Data items allocated to deadlocked transactions
will be unavailable to other transactions until the deadlock can be broken. In
addition, the number of cycles in the graph may also grow. In the worst case,
we would invoke the detection algorithm every time a request for allocation
could not be granted immediately.

5. Explain the following terms :

(i) Object identity
Ans. An identity in object-oriented programming, object-oriented design and
178 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

object-oriented analysis describes the property of objects that distinguishes

them from other objects. This is closely related to the philosophical concept
of identity.
Identity is closely associated with the location that objects are stored in. Some
programming languages implement object identity by using the location of the
object in computer memory as the mechanism for realizing object identity.
However, objects can move from one place to another without change to their
identity, and can be stored in places other than computer memory, so this does
not fully characterize object identity
Identity of objects allows objects to be treated as black boxes. The object
need not expose its internal structure. It can still be referred to, and its other
properties can be accessed via its external behaviour associated with the identity.
The identity provides a mechanism for referring to such parts of the object
that are not exposed in the interface. Thus, identity is the basis for polymorphism
in object-oriented programming

(ii) Serializability
Ans. In databases and transaction processing, serializability is the property of
a schedule being serializable. It means equivalence (in its outcome, the resulting
database state, the values of the database’s data) to a serial schedule (serial
schedule: No overlap in two transactions’ execution time intervals; consecutive
transaction execution). It relates to the isolation property of a transaction, and
plays an essential role in concurrency control. Transactions are usually executed
concurrently since their serial executions are typically extremely inefficient
and thus impractical.
Serializability is the major criterion for the correctness of concurrent
transactions’ executions (i.e., transactions that have overlapping execution
time intervals, and possibly access same shared resources), and a major goal
for concurrency control. As such it is supported in all general purpose database
systems. The rationale behind it is the following: If each transaction is correct
by itself, then any serial execution of these transactions is correct. As a result,
any execution that is equivalent (in its outcome) to a serial execution, is correct.
Schedules that are not serializable are likely to generate erroneous outcomes.
Well known examples are with transactions that debit and credit accounts
with money. If the related schedules are not serializable, then the total sum of
money may not be preserved. Money could disappear, or be generated from
nowhere. These violations of possibly needed other invariant preservations
are caused by one transaction writing, and “stepping on” and erasing what has
MCS-043 GPH Book 179

been written by another transaction before it has become permanent in the

database. It does not happen if serializability is maintained

(iii) ODBC
Ans. (iii) Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a standard software API
specification for using database management systems (DBMS). ODBC is
independent of programming language, database system and operating system.
ODBC was created by the SQL Access Group and first released in September,
1992. ODBC is based on the Call Level Interface (CLI) specifications from
SQL, X/Open (now part of The Open Group), and the ISO/IEC.
The ODBC API is a library of ODBC functions that let ODBC-enabled
applications connect to any database for which an ODBC driver is available,
execute SQL statements, and retrieve results.
The goal of ODBC is to make it possible to access any data from any application,
regardless of which database management system (DBMS) is handling the
data. ODBC achieves this by inserting a middle layer called a database driver
between an application and the DBMS. This layer translates the application’s
data queries into commands that the DBMS understands.

MS-ACCESS
ACCESS database
ODBC driver
Application DRIVER
manager SQL driver
MS-SQL
database
ODBC Application Architecture

(iv) OLAP
Ans. On Line Analytical Processing, or OLAP, is an approach to quickly
providing answers to analytical queries that are multidimensional in nature.
OLAP is part of the broader category business intelligence, which also includes
Extract transform load (ETL), relational reporting and data mining. The typical
applications of OLAP are in business reporting for sales, marketing,
management reporting, business process management (BPM), budgeting and
forecasting, financial reporting and similar areas. The term OLAP was created
as a slight modification of the traditional database term OLTP (On Line
Transaction Processing).
Databases configured for OLAP employ a multidimensional data model, allowing
180 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

for complex analytical and ad-hoc queries with a rapid execution time. Nigel
Pendse has suggested that an alternative and perhaps more descriptive term to
describe the concept of OLAP is Fast Analysis of Shared Multidimensional
Information (FASMI). They borrow aspects of navigational databases and
hierarchical databases that are speedier than their relational kin.
The output of an OLAP query is typically displayed in a matrix (or pivot)
format. The dimensions form the row and column of the matrix; the measures,
the values.

(v) Deductive database

Ans. A deductive database system is a database system which can make
deductions (i.e.: infer additional rules or facts) based on rules and facts stored
in the (deductive) database. Deductive database systems:
Mainly deal with rules and facts.
Use a declarative language (such as Prolog) to specify those rules and facts.
Use an inference engine which can deduce new facts and rules from those
given.
A good example of a declarative language would be Prolog, but for databases
Datalog is used more often. Datalog is both a syntactic subset of prolog and a
database query language – it is designed specifically for working with logic
and databases. Deductive databases are also known as logic databases,
knowledge systems and inferential databases. The problem domain of an expert
system / deductive database is usually quite narrow. Deductive databases are
similar to expert systems - “traditional” expert systems have assumed that all
the facts and rules they need (their knowledge base) will be loaded into main
memory, whereas a deductive database uses a database (usually on disk storage)
as its knowledge base. Traditional expert systems have usually also taken their
facts and rules from a real expert in their problem domain, whereas deductive
databases find their knowledge inherent in the data. Deductive databases and
expert systems are mainly used for:
• Replicating the functionality of a real expert.
• Hypothesis testing.
• Knowledge discovery (finding new relationships between data).
 MCS-043 : ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
June, 2007

Note : Question number 1 is compulsory. Attempt any three questions from

the rest.

1. (a) What is multivalued dependency? How is 4NF related to multivalued

dependency? Is 4NF dependency preserving in nature? Justify your
answer. 4
Ans. Multivalued dependencies are a consequence of first normal form (1NF),
which disallowed an attribute in a tuple to have a set of values. If we have two
or more multivalued independent attributes in the same relation schema, we
get into a problem of having to repeat every value of one of the attributes with
every value of the other attribute to keep the relation state consistent and to
maintain the independence among the attributes involved. This constraint is
specified by a multivalued dependency.

Formal Definition of Multivalued Dependency

A multivalued dependency (MVD) χ Y specified on relation schema
R, where χ and Y are both subsets of R, specifies the following constraint on
any relation state r of R: If two tuples t 1 and t 2 exist in r such that
t 1[ χ ] = t 2 [ χ ], then two tuples t 3 and t 4 should also exist in r with the following
properties, where we use Z to denote (R − ( χ UY)) :

t 3 [χ]=t 4 [χ] = t1[χ]=t 2 [χ].

t 3 [γ]=t1[γ] and t 4 [γ]=t 2 [γ]. where the t1, t2, t3, and t4 are not necessarily
t 3 [Ζ]=t 2 [Ζ] and t 4 [Ζ]=t1[Ζ],
distinct.

(a)
182 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

EMP

ENAME PNAME DNAME

Sanjay X Johny
Sanjay Y Anita
Sanjay X Anita
Sanjay Y Johny

(b)
EMP_PROJECTS

ENAME PNAME ENAME DNAME

Sanjay X Sanjay Johny

Sanjay Y Sanjay Anita
(c)

SUPPLY

SNAME PARTNAME PROJNAME

Sanjay Bolt ProjX

Sanjay Nut ProjY
Adamearth Bolt ProjY
Winston Nut ProjZ
Adamearth Nail ProjX
---------------------------------------------------
Adamearth Bolt ProjX
Sanjay Bolt Projy

R1 R2 R3

SNAME PARTNAME SNAME PROJNAME PARTNAME PROJNAME

Sanjay Bolt Sanjay ProjX Bolt ProjX

Sanjay Nut Sanjay ProjY Nut ProjY
Adamearth Bolt Adamearth ProjY Bolt ProjY
Winston Nut Winston ProjZ Nut ProjZ
Adamearth Nail Adamearth ProjX Nail ProjX

Figure : Fourth and fifth normal form. (a) The EMP relation with two MVDs:
MCS-043 GPH Book 183

ENAME PNAME and ENAME DNAME. (b) Decomposing EMP

into two relations in 4NF. (c) The relation SUPPLY with no MVDs satisfies
4NF but does not satisfy 5NF if the JD (R1, R2, R3) holds. (d) Decomposing
SUPPLY into three 5NF relations.
Whenever χ Y holds, we say that χ multidetermines Y. Because of the
symmetry in the definition, whenever χ Y holds in R, so does χ Z.
Hence, χ Y implies χ Z, and therefore it is sometimes written
as χ Y|Z

Relation of 4NF with Multivalued Dependency:

A relation schema R is in 4NF with respect to a set D of functional and
multivalued dependencies if for all multivalued dependencies in D+ of the form
a ®® b, where a Í R and b Í R, at least one of the following hold:
 a ®® b is trivial (i.e., b Í a or a a È b = R )
 a is a superkey for schema R

Is 4NF dependency preserving in Nature?

Yes, 4NF is dependency preserving.

(b) What are Assertions? What is the utility of assertions? How are
Assertions different from Views? Describe both Assertions and Views
with the help of example. 6
Ans. Refer to Chapter-4, Q.No.-1, Page No.-48

(c) What is UML? How does UML have an edge over other database
designing tools? With the help of an example, describe the designing of
database by using a UML class diagram. 6
Ans. UML is a standard modeling language used for modeling software systems
of varying complexities. System can range from enterprise information systems
to distributed web based systems.
Since UML is accepted by the Object Management Group (OMG) as the
standard for modeling object-oriented programs it becomes one of the automatic
choices. UML has quickly become one of the popularly used tools for modeling
business and software application needs. The UML became popular due to the
following reasons:
(1) It is very flexible. It allows for many different types of modeling. Some of
them include:
184 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

• Business process modeling event workflow.

• Sequencing of events,
• Defining database architecture etc.
(2) It is language and platform-independent. It allows software architects to
model any application, on any operating system in any programme language
or network.
(3) UML, supports object-oriented methodologies. Even if the concepts are
based on object-oriented methods, the resulting structure and behaviour of
UML can be used to design both relational and object-oriented models.
(4) The integration of various SDLC stages through UML tools has brought
the analysts, modeler, designers, and the software application developers closer
to each other.

UML Class Diagrams and Database Design

The class diagram sometimes may be considered as an alternative notation to
E-R diagram. In UML class diagram contains:
• ‘Class’ – is displayed as a box. It has three sections”
“Top Section” – Class Name
“ Middle Section” – Attributes
“Last Section” – Operations
• Associations : Relationship Types are called Associations.
• Links : Relationship instances are called Links.
• Binary Association : Represented as a line connecting the participating classes.
• Linked Attributed: Connected to the Association’s line by dashed line.
• Multiplicities : The (Minimum and Maximum) constraints.
• Reflexive Association : A Recursive Relationship
• Aggregation: To represent a relationship between a whole object and its
component parts.
• Different unidirectional and bi-directional Associations.

The specialisation/generalization can be represented in UML class

diagrams as :
• Basic notation is to connect the subclass by vertical lines to horizontal lines.
• A blank triangle indicates a specialisation/generalization with the disjoint
constraint and a filled triangle indicates an overlapping constraint.
• The root super class is known as the base class and the leaf nodes are called
terminal nodes.
Let us explain the role of class diagram with generalization/specialisation
MCS-043 GPH Book 185

hierarchy in a database structure design with the help of an example. Consider

the following UML class diagram for a University.

Student Programme
ID Programmecode
Name Name
Phone Fee
..... .....
registersprogramme ( ) addprogramme
viewtimetable ( )
......

Full time student Part time student

viewtimetable ( ) numberofhrs
......

viewtimetable ( )
feecalculation ( )
Figure : UML class diagram

Please note that in the diagram above, you can make clear-cut table design.
One such possible design may be:
STUDENT (ID, Name, Phone, type (PT, FT))
PT (ID, numberofhrs)
PROGRAMME (Programmecode, Name, Fee)
Stuprog (ID, Programmecode)
You can also identify several functions/data processing functions/triggers
relating to functions of classes. For example, feecalculation( ) may need to be
implemented as a stored procedure while calculating the fee of part-time
students, whereas addprogramme( ) is a simple data entry function. Thus,
UML Class diagram with generalization/ specialisation is a very useful database
design tool.

(d) With the help of a block diagram describe the phases of Query
processing. How do we optimize a Query under consideration? Does Query
optimisation contribute to the measurement of Query cost? Support
your answer with suitable explanation. 8
186 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Ans. Refer to Chapter-5, Q.No.-1, Page No.-68

(e) What do you mean by transaction? What are the properties of a

transaction? Violation of which property causes Lost Update problem?
Justify your answer with suitable example. 5
Ans. Refer to Chapter-5, Q.No.-15, Page No.-77

(f) Access control is the feature of which category of language (DSDL,

DDL, DML, DCL)? At which level of ANSI-SPARC 3 level architecture
does Access control work? Describe the commands used for Access
control. Give an example in support of operation of each command. 6
Ans. Access control is the feature of data control language. It works on
external level of ANSI–SPARC 2 level architecture the 2 commands for it are:
(1) Grant
(2) Revoke

Grant Command : SQL is also used in multiuser environments. The GRANT

command is used to permit users access to the database. The syntax for
GRANT command is:
GRANT <privilege_name> | ALL
ON <object> TO <user | PUBLIC>
[WITH GRANT OPTION];
<privilege_name> specifies the actions such as INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE,
SELECT, etc. the user can perform on the <object>. The clause ALL indicates
all the privileges.

<user> specifies the name of the user to whom the privileges have been granted.
To grant the privileges to all the uses PUBLIC option can be used.
[WITH GRANT OPTION] is optional.
A user having privileges can pass on his privileges to another user by using the
GRANT command. The recipient user can then grant the same privileges to
some other user. For example, when an owner of a table grants privilege on
the table to another user B, the privilege can be given with or without Grant
Option. If the [WITH GRANT OPTION] is given, this means that B can also grant
privilege to other user, else B cannot grant privilege to other users.

For example a query to provide SELECT permission on the DEPARTMENT

table to user ‘anita’ and allow her to give further grants will be as follows:
MCS-043 GPH Book 187

GRANT SELECT ON DEPARTMENT

TO anita WITH GRANT OPTION;

We can also grant privileges on individual columns in a table. For example, to

give user ‘anita’ , the privilege to update the column EMP_NAME, we will
raise the following query:
GRANT UPDATE (EMP _NAME)
ON EMPLOYEE TO anita;

Revoke Command
The Revoke command is used to cancel database privileges from user(s). The
syntax for revoke command is

REVOKE <privilege_name> | ALL

ON <object> FROM <user | PUBLIC>;
For example a query to revoke the privilege we gave to user ‘anita’ will be as
follows:
REVOKE SELECT ON DEPARTMENT
FROM anita;

(g) Describe the reference architecture of a distributed DBMS, with the

help of a block diagram. 5
Ans. Refer to Dec-2006, Q.No-2, Page No.-168

2. (a) Compare and contrast the following: 8

(i) Inclusion dependencies and Template dependencies
Ans. An inclusion dependency R.X<S.Y between two sets of attributes – X of
a relation scheme R, and Y of a relation schema LS – is defined as the following
constraint:

If r and s are the relation state of R and S respectively at any specific time
then:
x (r(R)) ⊆ y (s(S))
The subnet relationship does not necessarily have to be a proper subnet. The
sets of attributes on which the inclusion dependency is specified viz. X of R
and Y of S above, must have the same number of attributes. In addition, the
domains for each corresponding pair of attributes in X and Y should be
188 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

compatible. The objectives of inclusion Dependencies are to formalise two

important types of interrelation constraints that exist between the relations,
thus cannot be expressed using FDs and MVDs that are:

(1) Referential integrity constraints,

(2) Class / subclass relationships
The common rules for making inferences from defined inclusion dependencies
(Inclusion Dependency Inference Rule – IDIR) are:
IDIR1 (reflexivity): R.X< R.X
IDIR2 (attribute correspondence): if R.X < S.Y

Here
X = {A1, A2, ……., An} and
Y = {B1, B2, ….., Bn} and
Ai correspondence to Bi for 1 in

IDIR3 (transitivity): if R.X < S.Y and S.Y < T.Z then R.X < T.Z

Template Dependencies
The Template dependencies are the more general and natural class of data
dependencies that generalizes the concepts of JDs. A template dependency is
representation of the statement that a relation is invariant under a certain tableau
mapping. Therefore, it resembles a tableau. It consists of a number of hypothesis
rows that define certain variables with a special row at the bottom, called the
conclusion row. A relation r satisfies a template dependency, if and only if, a
valuation (say ρ )that successfully maps the hypothesis rows to tuples in a
relation r, finds a map for conclusion row to a tuple in r.
Definition : A template dependency (TD) on a relation scheme R is a pair T =
(T, w) where T={w1, w2, …..wk} is a set of hypothesis rows on R, and w
is a single conclusion row on R. A relation r(R) satisfies TD T if for every
valuation ρ of T such that ρ(T) ⊆ r, ρ can be extended to show that
ρ(w) ∈ r. A template dependency is trivial if every relation over R satisfies it.

(ii) XML and HTML

Refer to Dec-2006, Q1(vii), Page No.-166

(iii) Centralised 2PL and Distributed 2PL

Ans. Centralised 2PL
MCS-043 GPH Book 189

As the name of this protocol suggests that in this protocol a single site known
as the central site maintains the entire locking information. Therefore, it has
only one lock manager that grants and releases locks. There is only one lock
manager, for the entire distributed DBMS that can grant and release locks.
This scheme can be modified by making the transaction manager responsible
for making all the lock requests rather than the sub transaction’s local transaction
manager. Thus, the centralised lock manager needs to talk to only the transaction
coordinator.

One of the major advantage of the centralised 2PL is that this protocol can
detect deadlocks very easily as there is only one lock manager. However, this
lock manager often, becomes the bottleneck in the distributed database and
may make a system less reliable. This is, due to the fact, that in such a case,
for the system to function correctly it needs to depend on a central site meant
for lock management.

Distributed 2PL
The basic objective of this protocol is to overcome the problem of the central
site controlling the locking. It distributes the lock managers to every site such
that each the lock manager is responsible for managing the locks on the data
items of that site. In case there is no replication of data, this protocol, thus,
will be identical to the primary copy locking.
Distributed 2PL is a Read–One–Write–All type of protocol. It means that for
reading a data item any copy of the replicated data may be read (as all values
must be consistent), however, for any update all the replicated copies must be
exclusively locked. This scheme manages the locks in a decentralised manner.
The disadvantage of this protocol is that deadlock handling is very complex,
as it needs to be determined by information from many distributed lock
managers. Another disadvantage of this protocol is the high communication
cost while updating the data, as this protocol would require locks on all the
replicated copies and updating all of them consistently.

(iv) Partitioning Clustering and Nearest Neighbour Clustering

Ans.
190 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Partition Clustering Nearest Neighbour Clustering

Technique or These techniques start with a Nearest neighbor techniques are
working randomly chosen or user- fairly intuitive in that they grow
defined clustering, then clusters by continually adding the
optimize the clustering nearest neighbor of a cluster to that
according to some validity cluster, provided that the distance
measurement. falls below a specified threshold.
Distinction from It produce single partition. An important distinction from many
other technique other techniques is that the distance
measurement may not be metric.
Number of Partitional clustering Nearest Neighbour produces many
partition techniques produce a single partition of data.
partition of the data, not a
structure like a dendrogram.
Implementation Easy to implement Less easy than Partition Clustering
Efficiency Very efficient Less efficient
Disadvantage 1 ) U s e r m u s t c h o o s e 1) Expensive for large data set
beforehand exactly how many
clusters are desired
2) The final results can vary
depending upon the initial
clustering. In fact, it may be
desirable to run the algorithm
several times with a different
initial setup and choose the
best resulting partition.

(b) Describe the architecture of Datawarehouse with the help of a block

diagram. Briefly discuss the role of each component of the datawarehouse
architecture. 7
Ans. Refer to Chapter-6, Q.No.-39, Page No.-125

(c) What do you mean by Data mining? How does Database processing
differ from Data mining processing? 5
Ans. Refer to Chapter-6, Q.No.-131

3. (a) What do you mean by clustering? Briefly describe the concept of

Hierarchical clustering. How is clustering related to Data mining? 8
Ans. Refer to Chapter-6, Q.No.-134

(b) Write short notes on the following: 6

(i) JDBC
Ans. Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) provides a standard API that is used
MCS-043 GPH Book 191

to access databases, regardless of the DBMS, through JAVA. There are many
drivers for JDBC that support popular DBMSs. However, if no such driver
exits for the DBMS that you have selected then, you can use a driver provided
by Sun Microsystems to connect to any ODBC compliant database. This is
called JDBC to ODBC Bridge. For such an application, you may need to create,
an ODBC data source for the database before, you can access it from the Java
application.

Connecting to a Database : In order to connect to a database, let us say an

Oracle database, the related JDBC driver has to be loaded by the Java Virtual
Machine class loader successfully.

// Try loading the Oracle database driver

try
{
Class.forName(“oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver”).newInstance( );
}
catch (ClassNotFoundException ce)//driver not found
{
System.err.println (“Driver not found”);
// Code to handle error
}

Now, you can connect to the database using the driver manage class that
select the appropriate driver for the database. In more complex applications,
we may use different drivers to connect to multiple databases. We may identify
our database using a URL, which helps in identifying the database. A JDBC
URL starts with “jdbc:” that indicates the use of JDBC protocol.

A sample database URL may be

jdbc:[email protected]:2000:student

To connect to the database, we need to connect with a username and password.

Assuming it to be “username” and “password”, the connection string would
be:

// Try creating a database connection

192 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

connection db_conn=
DriverManager.getConection
(jdbc:[email protected]:2000:student,
“username”,”password”)

Thus, you will now be connected. Now the next step is to execute a query.

You can create a query using the following lines:

Statement stmt =db_conn.CreateStatement( )

try {
stmt.executeQuery (
// Write your SQL query using SQL and host language
)
}catch (……….) {….}
stmt.close ( )
db_conn.close ( )

Thus, the JDBC standard allows you to handle databases through JAVA as the
host language.

(ii) Spatial Databases

Ans. A spatial database keeps track of an object in a multi–dimensional space.
A spatial database may be used to represent the map of a country along with
the information about railways, roads, irrigation facilities, and so on. Such
application are known as Geographic Information Systems (GILS).
The idea of a geographic database is to provide geographic information: therefore
they are referred to also the Geographic Information System (GIS). A GIS is
basically a collection of the Geographic information of the world. This
information is stored and analyzed on the basis of data stored in the GIS. The
data in GIS normally defines the physical properties of the geographic world,
which includes:
• spatial data such as political boundaries, maps, roads, railways, airways,
rivers, land elevation, climate etc.
• non-spatial data such as population, economic data etc.

(iii) PJNF
Ans. PJNF is defined using the concept of the join dependencies. A relation
MCS-043 GPH Book 193

schema R having a set F of functional, multivalued, and join dependencies, is

in PJNF (5 NF), if for all the join dependencies in the closure of F (referred to
as F+) that are of the form
• (R1, R2,…,Rn), where each Ri ⊆ R and R = R1 ∪ R2 ∪ .... ∪ Rn, at least
on the following holds:
• * (R1, R2, . . .,Rn) is a trivial join dependency.
• Every Ri is a superkey for R.
PJNF is also referred to as the Fifth Normal From (5NF).

Let us first define the concept of PJNF from the viewpoint of the decomposition
and then refine it later to a standard form.

Definition 1 : A JD* [R1, R2,. . ., Rn] over a relation R is trivial if it is

satisfied by every relation r(R).
The trivial JDs over R are JDs of the form *[R1, R2, . . . , Rn] where for
some i the Ri = R.

Definition 2 : A JD *[R1, R2,…,Rn] applies to a relation scheme R if R = R1

R2….Rn.

Definition 3: Let R be a relation scheme having F as the set of FDs and JDs
over R. R will be in project-joint normal form (PJNF) if for every JD *[R1,
R2, . . . Rn] which can be derived by F that applies to R, the following holds:
• The JD is trivial, or
• Every Ri is a super key for R.

For a database scheme to be in project-join normal form, every relation R in

this database scheme should be in project-join normal form with respect to F.

(c) What is Datagrid? What is the requirement of datagrid (give at least

3 requirements)? Describe the structure of datagrid with the help of a
block diagram. 6
Ans. Refer to Chapter-7, Q.No.-20, Page No.-146

4. (a) How does PostgreSQL perform storage and indexing of tables?

Briefly discuss the type of indexes involved in PostgreSQL? 7
Ans. Refer to Chapter-7, Q.No.-27, Page No.-148
194 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

(b) What do you mean by tuning of SQL? What are the steps involved in
tuning of SQL? Discuss each step briefly. 6
Ans. An important facet of database system performance tuning is the tuning
of SQL statements. SQL tuning involves three basic steps:
• Identifying high load or top SQL statements that are responsible for a large
share of the application workload and system resources, by reviewing past
SQL execution history available in the system.
• Verifying that the execution planes produced by the query optimizer for
these statements perform reasonably.
• Implementing corrective actions to generate better execution plans for poorly
performing SQL statements.
These three steps are repeated until the system performance reaches a
satisfactory level or no more statements can be tuned.
Let us consider the Oracle to explain the tuning of SQL.

SQL tuning : Oracle SQL tuning is a phenomenally complex subject.

The goals of SQL tuning focus on improving the execution plan to fetch the
rows with the smallest number of database “touches” (LIO buffer gets and
PIO physical reads).
• Remove unnecessary large-table full-table scans: Unnecessary full-table
scans cause a huge amount of unnecessary I/O and can drag-down an entire
database. The tuning expert first evaluates the SQL based on the number of
rows returned by the query. If the query returns less than 40 percent of the
table rows, it needs tuning. The most common tuning remedy for unnecessary
full-table scans is adding indexes. Standard b-tree indexes can be added to
tables, and bitmapped and function-based indexes can also eliminate full-table
scans. In some cases, an unnecessary full-table scan can be forced to use an
index by adding an index hint to the SQL statement.
• Cache small-table full-table scans : In cases where a full-table scan is the
fastest access method, the administrator should ensure that a dedicated data
buffer is available for the rows. In Oracle7, you can issue “alter table xxx
cache”. In Oracle8 and beyond, the small table can be cached by forcing it
into the KEEP pool.
• Verify optimal index usage : This is especially important when using the
rule-based optimizer. Oracle sometimes has a choice of indexes, and the tuning
professional must examine each index and ensure that Oracle is using the
proper index.
A strategic plan for Oracle SQL tuning : Many people ask where they
MCS-043 GPH Book 195

should start when tuning Oracle SQL. Tuning Oracle SQL is like fishing. You
must first fish in the Oracle library cache to extract SQL statements and rank
the statements by their amount of activity.

Step 1: Identifying high-impact SQL: The SQL statements will be ranked

according the number of executions and will be tuned in this order. The
executions column of the v$sqlarea view and the stats$sql_summary or the
dba_hist_sql_summary table can be used to locate the most frequently used
SQL. Note that we can display SQL statements by:
• Rows processed: Queries that process a large number of rows will have
high I/O and may also have impact on the TEMP tablespace.
• Buffer gets: High buffer gets may indicate a resource-intensive query.
• Disk reads: High disk reads indicate a query that is causing excessive I/O.
• Memory KB: The memory allocation of a SQL statement is useful for
identifying statements that are doing in-memory table joins.
• CPU secs: This identifies the SQL statements that use the most processor
resources.
• Sorts: Sorts can be a huge slowdown, especially if they’re being done on a
disk in the TEMP tablespace.
• Executions: The more frequently executed SQL statements should be tuned
first, since they will have the greatest impact on overall performance.

Step 2: Determine the execution plan for SQL: As each SQL statement is
identified, it will be “explained” to determine its existing execution plan. There
are a host of third-party tools on the market that show the execution plan for
SQL statements. The most common way of determining the execution plan
for a SQL statement is to use Oracle’s explain plan utility. By using explain
plan, the Oracle DBA can ask Oracle to parse the statement and display the
execution class path without actually executing the SQL statement.
This syntax is piped into the SQL optimizer, which will analyze the query and
store the plan information in a row in the plan table identified by RUN1. Please
note that the query will not execute; it will only create the internal access
information in the plan table. The plan tables contains the following fields:
• operation: The type of access being performed. Usually table access, table
merge, sort or index operation
• options: Modifiers to the operation, specifying a full table, a range table or a
join
• object_name: The name of the table being used by the query component
196 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

• Process ID: The identifier for the query component

• Parent_ID: The parent of the query component. Note that several query
components may have the same parent.

Step 3: Tune the SQL statement: For those SQL statements that possess a
non-optimal execution plan, the SQL will be tuned by one of the following
methods:
• Adding SQL “hints” to modify the execution plan
• Re-write SQL with Global Temporary Tables
• Rewriting the SQL in PL/SQL. For certain queries this can result in more
than a 20x performance improvement. The SQL would be replaced with a call
to a PL/SQL package that contained a stored procedure to perform the query.

(c) What is SQLJ? What are the requirements of SQLJ? Briefly describe
the working of SQLJ. Can SQLJ use dynamic SQL? If yes, then how?
Otherwise specify what type of SQL it can use. 7
Ans. Refer to Chapter-4, Q.No.-11, Page No.-58

5. (a) What do you mean by Multiversioning? What are the various

schemes available for multiversioning? Describe any one scheme in
detail. 6
Ans. Multi-version schemes maintain old versions of data item to increase
concurrency.
These schemes are available for:
• Multi version Timestamp Ordering
• Multi-version Two-Phase Locking
In multi-version schemes each successfully write result in the creation of a
new version of the data item written.
Timestamps can be used to label the versions. When a read (Q) operation is
issued, you can select an appropriate version of Q based on the timestamp of
the transaction, and return the value of the selected version. Read operation
never has to wait as an appropriate version is returned immediately.

Multi-Version Timestamp Ordering

Each data item Q has a sequence of versions <Q1, Q2, ….,Qm>. Each version
Qk contains three data fields:
Content – the value of version Qk.
W-timestamp (Qk) – timestamp of the transaction that created (wrote) the
MCS-043 GPH Book 197

version Qk
R–timestamp (Qk) – largest timestamp of a transaction that successfully
read version Qk.

When a transaction Ti creates a new version Qk of Q, Qk’s W-timestamp and

R-timestamp are initialised to TS (Ti). R–timestamp of Qk is updated whenever
a transaction Tj reads Qk, and TS (Tj) > R–timestamp (Qk).

(1) If transaction Ti issues a read(Q), then the value returned is the content of
version Qk.
(2) If transaction Ti issues a write(Q), and if TS(Ti)< R-timestamp(Qk), then
Transaction Ti is rolled back, otherwise, if TS(Ti)=W–timestamp(Qk), the
content of Qk are overwritten a new version of Q is created.
The following multi–version technique ensure serialisability.

Suppose that transaction Ti issues a read (Q) or write (Q) operation. Let Qk
denote the versions of Q whose write timestamp is the largest write timestamp
less than or equal to TS (Ti).
(1) If transaction Ti issues a read (Q), then the value returned is the content of
version Qk.
(2) If transaction Ti issues a write (Q), and if TS (Ti) < LR–timestamp(Qk),
then transaction Ti is rolled back. Otherwise, if TS(Ti)= W–timestamp(Qk),
the contents of Qk are overwritten, then a version of Q is created.
Read always succeeds. A write by Ti is rejected if some other transaction Ti
(in the serialization order defined by the timestamp values) should read Ti’s
write, has already read a version created by a transaction older than Ti.

Multi–Version Two-Phase Locking

It differentiates between read-only transactions and update transactions. Update
transactions acquire read and write locks, and hold all locks up to the end of
the transaction. That is, update transactions follow rigorous two-phase locking.
(1) Each successful write results in the creation of a new version of the data
item written.
(2) Each version of a data item has a single timestamp whose value is obtained
from a counter-transaction that is incremented during commit processing.

(b) What is Audit trail? Give four benefits provided by Audit trail to
DBMS. 4
198 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Ans. Refer to Chapter-5, Q.No.-60, Page No.-103

(c) What do you mean by Multilevel Security? Discuss the techniques

involved in support of multilevel security. 5
Ans. Refer to Chapter-5, Q.No.-61, Page No.-104

(d) What are Distributed databases? How is data distribution performed

in DDBMS? Give two advantages and two disadvantages of DDBMS. 5
Ans. A distribute database system consists of a collection of sites, each of
which may participate in the execution of transactions, which access data at
one site, or several sites. The main difference between centralised and
distributed database systems is that, in the former, the data resides in one
single Centralised control, while in the latter, the data resides in several sites
under to control of local distributed DBMS components which are under the
control of one DBMS.

The primary advantage of distributed database systems is the ability to share

and access data in a reliable and efficient manner.
(1) Data sharing and Distributed Control : The primary advantage of
accomplishing data sharing by means of data distribution is that each site is
able to retain a degree of control over data stored locally. Depending upon the
design of the distributed database system, each local administrator may have a
different degree of autonomy.
(2) Reflects organisational structure : Many organizations are distributed
over several locations. If an organisation has many offices in different cities,
databases used in such an application are distributed over these locations.
Such an organisation may keep a database at each branch office containing
details of the staff that work at that location, the local properties that are for
rent, etc. The staff at a branch office will make local inquires to such data of
the database. The company headquarters may wish to make global inquiries
involving the access of data at all or a number of branches.

Disadvantages of Data Distribution

The primary disadvantage of distributed database systems is the added
complexity required to ensure proper coordination among the sites. This
increased complexity takes the form of:
• Higher Software development cost: Distributed database systems are complex
to implement and, thus, more costly. Increased complexity implies that we
MCS-043 GPH Book 199

can expect the procurement and maintenance costs for DDBMS to be higher
than those for a centralised DBMS. In additions to software, a distributed
DBMS requires additional hardware to establish a network between sites.
• Greater potential for bugs: Since the sites of a distributed system operate
concurrently, it is more difficult to ensure the correctness of algorithms. The
art of constructing distributed algorithms is an active and important area of
research.

A step-wise distributed database design methodology

Following is a step-wise methodology for distributed database design.
(1) Examine the nature of distribution. Find out whether an organisation needs
to have a database at each branch office, or in each city, or possibly at a
regional level. It has direct implication from the viewpoint of fragmentation.
For example, in case database is needed at each branch office, the relations
may fragment on the basis of branch number.
(2) Create a detailed global E-R diagram, if so needed and identify relations
from entities.
(3) Analyse the most important transactions in the system and identify where
horizontal or vertical fragmentation may be desirable and useful.
(4) Identify the relations that are not to be fragmented. Such relations will be
replicated everywhere. From the global ER diagram, remove the relations that
are not going to be fragmented.
(5) Examine the relations that are on one-site of a relationship and decide a
suitable fragmentation schema for these relations. Relations on the many-side
of a relationship may be the candidates for derived fragmentation.
(6) During the previous step, check for situations where either vertical or
mixed fragmentation would be needed, that is, where the transactions require
access to a subset of the attributes of a relation.
 MCS-043 : ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
December, 2007

Note: Question number 1 is compulsory. Answer any three questions from

the rest.

1. (a) Why is the functional dependency called so? Consider the following
functional dependency:
if you study → you will pass
Create instances where this functional dependency will hold/not hold.
12

(b) Create and explain an object oriented database for the following
UML diagram. Assume your attributes and functions. 8

Fruit

Mango Banana

Pulp Seed

(c) Consider the following table: 10

MCS-043 GPH Book 201

Employee_name Project_name Dependent_name

Mohan X Shyam
Mohan Y Ram
Mohan X Ram
Mohan Y Shyam

Identify the multivalued dependencies in the above table and write an

SQL code to check whether the table satisfies the multivalued dependency
identified by you.

(d) Explain the Apriori algorithm for finding frequent itemsets using an
example. 10

2. (a) What are assertions? What is the syntax for declaration of an

assertion? Also, give an example of assertion. 10

(b) Explain any two examples of vendor-specific security. 10

3. (a) Given the relational schemes:

ENROLL (S#, C#, Section) S# represents student number.
TEACH (Prof, C#, Section) C# represents course number
ADVISE (Prof, S#) Prof is a thesis advisor of S#
GRADES (S#, C#, Grade, Year)
STUDENT (S#, Sname) Sname is a student name
Write queries expressed in relational algebra.
(i) List all students taking courses with Mohan or Shyam.
(ii) List all students taking at least one course that their advisor teaches.
(iii) List those professors who teach more than one section of the same
course. 12

(b) Explain the architecture of a Data warehouse with the help of a

figure. 8

4. (a) Explain the tasks in the KDD process with the help of a figure.
10

(b) Explain the architecture of Oracle 10g with the help of a figure. 10
202 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

5. Consider the universal relation

R = {A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J} and a set of functional dependencies.

AB →C 
A → DE 
 
F=  
F →GH 
D → IJ 

Decompose R into BCNF. 10

(b) Explain the component architecture of DDBMS with the help of a

figure. 10
 MCS – 043: ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGNS
December, 2007
Note: Question number 1 is compulsory. Attempt any three questions from the
rest.

1. (a) Why is the functional dependency called so? Consider the following
functional dependency:
if you study you will pass
Create instances where this functional dependency will hold/not hold.
Ans. When a single constraint is established between two sets of attributes
from the database it is called functional dependency. A functional dependency
denoted by x → y between two sets of attributes X and Y that are subset of
universal relation “A” specifies a constraint on the possible tuples that can
form a relation state of “A”. The constraint is that, for any two tuples t1 and
t2 in “A” that have t1(X) = t2(X), we must also have t1(Y) = t2(Y). It means
that, if tuple t1 and t2 have same values for attributes X than X → Y to hold
t1 and t2 must have same values for attributes Y.
The relation schema “A” determines the function dependency of Y on X
( X → Y ) when and only when:
(1) if two tuples in “A”, agree on their X value then
(2) they must agree on their Y value.
This semantic property of functional dependency explains how the attributes
in “A” are related to one another. A FD in “A” must be used to specify constraints
on its attributes that must hold at all times.
Instance where FD hold
Name Study Pass
A Yes Yes
B Yes Yes
C No No
D No Yes
Instance where FD does not hold

Name Study Pass

A Yes Yes
B Yes No tuple violates FD is B
C No No
D No Yes
204 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

(b) Create and explain an object oriented database for the following
UML diagram. Assume your attributes and functions.
Fruit

Mango Banana

Pulp Seed

Ans. class fruit

(key name)
{ attribute string name;
attribute string color;
attribute string category;
};
class Mango extends fruit
{ attribute string variety;
attribute string shape;
relationship set <pulp> contain pulp :: pulp;
relationship set <seed> contain seed :: seed;
void getpulpqty ( );
void getseedsize ( );
};
class Banana extends fruit
{ attribute int size;
attribute string variety;
attribute string taste;
};
class pulp
{ attribute string color;
attribute string taste;
relationship Mango has :: has_pulp;
};
class seed
{ attribute string size;
MCS-043 GPH Book 205

relationship Mango has :: has_seed;

};
(c) Consider the following table:

Employee_name Project_name Dependent_name

Mohan X Shyam
Mohan Y Ram
Mohan X Ram
Mohan Y Shyam

Identify the multivalued dependencies in the above table and write an

SQL code to check whether the table satisfies the multivalued dependency
identified by you.
Ans. Multivalue Dependencies hold by the relation
1. Employee_Name Project_Name
2. Employee_Name Dependent_Name
3. Project_Name Dependent_Name
SQL Statement for:
First MVD: Select Employee_Name, Count (Distinct Project_Name)
From Emp Group By Employee_Name, Project_Name
Second MVD: Select Employee_Name, Count (Distinct Dependent_Name)
From Emp Group By Employee_Name, Dependent_Name
Third MVD: Select Project_Name, Count (Distinct Dependent_Name)
From Emp Group By Project_Name, Dependent_Name
(d) Explain the Apriori algorithm for finding frequent itemsets using an
example.
Refer to Q.No.-60,61 Page No.-138-139
2. (a) What are assertions? What is the syntax for declaration of an
assertion? Also, give an example of assertion.
Refer to Q.No.-1 Page No.-48-49
(b) Explain any two examples of vendor-specific security.
Ans. Individual vendors largely determine the security schemes that may be
implemented to provide the link between the database and its interfaces.
Oracle: Oracle, provides SSL and S-HTTP security. Oracle uses Java as a
basic component of its security model. The company created its Oracle Web
Server to work most effectively with Oracle clients such as the solutions
created with the Developer/2000 or other development tools.
Oracle modified the HTTP protocol to allow a straight/direct connection between
the client and the server. This connection defines a session in which the user
206 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

is identified by a generated ID.

These enhancements are also present in the Secure Network Server (SNS)
that is included in the Oracle Universal Database a single login permits access
to any Oracle database in an enterprise system.
The Java security classes are used by the oracle development tools to give
complete security integration to the client.
Microsoft: Microsoft has included most of the key security technologies with
Internet Information Server (IIS). For user authentication, Microsoft provides
its tried-and-true challenge/response mechanism. Traditional login on the Web
presents the same security as in the basic Windows NT login. Unfortunately,
only Microsoft Internet Explorer browser supports this login approach.
For database access, IIS security has been integrated with Microsoft SQL
Server through the Internet Database Connector. Although, users must login
through an HTML login form, the information may be verified by a SQL Server
stored procedure. Microsoft has also integrated the Kerberos security
architecture into Windows NT Server. By releasing the server, Microsoft hopes
to integrate the Kerberos native to the NT Server with public key security.
Microsoft has already released a Certificate Server API in an attempt to create
a Certificate Server standard.
3. (a) Given the relational schemes:
ENROLL (S#, C#, Section) S# represents student number.
TEACH (Prof, C#, Section) C# represents course number
ADVISE (Prof, S#) Prof is a thesis advisor of S#
GRADES (S#, C#, Grade, Year)
STUDENT (S#, Sname) Sname is a student name
Write queries expressed in relational algebra.
(i) List all students taking courses with Mohan or Shyam.
Ans.
(i)
π s# (σ ( A.Sname = 'Mohan' ∨ A.SName = 'Shyam') ∧ Enroll.C#=A.C# (Enroll Student
9A(Enroll)))

(ii) List all students taking at least one course that their advisor teaches.
πS# (σ ENROLL.S#=ADVISE.S# (ADVISE TEACH ENROLL))

(iii) List those professors who teach more than one section of the same
course.

(
π prof σ count (section ) >1 ( g prof-c# ( teachers ) ) )
MCS-043 GPH Book 207

(b) Explain the architecture of a Data warehouse with the help of a

figure.
Refer to Q.No.-39 Page No.-125-129

4. (a) Explain the tasks in the KDD process with the help of a figure.
Ans. The different tasks in KDD are as follows:
• Obtains information on application domain: It gathers knowledge from
the domain relevant to the user.
• Extracting data set: It includes extracting required data which will later, be
used for analysis.
• Data cleansing process: It involves basic operations such as, the removal
of noise, collecting necessary information to from noisy data, such as, deciding
on strategies for handling missing data fields.
• Data reduction and projection: Using dimensionality reduction or
transformation methods it reduces the effective number of dimensions under
consideration.
• Selecting data mining task: In this stage we decide what the objective of
the KDD process is. Whether it is classification, clustering, association rules
etc.
• Selecting data mining method: In this stage, we decide the methods and
the parameter to be used for searching for desired patterns in the data.
Data organised by
function The KDD Process

Create/select
target database
Data Warehousing
Select sample
data

Supply missing
values
Find important
Normalize Transform Create derived attributes and
values Values attributes value ranges

Select Data Select Data Extract Test Refine

Mining task Mining method Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge

Transform to
Different
representation
Tasks in the KDD process
208 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

· Extraction of patterns: It includes searching for desired patterns only,

because, the data-mining model may generate a lot of patterns.
· Interpretation and presentation of pattern/model.

(b) Explain the architecture of Oracle 10g with the help of a figure.
Ans. A schematic diagram of Oracle database is given below:
RECO PMON SMON

System Global Area

Database Redo Log
Buffer Cache Buffer

User Shared Dedicated

Process Server Server
Process Process
User Processes
DBWO Offline
CKPT
D000 Storage
Device

DBWO
Legend : LGWR
RECO Recoverer process User Control
PMON Process Monitor Process Files
SMON System monitor
CKPT Checkpoint
ARC0 Archiver Redo Log
DBW0 Database writer Files
LGWR Log writer
D000 Dispatcher Process
Datafiles

Oracle 10g Architecture

1. Physical Database Structures: The physical database structures of an
Oracle database, include datafiles, redo log files and control files.
Datafiles: Every Oracle database has one or more physical datafiles. The
datafiles contain all the database data. The data of logical database structures,
such as tables and indexes, is physically stored in the datafiles allocated for a
database.
Control Files: Every Oracle database has a control file. A control file contains
entries that specify the physical structure of the database.
Redo Log Files: Every Oracle database has a set of two or more redo log
files. The set of redo log files is collectively known as the redo log for the
MCS-043 GPH Book 209

database. A redo log is made up of redo entries (also called redo records).
Parameter Files: Parameters files contain a list of configuration parameters
for that instance and database.
Backup Files: To restore a file is to replace it with a backup file. Typically,
you restore a file when a media failure or user error has damaged or deleted
the original file.
2. Logical Database Structures: The logical storage structures, including
data blocks, extents and segments, enable Oracles fine-grained control of disk
space use.
Tablespaces: A database is divided into logical storage units called tablespaces,
which group related logical structures together. For example, tablespaces
commonly group together all application objects to simplify administrative
operations.
Each database is logically divided into one or more tablespaces. One or more
datafiles are explicitly created for each tablespace to physically store the data
of all logical structures in a tablespace.
Oracle Data Blocks: At the finest level of granularity, Oracle database data is
stored in data blocks. One data block corresponds to a specific number of
bytes of physical database space on disk. The standard block size is specified
by the DB_BLOCK_SIZE initialization parameter.
Extents: The next level of logical database space is an extent. An extent is a
specific number of contiguous data blocks, obtained in a single allocation,
used to store a specific type of information.
Segments: Next, is the segment or the level of logical database storage. A
segment is a set of extents allocated for a certain logical structure.
3. Oracle Data Dictionary: Each Oracle database has a data dictionary. An
Oracle data dictionary is a set of tables and views that are used as a read-only
reference on the database. For example, a data dictionary stores information
about the logical and physical structure of the database.
4. Oracle Instance: An Oracle database server consists of an Oracle database
and an Oracle instance. Every time a database is started, a system global area
(SGA) is allocated and Oracle background processes are started. The
combination of the background processes and memory buffers is known as
an Oracle instance.
Instance Memory Structures: Oracle creates and uses memory structures
to complete several jobs. For example, memory stores program code being
run and data shared among users. Two basic memory structures associated
with Oracle are: the system global area and the program global area. The
following subsections explain each in detail.
System Global Area: The System Global Area (SGA) is a shared memory
region that contains data and control information for one Oracle instance.
210 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

Oracle allocates the SGA when an instance starts and deallocates it when the
instance shuts down. Each instance has its own SGA.
Database Buffer Cache of the SGA: Database buffers store the most recently
used blocks of data. The set of database buffers in an instance is the database
buffer cache.
Redo Log Buffer of the SGA: The redo log buffer stores redo entries – a log
of changes made to the database. The redo entries stored in the redo log
buffers are written to an online redo log, which is used if database recovery is
necessary.
Shared Pool of the SGA: The shared pool contains shared memory constructs,
such as shared SQL areas. A shared SQL area is required to process every
unique SQL statement submitted to a database. A shared SQL area contains
information such as the parse tree and execution plan for the corresponding
statement.
Program Global Area: The Program Global Area (PGA) is a memory buffer
that contains data and control information for a server process. A PGA is
created by Oracle when a server process is started. The information in a PGA
depends on the configuration of Oracle.
5. Oracle Background Processes: An Oracle database uses memory structures
and processes to manage and access the database.
There are numerous background processes and each Oracle instance can use
several background processes.
Process Architecture: A process is a “thread of control” or a mechanism in
an operating system that can run a series of steps. Some operating systems
use the terms job or task. A process generally has its own private memory area
in which it runs. An Oracle database server has two general types of processes:
user processes and Oracle processes.
Oracle Processes: Oracle processes are invoked by other processes to perform
functions on behalf of the invoking process. Oracle creates server processes
to handle requests from connected user processes. A server process
communicates with the user process and interacts with Oracle to carry out
requests from the associated user process.

5. (a) Consider the universal relation

R = {A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J} and a set of functional dependencies.

AB →C 
A → DE 
 
F=  
F →GH 
D → IJ 
MCS-043 GPH Book 211

Decompose R into BCNF.

Ans. A relation is in BCNF if each determinants is a candidate key. Therefore,
the relations R, can be decomposed in following relations (based on each non-
trivial FD).
R1 (A B C) F1 = {AB → C}

R2 (A D E) F2 = {A → DE}

R3 (F G H) F3 = {F → GH}

R4 (D I J) F4 = {D → IJ}

R5 (A F) F5 = {AF → φ} to preserve the key of the relation R

(b) Explain the component architecture of DDBMS with the help of a

figure.
Refer to Q.No.-2(i) Page No.-168-170
 MCS – 043: ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
June, 2008

Note: Question number 1 is compulsory. Answer any three questions from the
rest.

Q1. (a) What are cursors, stored procedures and triggers? Explain with
an example of your choice.
Refer to Page-92-94, Q.No.-36
(b) The concept of “marriage” is identified as a class in first view, as a
relationship in second view and as an attribute in third view. How will
you solve this using View-Integration problem? Suggest one good
measure.
Ans. View 1:
MARRIAGE
Bride
Groom
Date of marriage

View 2:

Bride Married Groom

with
View 3:
name sponse

Person
All the above three views can be integrated into one conceptual schema as
given below:
Person

Bride married Groom

with

Date of
marriage
MCS-043 GPH Book 213

(c) Differentiate between Logical and Physical database design. How can
UML Diagrams help in database design?
Ans.
Basis Logical Database Design Physical Database Design
Task Maps or transforms the The specifications for the
conceptual schema (or an ER stored database in terms of
schema) from the high-level data physical storage structures,
model into a relational database record placement, and
schema. indexes are designed.
Choice of The mapping can proceed in two The following criteria are
criteria stages: often used to guide the choice
 System-independent of physical database design
mapping but data model- options:
dependent  Response Time
 Tailoring the schemas to a  Space Utilization
specific DBMS  Transaction Throughput
Result DDL statements in the language An initial determination of
of the chosen DBMS that storage structures and the
specify the conceptual and access paths for the database
external level schemas of the files. This corresponds to
database system. But if the DDL defining the internal schema
statements include some in terms of Data Storage
physical design parameters, a Definition Language.
complete DDL specification
must wait until after the physical
database design phase is
completed.
The database design is divided into several phases. The logical database design
and physical database design are two of them. This separation is generally
based on the concept of three-level architecture of DBMS, which provides the
data independence. Therefore, we can say that this separation leads to data
independence because the output of the logical database design is the conceptual
and external level schemas of the database system which is independent from
the output of the physical database design that is internal schema.
Now Refer : Page-183-184, Q.No.-1(c)
(d) Explain how Hash Join is applicable to Equi Join and Natural Joins.
Explain the Algorithm and Cost calculation for Simple Hash Join.
Ans. This is applicable to both the equi-joins and natural joins. A hash function
h is used to partition tuples of both relations, where h maps joining attribute
(enroll no in our example) values to {0, 1, …, n-1}.
214 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

The join attribute is hashed to the join-hash partitions. In the example of Figure
we have used mod 100 function to hashing and n = 100.
Student Marks
partitions partitions
0 1100 0
STUDENT table MARKS table
Enrolon Name …
1001 1
1 Enrolon Name Marks
1001 Ajay . 1001 1001 1001 MCS-11 55
1002 Aman . 1001 MCS-12 75
1005 Rakes . 2 2 1002 MCS-11 90
1100 Raman . 1002 1002 1005 MCS-15 75
. . . . . .
. . . . . .
3 3
. . . . . .
. . . . . .
. . . . . .
4 4
. . . . . .

5 5
1005 1005

Figure : A hash-join example

Once the partition tables of STUDENT and MARKS are made on the enrolment
number, then only the corresponding partitions will participate in the join as:
A STUDENT tuple and a MARKS tuple that satisfy the join condition will have
the same value for the join attributes. Therefore, they will be hashed to equivalent
partition and thus can be joined easily.
Algorithm for Hash-Join: The hash-join of two relations r and s is computed
as follows:
· Partition the relation r and s using hashing function h.
· For each partition si of s, load the partition into memory and build an in-
memory hash index on the join attribute.
· Read the tuples in ri from the disk, one block at a time. For each tuple in ri
locate each matching tuple in si using the in-memory hash index and output
the concatenation of their attributes.
In this method, the relation s is called the build relation and r is called the probe
relation. The value n and the hash function h is chosen in such a manner that
each si should fit in to the memory. Typically n is chosen as Number of blocks
of s/Number of memory buffers] *f(M) where f is a “fudge factor”, typically
around 1.2. The probe relation partitions ri need not fit in memory.
Average size of a partition si will be less than M blocks using the formula for
n as above thereby allowing room for the index. If the build relation s is very
huge, then the value of n as given by the above formula may be greater than M
MCS-043 GPH Book 215

– 1 i.e., the number of buckets is > the number of buffer pages. In such a
case, the relation s can be recursively partitioned, instead of partitioning n
ways, use M – 1 partitions for s and further partition the M – 1 partitions using
a different hash function.
Cost calculation for Simple Hash-Join:
(i) Cost of partitioning r and s: all the blocks of r and s are read once and after
partitioning written back, so cost 1 = 2 (blocks of r + blocks of s).
(ii) Cost of performing the hash-join using build and probe will require at least
one block transfer for reading the partitions
Cost 2 = (blocks of r + blocks of s)
(iii) There are a few more blocks in the main memory that may be used for
evaluation, they may be read or written back. We ignore this cost as it will be
too less in comparison to cost 1 and cost 2.
Thus, the total cost = cost 1 + cost 2
= 3 (blocks of r + blocks of s)
Cost of Hash-Join requiring recursive partitioning:
(i) The cost of partitioning in this case will increase to number of recursion
required, it may be calculated as:
Number of iterations required = ([logM-1 (blocks of s)] – 1)
Thus, cost 1 will be modified as:
= 2 (blocks of r + blocks of s) × ([logM-1 (blocks of s)] – 1)
The cost for step (ii) and (iii) here will be the same as that given in steps (ii)
and (iii) above.
Thus, total cost = 2(blocks of r + blocks of s) ([logM-1(blocks of s) – 1]) +
(blocks of r + blocks of s).
Because s is in the inner term in this expression, it is advisable to choose the
smaller relation as the build relation. If the entire build input can be kept in the
main memory, n can be set to 1 and the algorithm need not partition the
relations but may still build an in-memory index, in such cases the cost estimate
goes down to (Number of blocks r + Number of blocks of s).
(e) How is a database management system different from a data
warehouse? When we have sufficient tools and concepts to develop a
DBMS, then why do we still design warehouses?
Ans. The first and most important difference between a classical, general
purpose DBMS and a data warehouse–specific DBMS is how updates are
performed. A classical, general purpose DBMS must be able to accommodate
record-level, transaction-based updates as a normal part of operations. Because
these updates are a regular feature of the general purpose DBMS, this DBMS
must offer facilities for such items as:
216 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

Locking
COMMITs
Checkpoints
Log processing
Deadlock
Backout
Not only do these features become a normal part of the DBMS, they consume
a tremendous amount of overhead. Interestingly, the overhead is consumed
even when it isn’t being used. In other words, at least some update and locking
overhead that’s dependent on the DBMS is required by a general purpose
DBMS even when read-only processing is being executed. Depending on the
general purpose DBMS, the overhead required by an update can be minimized,
but it cannot be completely eliminated. For a data warehouse–specific DBMS,
there’s no need for any of the overhead of an update.
The second major difference between a general purpose DBMS and a data
warehouse–specific DBMS regards basic data management. For a general
purpose DBMS, data management at the block level includes space that’s
reserved for future block expansion at the moment of update or insertion.
Typically, this space is referred to as freespace. For a general-purpose DBMS,
freespace may be as high as 50%. For a data warehouse–specific DBMS,
freespace always equals 0% because there’s no need for expansion in the
physical block, once loaded; after all, an update is not done in the data warehouse
environment. Indeed, given the amount of data to be managed in a data
warehouse, it makes no sense to reserve vast amounts of space that may
never be used. Another relevant difference between the data warehouse and
the general purpose environment that’s reflected in the different types of DBMS
is indexing.
A general purpose DBMS environment is restricted to a finite number of indexes.
This restriction exists because as updates and insertions occur, the indexes
require their own space and their own data management. In a data warehouse
environment where there is no update and there is a need to optimize data
access, there’s a need (and an opportunity) for many indexes. Indeed, a much
more robust and sophisticated indexing structure can be employed for data
warehousing than for operational, update-oriented databases.
Beyond indexing, update and basic data management at the physical block
level are some other basic differences between the data management capabilities
and philosophies of a general purpose, transaction-processing DBMS and a
data warehouse–specific DBMS. Perhaps the most basic difference is the
ability to physically organize data in an optimal fashion for different kinds of
access. Typically a general purpose DBMS physically organizes data for optimal
transaction access and manipulation. Organizing in this fashion allows many
MCS-043 GPH Book 217

different types of data to be gathered according to a common key and efficiently

accessed in one or two I/Os. Data that’s optimal for informational access
usually has a very different physical profile; it’s organized so that many different
occurrences of the same type of data can be accessed efficiently in one or
two physical I/Os. Another important difference between the classical
transaction-processing database environment and the data warehouse
environment is that the latter tends to hold much more data, measured in
terabytes (10E15) and petabytes (10E18), than the former. I agree if you say
you don’t have this amount of data now but, as we’ll see later, if you have a
warehouse and it’s running fine and your users like it, you might go one step
further and integrate much more data within your company.
(f) How does granularity of data item affect the performance of
concurrency control? How are granularity and database security related?
Ans. In the concurrency control schemes, we used each individual data item
as a unit on which synchronization is performed. Can we allow data items to
be of various sizes and define a hierarchy of data granularities, whereby the
small granularities are nested within larger ones? It can be represented
graphically as a tree (not tree-locking protocol). In such a situation, when a
transaction locks a node in the tree explicitly, it implicitly locks all the node’s
descendants in the same mode. Granularity of locking (the levels in trees
where locking is done) are:
· Fine granularity (lower in the tree): It allows high concurrency but has
high locking overhead,
· Coarse granularity (higher in the tree): It has low locking overhead but
also has low concurrency.
Figure shows an example of Granularity Hierarchy.

DB Database

F1 F2 Files

R1 R2 Records

f11 f12 f21 f22 f31 f32 Fields

Figure : Hierarchical locking

The highest level in the example hierarchy is the entire database. The levels
below are of file, record and field.
218 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

(g) What are the various problems that arise in distributed DBMS
environment that are not encountered in a centralized DBMS
environment?
Refer to Page-110, Q.No.-68
Q2. (a) Distinguish between the following:
(i) Embedded SQL and Dynamic SQL
Refer to Page-55-56, Q.No.-8
(ii) XML and HTML
Refer to Page-166-167, Q.No.-1(vii)
(iii) 2 PC and 3 PC
Ans. Major difference of 3PC occurs with 2PC, where a crashed participant
could recover to a Commit state while all the others were still in state Ready.
In that case, the remaining operational processes could not reach a final decision
and would have to wait until the crashed process recovered. With 3PC, if any
operational process is in its Ready state, no crashed process will recover to a
state other than INIT, Abort, or PreCommit. For this reason, surviving
processes can always come to a final decision. Finally, if the processes that P
can reach are in state Precommit (and they form a majority), then it is safe to
commit the transaction. Again, it can be shown that in this case, all other
processes will either be in state Ready or at least, will recover to state Ready,
Precommit, or Commit when they had crashed.
(iv) Data warehousing and Data mining
Ans. There is a lot of confusion concerning the terms data mining and data
warehousing (also referred to as business intelligence in the marketplace today).
To my chagrin, many IT professionals use the two terms interchangeably,
with little hesitation or regard for the differences between the two types of
applications. While the goals of both are related, and often overlap; data mining
and data warehousing are dedicated to furnishing different types of analytics,
for different types of users and therefore merit their own space.
By definition, data mining is intended for users who are statistically inclined.
These analysts look for patterns hidden in data, which they are able to extract
using statistical models. Data miners engage in question formulation based
primarily on the “law of large numbers” to identify potentially useful relationships
between data elements, which can be profitable to companies.
For instance, car insurance companies will sift through terabytes of data to
link accident rates to demographic groups. They may start with a hypothesis
that single men in the 18-25 age group who drive red sports cars are prone to
drive recklessly (based on number of tickets they get and number of accidents
they have) than older men who drive minivans. After sifting through their
MCS-043 GPH Book 219

data, they may find that this hypothesis is not necessarily true. On the contrary,
they may find that families who have multiple cars, among which one is a
sports car (color is irrelevant), have more accidents and tickets when they
have a teenager living in the house. Such cause-and-effect patterns help data
miners quote premiums fairly on insurance rates. And hopefully allow them to
reduce premiums where appropriate.
(b) List all the functional dependencies satisfied by the following relation:

A B C
a1 b1 c1
a1 b1 c2
a2 b1 c1
a2 b1 c3
Write an SQL-Code to identify whether a given functional dependency
holds.
Ans. FDS:
A→B
C→B
SQL Code for
First FD: A → B
Select A, Count (A) From R Group By A
Second FD: C → B
Select C, Count (B) From R Group By C
(c) What are Semantic Databases? List features of Semantic Databases.
Explain the process of searching the knowledge in these databases.
Ans. Semantic modeling provides a far too rich set of data structuring capabilities
for database applications. A semantic model contains far too many constructs
that may be able to represent structurally complex inter-relations among data
in a somewhat more natural way.
Semantic modeling is one of the tools for representing knowledge especially in
Artificial Intelligence and object-oriented applications. Thus, it may be a good
idea to model some of the knowledge databases using semantic database system.
Some of the features of semantic modeling and semantic databases are:
· these models represent information using high-level modeling abstractions,
· these models reduce the semantic overloading of data type constructors,
· semantic models represent objects explicitly along with their attributes,
· semantic models are very strong in representing relationships among objects,
and
· they can also be modeled to represent IS A relationships derived schema and
220 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

also complex objects. Some of the applications that may be supported by such
database systems in addition to knowledge databases may be applications such
as bio-informatics, that require support for complex relationships, rich
constraints and large-scale data handling.
Q3. (a) What is Data Mining? How is Data Mining a part of Knowledge
Discovery process? What are the goals of Data Mining and Knowledge
Discovery?
Ans. Data mining is the process of automatic extraction of interesting (non
trivial, implicit, previously unknown and potentially useful) information or
patterns from the data in large databases. Data mining is only one of the many
steps involved in knowledge discovery in databases. The various steps in
KDD are data extraction, data cleaning and preprocessing, data transformation
and reduction, data mining and knowledge interpretation and representation.
The different data-mining goals are: Classification, Clustering and Association
Rule Mining.
(b) Create an object-oriented database using ODL for the following figure:

Book Student
ISB_No. ENROLMENT_No.
TITLE * * NAME
Supply
PRICE MARKS
PUBLISHER COURSE
AUTHORS

*
Supplier
SUPPLIER_ID
SUPPLIER_NAME
SUPPLIER_ADDRESS
SUPPLIER_CITY
Ans. class Book
(key ISB_No.)
{ attribute string ISB_No;
attribute string title;
attribute float price;
attribute string publisher;
attribute string authors;
relationship set <student> student :: student;
relationship set <supplier> supplier :: supplier;
MCS-043 GPH Book 221

};
class student
(key Enrolment_No)
{ attribute number Enrolment_No;
attribute string name;
attribute number marks;
attribute string course;
relationship set <book> book :: book;
relationship set <supplier> supplier :: supplier;
};
class supplier
(key supplier_ID)
{ attribute number supplier_ID;
attribute string supplier_name;
attribute string supplier_address;
attribute string supplier_city;
relationship set <book> book :: book;
relationship set <student> student :: student;
};

(c) What is ODBC? How is ODBC implemented? How is access provided

to Database on World Wide Web (WWW)?
Refer to Page-179, Q.No.-5(iii)

Q4. (a) What do you understand by Open Source Technologies? List

some open source DBMS. Explain the working and features of
PostgreSQL.
Ans. Open Source Definition
The Open Source Definition is used by the Open Source Initiative to determine
whether or not a software license can be considered open source. The definition
was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines, written and adapted
primarily by Bruce Perens.

Open source doesn’t just mean access to the source code. The distribution
terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria:
1) Free Redistribution : The license shall not restrict any party from selling
or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software
distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license
shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
2) Source Code : The program must include source code, and must allow
distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a
222 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized

means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction
cost preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The source
code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the
program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate
forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed.
3) Derived Works : The license must allow modifications and derived works,
and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of
the original software.
4) Integrity of The Author’s Source Code : The license may restrict source-
code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the
distribution of “patch files” with the source code for the purpose of modifying
the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of
software built from modified source code. The license may require derived
works to carry a different name or version number from the original software.
5) No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups : The license must not
discriminate against any person or group of persons.
6) No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor : The license must not
restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor.
For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or
from being used for genetic research.
7) Distribution of License : The rights attached to the program must apply
to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of
an additional license by those parties.
8) License Must Not Be Specific to a Product : The rights attached to the
program must not depend on the program’s being part of a particular software
distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or
distributed within the terms of the program’s license, all parties to whom the
program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted
in conjunction with the original software distribution.
9) License Must Not Restrict Other Software : The license must not place
restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software.
For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on
the same medium must be open-source software.
10) License Must Be Technology-Neutral : No provision of the license may
be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface.

Some open source DBMSs are:

1. PostgreSQL
2. MySQL
PostgreSQL supports the following features:
MCS-043 GPH Book 223

• ANSI SQL 2 compliance,

• Support for transactions, triggers, referential integrity and constraints,
• High level language support,
• Inheritance, complex data types and polymorphism,
• Built in complex data types like IP address,
• Aggregate functions, collections and sequences,
• Portability, and
• ODBC and JDBC drivers.

(b) Explain the overview of ORACLE architecture. What are the main
ORACLE tools available for application development? Can mobile use
of data centric applications be performed by ORACLE?
Ans. Refer to Dec-2007, Q.No.-4(b)
ORACLE forms Developer
ORACLE Reports Developer
ORACLE Designer
ORACLE J Developer
ORACLE Discoverer Administrative Edition
ORACLE Portal.

(c) What is data dictionary? List some features of data dictionary. What
are the various approaches to implement a Distributed Database
Catalogue?
Refer to Page-64-67, Q.No.-18, 20 and 24

Q5. (a) What is shadow paging? Illustrate with an example. What are
the advantages and disadvantages of shadow paging?
Ans. Shadow paging is an alternative to log-based recovery; this scheme is
useful if transactions are executed serially. In this two page tables are maintained
during the lifetime of a transaction—the current page table and the shadow
page table. It stores the shadow page table in non-volatile storage, in such a
way that the state of the database prior to transaction execution may be
recovered (shadzow pages table is never modified during execution). To start
with, both the page tables are identical. Only the current page table is used for
data item accesses during execution of the transaction. Whenever any page is
about to be written for the first time a copy of this page is made on an unused
page, the current page table is then made to point to the copy and the update is
performed on the copy.
224 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
•
•
•
n
Page table

Page on disk
A Sample page table

1 1
2 2
3 3
4 4
5 5
6 6
7 7
8 8
Shadow page table Current page table

Pages on disk
Shadow page table
MCS-043 GPH Book 225

To commit a transaction:
1. Flush all modified pages in main memory to disk
2. Output current page table to disk
3. Make the current page table the new shadow page table, as follows:
• keep a pointer to the shadow page table at a fixed (known) location on disk,
• to make the current page table the new shadow page table, simply update
the pointer to point at the current page table on disk.
Once pointer to shadow page table has been written, transaction is committed.
No recovery is needed after a crash — new transactions can start right away,
using the shadow page table. Pages not printed to from current/shadow page
table should be freed (garbage collected).
Advantages of shadow paging over log-based schemes:
• It has no overhead of writing log records,
• The recovery is trivial.
Disadvantages:
• Copying the entire page table is very expensive, it can be reduced by using a
page table structured like a B+-tree (no need to copy entire tree, only need to
copy paths in the tree that lead to updated leaf nodes).
• Commit overhead is high even with the above extension (Need to flush every
updated page and page table).
• Data gets fragmented (related pages get separated on disk).
• After every transaction is completed, the database pages containing old
versions is completed, of modified data need to be garbage collected/freed.
• Hard to extend algorithm to allow transactions to run concurrently (easier to
extend log based schemes).

(b) What are the various reasons for a transaction to fail in the middle
of execution?
Ans. A DBMS may encounter a failure. These failures may be of the following
types:
Transaction failure: An ongoing transaction may fail due to:
• Logical errors: Transaction cannot be completed due to some internal error
condition.
• System errors: The database system must terminate an active transaction
due to an error condition (e.g., deadlock).
System crash: A power failure or other hardware or software failure causes
the system to crash.
• Fail-stop assumption: Non-volatile storage contents are assumed to be
uncorrupted by system crash.
• Disk failure: A head crash or similar disk failure destroys all or part of the
disk storage capacity.
226 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

• Destruction is assumed to be detectable: Disk drives use checksums to

detect failure.
All these failures result in the inconsistent state of a transaction.

(c) What is statistical database? Discuss the problem of statistical database

security.
Ans. Statistical databases are used to provide statistical information or summaries
of values based on various criteria. For example, a database for population
statistics may provide statistics based on age groups, income levels etc.
Statistical database users are allowed to access database to retrieve statistical
information but not to access the detailed confidential information about specific
individuals. Security for statistical databases must ensure that information
about individuals cannot be accessed. It sometimes possible to deduce or infer
certain facts concerning individuals from queries that involve only summary.
Statistics on groups, consequently this must not be permitted either. This
problem is called as statistical database security problem.

(d) What is Distributed DBMS? Explain its architecture. What are the
advantages of DDBMS over centralized databases?
Refer to Page-168-170, Q.No.-2(i)
Now Refer to Page-107-109, Q.No.-64
 MCS – 043: ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
Dec, 2008

Note: Question number 1 is compulsory. Answer any three questions from the
rest.

Q1. (a) Consider the following relation R (A, B, C):

R
A B C
1 2 3
4 2 3
5 3 3
5 3 4
Which of the following dependencies does not hold? Give reasons.
(i) A → B
Ans. Dependency A → B is hold by the relation R.
(ii) A →→ B
Ans. Dependency A →→ B is hold by the relation R.

(b) What is a data warehouse? Describe the process of ETL for a data
warehouse.
Ans. A Data Warehouse can be considered to be a “corporate memory”. It is
a repository of processed but integrated information that can be used for
queries and analysis. Data and information are extracted from heterogeneous
sources as they are generated. Academically, it is subject-oriented, time-variant
and a collection of operational data.
ETL is Extraction, transformation and loading. ETL refers to the methods
involved in accessing and manipulating data available in various sources and
loading it into target data warehouse. The following are some of the
transformations that may be used during ETL:
• Filter Transformation
• Joiner Transformation
• Aggregrator Transformation
• Sorting Transformation

(c) What is timestamp ordering? Explain timestamp based protocol for

serializable schedule.
Ans. Each transaction is issued a timestamp when it enters the system. If an
old transaction Ti has time-stamp TS(Ti), a new transaction Tj is assigned
time-stamp TS(T j ) such that TS(T i) < TS(T j). This protocol manages
228 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

concurrent execution in such a manner that the time-stamps determine the

serialisability order. In order to assure such behaviour, the protocol needs to
maintain for each data Q two timestamp values:

• W-timestamp(Q) is the largest time-stamp of any transaction that executed

write(Q) successfully.

• R-timestamp(Q) is the largest time-stamp of any transaction that executed

read(Q) successfully.
The timestamp ordering protocol executes any conflicting read and write
operations in timestamp order. Suppose a transaction Ti issues a read(Q).
1. If TS(Ti) <W-timestamp(Q), ⇒ Ti needs to read a value of Q that was
already overwritten. Action: reject read operation and rolled back Ti.
2. If TS(Ti) ≥ W-timestamp(Q), ⇒ It is OK. Action: Execute read operation
and set R-timestamp(Q) to the maximum of R-timestamp(Q) and TS(Tj).
Suppose that transaction Ti issues write (Q):
1. If TS(Ti) < R-timestamp(Q), ⇒ the value of Q that Ti is writing was used
previously, this value should have never been produced. Action: Reject the
write operation. Roll back Ti.
2. If TS(Ti) < W-timestamp(Q), ⇒ Ti is trying to write an obsolete value of
Q. Action: Reject write operation and roll back Ti.
3. Otherwise, execute write operation and set W-timestamp(Q) to TS(Ti).

(d) Consider the following requirements:

A car or truck can be a registered-vehicle. A person, bank or company
can own a registered vehicle. Model this requirement using EER diagram.
Ans.
(1.0) (1.0)
Registered Vehicle Owned Owner
by

d d

Car Truck Person Bank Company

(e) Consider the following relations:

EMPLOYEE (Eno, Ename, Address, Phone, Salary, Dnum)
DEPT (Dnum, Dlocation, Dname)
PROJECT (Pno, Dname, Dnum)
MCS-043 GPH Book 229

Find the names of employees using relational algebra who work on all
projects controlled by Department Number 5.
Ans.
( πename, pno ( Employee = Dept = Project ) ) ÷ ( πpno ( σdnum =5 ( Pr oject ) ) )
(f) How will you enforce Referential Integrity Constraint in Oracle?
Explain with the help of one example.
Ans. The referential integrity constraint can be enforced in Oracle (i) at the
time of table creation, and (ii) after the table creation.
Example: (i) At the time of table creation
create table Dept
( DNo number (4) Primary key
DName var char2 (10));
create table emp
( ENo number (6) Primary key
Ename var char2 (20)
DNo number (4) references dept (dno));

(ii) After table creation

Alter table emp
Add constraint fk1 foreign key (dno) references
dept(dno);

(g) Create an object-oriented database using ODL for the following

schema. Make suitable assumptions about attributes.

m n
Teacher Student

Ans. class Teacher

(Key Teacher id)
{
attribute string Teacher id;
attribute string name;
attribute string subject;
relationship set <student> student :: student;
};
class student
(Key Roll no)
}
230 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

attribute int Rollno;

attribute string sname;
attribute string class;
};

(h) What are the common database security failures? What are the
SQL commands for granting permission? Why are statistical databases
more prone to disclosure? Explain with the help of an example.
Ans. Common Database Security Failures: Database security is of
paramount importance for an organisation, but many organisations do not
take this fact into consideration, till an eventual problem occurs. The common
pitfalls that threaten database security are:

Weak User Account Settings: Many of the database user accounts do not
contain the user settings that may be found in operating system environments.
For example, the user accounts name and passwords, which are commonly
known, are not disabled or modified to prevent access.

Insufficient Segregation of Duties: No established security administrator

role is defined in the database management of the organisation. This results in
database administrators performing both the functions of the administrator, as
well as the performance and operations expert. This may result in management
inefficiencies.

Inadequate Audit Trails: The auditing capabilities of databases since it require

keeping track of additional requirements, are often ignored for enhanced
performance or disk space. Inadequate auditing results in reduced
accountability. It also reduces the effectiveness of data history analysis.

Unused DBMS Security Features: The security of an individual application

is usually independent of the security of the DBMS.
Permissions can be granted to a user or a role with the use of the SQL GRANT
statement.

The syntax of this statement is:

GRANT <permissions>
[ON <table>]
TO <user/role>
[WITH GRANT OPTION]
Disclosure of data as indicated in the previous section is a major problem as
disclosure may result in breach of security in some form or the other and
MCS-043 GPH Book 231

thus, is not acceptable. Thus, the first step in this direction would be to reject
any query that directly asks for sensitive information that is hidden. But, how
about a sequence of queries that are raised for the purpose of statistics? For
example, we may be able to determine the average marks obtained in a class of
50 student, but if only 2 students have opted for a subject then the first student
who knows his/her marks can find the marks of the other student by issuing
the average marks query. Thus, statistical queries should be permitted only
when some minimum number of records satisfies a condition. Thus, the overall
objectives are to make sure that security is not compromised.

Q2. (a) What is the significance of cursors in embedded SQL? Explain

with the help of an example.
Ans. The Cursor can be defined as a pointer to the current tuple. It can also be
defined as a portion of RAM allocated for the internal processing that has been
set aside by the database server for database interactions.
Since most of the commercial RDBMS architectures are client-server
architectures, on execution of an embedded SQL query, the resulting tuples
are cached in the cursor. This operation is performed on the server. Sometimes
the cursor is opened by RDBMS itself - these are called implicit cursors.
However, in embedded SQL we need to declare these cursors explicitly - these
are called explicit cursors.

(b) What are mobile databases? Explain the characteristics of mobile

databases.
Refer to Chapter-7, Q.No.-10 and Q.No.-14

(c) What do you mean by deadlock? How can we prevent them? Write
an algorithm that checks whether the concurrently executing
transactions are in deadlock.
Refer to Chapter-5, Q.No.-2

Q3. (a) What is data mining? How is it different from OLTP? What is
classification in context of data mining?
Refer to Chapter-6, Q.No.-50, Q.No.-53 and Q.No.-55

(b) What are data-marts? What is the significance of creating them?

Ans. Data marts can be considered as the database or collection of databases
that are designed to help managers in making strategic decisions about business
and the organisation. Data marts are usually smaller than data warehouse as
they focus on some subject or a department of an organisation. Some data
232 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

marts are also called dependent data marts and may be the subsets of larger
data warehouses.
A data mart is like a data warehouse and contains operational data that helps in
making strategic decisions in an organisation. The only difference between
the two is that data marts are created for a certain limited predefined application.
Even in a data mart, the data is huge and from several operational systems,
therefore, they also need a multinational data model. In fact, the star schema is
also one of the popular schema choices for a data mart.

(c) What is XML? How is it different from HTML? What are the
advantages of XML? Create an XML schema for list of students and
their marks.
Refer to Dec-2006, Q.No.-1(viii) and Chapter-6, Q.No.-22
<?xml version = “1.0” encoding = “VTF-8” standalone = “Type”?>
<!DOCTYPE document [
<!ELEMENT document (student) *>
<!ELEMENT Student (name, marks)>
<!ELEMENT NAME (# PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT Marks (# PCDATA))]>
<document>
<student>
<name> XYZ </name>
<marks> 45 </marks>
</student>
</document>

Q4. (a) Compare and contrast Relational database management systems,

Object-relational database management systems, Object-oriented
database management systems. Suggest one application for each of these
database management systems.
Refer to Chapter-6, Q.No.-2 and Dec-2006, Q.No.-3(i)

(b) Explain Join Dependency with the help of an example. To which

normal form does it correspond? Functional dependencies and
multivalued dependencies are special type of Join dependencies. Justify.
Ans. The fifth normal form deals with join-dependencies, which is a
generalisations of the MVD. The aim of fifth normal form is to have relations
that cannot be decomposed further. A relation in 5NF cannot be constructed
from several smaller relations.
A relation R satisfies join dependency *(R1, R2, ..., Rn) if and only if R is equal
to the join of R1, R2, ..., Rn where Ri are subsets of the set of attributes of R.
MCS-043 GPH Book 233

A relation R is in 5NF if for all join dependencies at least one of the following
holds:
(a) (R1, R2, ..., Rn) is a trivial join-dependency (that is, one of Ri is R)
(b) Every Ri is a candidate key for R.

Q5. (a) Explain the centralized Two-phase Commit Protocol in Distributed

Environment. Give the algorithm for both coordinator and participants.
Refer to Chapter-5, Q.No.-72 and Q.No.-75

(b) Develop a query plan for the following query and compute its cost:
‘SALARY > 40000 (EMPLOYEE = DEPARTMENT)’
Make suitable assumptions of your own about the relation schema as
well as the database statistics.
Ans. Assumption
Size of Employee relation = 1000 tuples
Size of Department relation = 400 tuples
No. of employees having salary > 4000 = 100

Step No. Operation Cost of Query Result Size

Processing time
1. Employee = Department 1000 × 400 1000 tuples
2. Selection operation 1000 100 tuples
 MCS – 043: ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
Jun, 2009

Note: Question number 1 is compulsory. Answer any three questions from the
rest.

Q1. (a) Consider the following three transactions

T1 T2 T3
read (X) read (X) read (X)
X = X – 1000 display (X) Y:=X
Write (X) display (X)

Insert shared and exclusive locks in T 1 , T 2 and T 3 such that the

transactions when executed concurrently do not encounter any
concurrency related problem.
Ans.

T1 T2 T3
Lock-X(X) Lock-S(X) Lock-S(X)
Read (X) Read (X) Read (X)
Y:=X
X = X – 1000 display (X) display (X)
Write (X) Unlock (X) Unlock (X)
Unlock (X)
MCS-043 GPH Book 235

(b) Consider the following EER Diagram

SSN

Name PERSON Address

Gender

FACULTY
M STUDENT Programme

Department M

Teach

N Name
COURSE
N
Code

Derive relations from the above EER diagram.

Ans. Person (SSN, Name, Address, Gender)
Faculty (SSN, Department)
Student (SSN, Programme)
Course (Code, Name)
Teach (SSN, Code)
Register (SSN, Code)

(c) Define Simple Hash-Join and explain the process and cost calculation
of Hash-Join with the help of example.
Make suitable assumptions of your own about the relation schema as
well as the database statistics.
Refer to June-2008, Q.No.-1(d)

(d) Explain the characteristics of mobile databases. Give an application

of mobile databases.
Refer to Dec-2008, Q.No.-2(b)

(e) The decision regarding indexing is a trade off between read-only

queries and update queries. Elaborate the statement with the help of
example.
Ans. If we are using read only queries then indexing gives very good
236 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

performance as it provide binary search over linear search. The same

performance is also provided with update queries while selecting the records
but it introduces the overheads to update all the indexes created based on the
table on which we are going to execute update query.
For example : Consider a relation emp(emp_no, name, city, deptno) with the
indexes on emp_no , city and deptno.
If we want to use select query on emp table with selection criteria’s on
empno,city or deptno then it will give faster response time. But if we want to
execute update query on this relation then all the three indices will be updated
every time.

(f) Consider the following relational schema

emp (e-no, e-name, title)
pay (title, Sal)
Let P1: Sal < 3000 and
P2: Sal ≥ 3000 be 2 predicates
Perform a horizontal fragmentation of relation pay, with respect to these
predicates, to obtain pay 1 and pay 2. Using this fragmentation of pay,
perform further derived horizontal fragmentation of Emp based on title
“Dr”.
Ans. Pay1 (title, Sal) where Sal < 3000
Pay2 (title, Sal) where Sal ≥ 3000
Emp1(e_no, e_name, title) where title = “Dr”
Emp2(e_no, e_name, title) where title < > “Dr”

(g) What is ETL? What are different transformations that are needed
during the ETL Process?
Refer to Dec-2008, Q.No.-1(b)

(h) Given the following semi structured data in XML create the DTD
(Document Type Declaration) for it:
<document>
<employee>
<Name> Ramesh Jain </Name>
<Address> H-1, 25, Delhi </Address>
<Address> B-1, New office, Delhi </Address>
</employee>
<employee>
<Name> Anuj </Name>
<Address> 25, Gurgaon, Haryana </Address>
MCS-043 GPH Book 237

</employee>
</document>
Ans. <?xml version = “1.0” encoding = “UTF – 8” standalone = “Yes”?>
<!DOCUMENT document [
<!ELEMENT document (employee) *>
<!ELEMENT employee (name, address *)>
<!ELEMENT name (# PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT address (# PCDATA)>]>

Q2. (a) What is data mail and how it is different from dataware house?
Ans. The basic constructs used to design a data warehouse and a data mart
are the same. However, a Data Warehouse is designed for the enterprise level,
while Data Marts may be designed for a business division/department level. A
data mart contains the required subject specific data for local analysis only.

(b) Consider the following query:

Select student-id, student-name, subject, marks from STUDENT, RESULT
WHERE STUDENT. Student-id = RESULT.,Student-id
AND RESULT, MARKS > 60
Assume suitable relation and statistics.
Create a query evaluation plan for the above.
Ans. Assumptions
1. Size of the relation Student = 1000 tuples
2. Size of the relation Result = 2500 tuples
3. No. of tuples belongs to > 60 marks = 1200 tuples

Step No. Operation Cost

Intermediate Output
Result
1. Student Result 1000 × 2500 2500 tuples
2. Selection operation 2500 1200 tuples
3. Projection operation 1200 1200 tuples

(c) State the main disadvantage of basic time stamp method for
concurrency control. How can you overcome this advantage?
Refer to Dec-2006, Q.No.-1(vi)

(d) How audit trails is done in data base? How are they related to database
security?
Refer to Chapter-5, Q.No.-60
238 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

Q3. (a) What were the limitations of relational databases and why there
was a need for extending them to object-object databases? Consider we
want to represent the information of a book comprising of ISBNNO,
TITLE, CATEGORY (such as text, Reference, Journal) and list of
AUTHORS create the database structure for:
(i) OODB using ODL (Object Definition Language)
(ii) an object relation database of Book.
Ans. Limitations of Relational Databases: Relational database technology
was not able to handle complex application systems such as Computer Aided
Design (CAD), Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) and Computer
Integrated Manufacturing (CIM), Computer Aided Software Engineering
(CASE) etc. The limitation for relational databases is that, they have been
designed to represent entities and relationship in the form of two-dimensional
tables. Any complex interrelationship like, multi-valued attributes or composite
attribute may result in the decomposition of a table into several tables, similarly,
complex interrelationships result in a number of tables being created. Thus,
the main asset of relational databases viz., its simplicity for such applications,
is also one of its weaknesses, in the case of complex applications.

(i) class Book

{ key ISBN No}
( attribute string ISBN No;
attribute string title;
attribute string category;
attribute string authors;
);

(ii) Book(ISBNNO, TITLE, CATEGORY, AUTHOR(Name, Area))

(b) Differentiate between JDBC and ODBC.

Ans. Database access from different interfaces may require some standards.
The two standards that are quite useful are ODBC for accessing a database
from any DBMS environment that support ODBC and JDBC that allows JAVA
program access databases.

Open Database Connectivity (ODBC): Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)

is a standard API (Application Programming Interface) that allows access to
as database that is a part of any DBMS that supports this standard. By using
ODBC statements in a program one may access any database in MS-Access,
SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, even an Excel file, etc. to work with ODBC driver
for each of the database that is being accessed from the ODBC. The ODBC
MCS-043 GPH Book 239

allows program to use standard SQL commands for accessing database. Thus,
we need not master the typical interface of any specific DBMS.
For implementing ODBC in a system the following components will be required:
• the applications themselves,
• a core ODBC library, and
• the database drives for ODBC.

Java Database Connectivity (JDBC): Accessing a database in Java requires,

Java Database Connectivity (JDBC).
Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) provides a standard API that is used to
access databases, regardless of the DBMS, through JAVA. There are many
drivers for JDBC that support popular DBMSs. However, if no such driver
exits for the DBMS that we have selected then, we can use a driver provided
by Sun Microsystems to connect to any ODBC compliant database. This is
called JDBC to ODBC Bridge. For such an application, we may need to create,
an ODBC data source for the database before, we can access it from the Java
application.

Connecting to a Database: In order to connect to a database, let us say an

oracle database, the related JDBC driver has to be loaded by the Java Virtual
Machine class loader successfully.

(c) What are various mechanism to deal with Dead lock? Explain any
one with the help of example.
Refer to Chapter-5, Q.No.-21

Q4. (a) Explain MVD (Multi valued dependency) and Join Dependency
with the help of an example each. Given the relation R{ABCDE} with
FDS
{A → BCDE, B → ACDE, C → ABDE}.
Where the join dependencies for R? Give thelosslessjoin decomposition
for R.
Ans. Multivalued dependency: The multivalued dependency X →→ Y is
said to hold for a relation R(X, Y, Z) if, for a given set of value (set of values
if X is more than one attribute) for attribute X, there is a set of (zero or more)
associated values for the set of attributes Y and the Y values depend only on X
values and have no dependence on the set of attributes Z.
Please note that whenever X →→ Y holds, so does X →→ Z since the role
of the attributes Y and Z is symmetrical.
The fifth normal form deals with join-dependencies, which is a generalisations
240 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

of the MVD. The aim of fifth normal form is to have relations that cannot be
decomposed further. A relation in 5NF cannot be constructed from several
smaller relations.
A relation R satisfies join dependency *(R1, R2, ..., Rn) if and only if R is equal
to the join of R1, R2, ..., Rn where Ri are subsets of the set of attributes of R.
A relation R is in 5NF if for all join dependencies at least one of the following
holds:
(a) (R1, R2, ..., Rn) is a trivial join-dependency (that is, one of Ri is R)
(b) Every Ri is a candidate key for R.
Join Dependency is B → C
R1 (ABDE)
R2 (BC)
R3 (CA)

(b) How OLAP support query processing in dataware house?

Ans. Data warehouses are not suitably designed for transaction processing,
however, they support increased efficiency in query processing. Therefore, a
data warehouse is a very useful support for the analysis of data.
On Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) is an approach for performing
analytical queries and statistical analysis of multidimensional data. OLAP tools
can be put in the category of business intelligence tools along with data mining.
OLAP tools require multidimensional data and distributed query-processing
capabilities. Thus, OLAP has data warehouse as its major source of information
and query processing.

(c) Differentiate between embedded SQL and dynamic SQL. Give an

example of embedded SQL.
Refer to Chapter-4, Q.No.-8

Q5. Explain the following with the help of am example diagram, if any:
(a) Semantic databases
Refer to June-2008, Q.No.-2(c)

(b) Applications of data grid

Refer to Chapter-7, Q.No.-20

(c) Security features of oracle

Ans. Oracle includes security features that control the accessing and using of
a database. For example, security mechanisms in Oracle:
• prevent unauthorized database access,
MCS-043 GPH Book 241

• prevent unauthorized access to schema objects, and

• audit user actions.
Associated with each database user is a schema by the same name. By default,
each database user creates and has access to all objects in the corresponding
schema.
Database security can be classified into two categories: system security and
data security.

(d) Challenges in design of multimedia-database

Refer to Chapter-7, Q.No.-4

(e) Benefits of data dictionary

Refer to Chapter-4, Q.No.-20

(f) Steps of database design

Ans. 1. Logical Database Design using ER Modeling
2. ER to Relational Mapping
3. Normalization
4. Physical Database Design
5. Database Tuning
6. Denormalization

(g) Clustering in data mining

Refer to Chapter-6, Q.No.-56

(h) Application of data mining

Ans. Some of the applications of data mining are as follows:
• Marketing and sales that analysis: A company can use customer
transactions in their database to segment the customers into various types.
Such companies may launch products for specific customer bases.
• Investment analysis: Customers can look at the areas where they can get
good returns by applying the data mining.
• Loan approval: Companies can generate rules depending upon the dataset
they have. On that basis they may decide to whom, the loan has to be
approved.
• Fraud detection: By finding the correlation between faults, new faults can
be detected by applying data mining.
• Network management: By analyzing pattern generated by data mining for
the networks and its faults, the faults can be minimized as well as future
needs can be predicted.
• Risk Analysis: Given a set of customers and an assessment of their risk-
242 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

worthiness, descriptions for various classes can be developed. Use these

descriptions to classify a new customer into one of the risk categories.
• Brand Loyalty: Given a customer and the product he/she uses, predict
whether the customer will change their products.
• Housing loan prepayment prediction: Rule discovery techniques can be
used to accurately predict the aggregate number of loan prepayments in a
given quarter as a function of prevailing interest rates, borrower
characteristics and account data.
 MCS – 043: ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
December, 2009

Note: Question number 1 is compulsory. Answer any three questions from the
rest.

Q1. (a) Consider the following query:

SELECT ENAME, PNAME
FROM EMP, ASG, PROJ
WHERE
PROJ. TITLE = “Comp Engg”
AND ASG. ENO = EMP. ENO
AND ASG. PNO = PROJ.PNO
Assuming that the size of EMP relation is 400 tuples, PROJ has 100
tuples and ASG has 20,000 tuples. There are no indexes. Derive a query
execution plan for above. Make suitable assumptions.
Ans. Assumption.
(1) Size of the relation Emp = 400 tuples
(2) Size of the relation ASG = 20,000 tuples
(3) Size of the relation PROJ = 100 tuples
Step No.
Operation Cost
Intermediate Output
R esult
(1) Proj. Title = “c om p E ng” 100 x 400 x 2000 20000
AND A SG. ENO = EM P.END
AND A SG. PNO = PROJ.PN O
(2) Selection Ope ration for
Emp 400 400
PROJ 100 100
ASG 20000 20000

(b) Two-phase locking protocol uses waiting, time stamping and optimistic methods
use restacting, to avoid nonserializable execution. Justify the statement.
Ans. This protocol manages concurrent execution in such a manner that the
timestamps determine the serialisability order. Each timestamp based transaction
is issued a timestamp when it enters the system. If an old transaction Ti has
timestamp Ts(Ti), a new transaction Tj is assigned timestamp Ts(Tj) such
that Ts(Ti)<Ts<(Tj). There are two timestamp date(q) values.
W-timestamp (q) is the largest timestamp of any transaction that executed
write q successfully.
(243)
244 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

R-times (q) is the largest time-stamp of any transaction that executed read (q)
successfully. Serialisability order is determined by a timestamp given at the
time of validation to increase concurrency. Thus TS(Ti) is given the value of
validation (TJ).

(c) What is the difference between document type definition and XML
schema? Explain using an example.
Ans. Both DTD and schemas are document definition languages, schema are
written in XML, while DTDs use EBNF (Extended Bakus Naur Format) notation
Thus, schema are extensible as they are written in XML. They are also easy to
read, write and define.
DTD provide the capability for validation of the following:
Element nesting
Element occurrence constraints
Permitted attributes
Attribute types and default values.
However DTD do not provide control over the format and data types of element
and attributes value; e.g. once an element or attribute has been declared to
contain character data, no limits may be placed on the length, type, or format
of that content.
XML standard includes
Simple and complex data types
Type derivation and inheritance
Element occurrence constraints
Name-space-aware elements and attribute declaration.
XML can use simple data types for passed character data and attribute values,
and can also enforce specific rules on the contents of elements and attributes
than DTDs.

(d) What are the differences between datamining and knowledge

discovery in database (KDD)? Can these two techniques be used
alternatively. Justify.
Ans. Refer to Ch-6, Q.No.-51(ii), Page No.-133 and;
No, we cannot use these techniques alternatively because one is the process
of discovering the information and knowledge in data while other is the process
of extracting these information and knowledge.

(e) What is a join dependency? Explain with an example. When a join

dependency is referred as trivial?
Ans. A join dependency is a constraint on the set of legal relations over a
database scheme. The join dependency plays an important role in the Fifth
MCS-043 GPH Book 245

normal form, also known as project-join normal form, because it can be proven
that if you decompose a scheme R in tables R1 to Rn, the decomposition will
be a lossless-join decomposition if you restrict the legal relations on R to a join
dependency on R called * (R1,R2,...Rn). It is to say that the set of relationships
in the join dependency is independent of each other.
Example : Given a pizza-chain that models purchases in table Customer = {
order-number, customer-name, pizza-name, delivery-boy }. It is obvious that
you can derive the following relations:
customer-name depends on order-number
pizza-name depends on order-number
delivery-boy depends on order-number
Since the relationships are independent you can say there is a join dependency
as follows: *((order-number, customer-name), (order-number, pizza-name),
(order-number,delivery-boy)).
If each customer has his own delivery-boy however, you could have a join-
dependency like this: *((order-number, customer-name), (order-number,
delivery-boy), (customer-name, delivery-boy), (order-number,pizza-name)),
but *((order-number, customer-name, delivery-boy), (order-number,pizza-
name)) would be valid as well. This makes it obvious that just having a join
dependency is not enough to normalize a database scheme.
Let R be a relation schema and let R1,R2,...,Rn be a decomposition of R.
The relation r(R) satisfies the join dependency * (R1,R2,...Rn) if .
A join dependency is trivial if one of the Ri is R itself.

(f) Consider a small institute in which students register for programmes

run by the institute. A program can be a full or a part time program or
both. Every student necessarily registers in at least one programme and
at most three programme. Assuming suitable attributes, design an EER
diagram for the same.
Ans. Given two entities Students and programme run by the institute. Here in
student entity possible assumption could be Enrolment_no, Name, DOB, Gender,
Address, Phone no., and Program Entity will constitute of P-code, P-name,
P_type, Date of start, Minimum eligibility, Fee.
Addition to these there will be another Entity Institute which will have attribute
Institute Name, Location, and Address.
246 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

Minimum_eligibility

Date_of Start
Address

Fee

PROGRAMME
INSTITUTE

Associated
Location

Type
with

P_code
Name

M Register
for
Date_of Birth

Address
M
STUDENT

Gender
Name

Phone_no
Enrol_no

ER Diagram for Institute

(g) What are the different types of index implementations available in

POST gre SQL. Explain each one of them.
Refer to Ch—7, (Indexes), Page No.-150
MCS-043 GPH Book 247

(h) What are triggers and what is their use? Explain with the help of an example.
Refer to Q.No.-36, Page No.-92
Q2. (a) Why is query expressed in relational algebra preferred over
query expressed in SQL in query optimization. Explain this by taking a
suitable example.
Ans. Query expressed in relational algebra preferred over query
expressed in SQL in query optimization because :
1) It is more procedural, because algebraic expressions also give the order of
application of operations in the computation of the query; thus, it is a more
appropriate model for query optimization and system implementation.
2) Many existing approaches to query optimization and equivalence are (or
can easily be) expressed in relational algebra.
3) Relational algebra uses relations (or sets) as operands, while calculus is
based on tuple variables. For the optimization of queries, particularly with
distributed environments or special-purpose database machines, set-oriented
models are more appropriate than tuple-oriented models.
Example : Let us consider the relational schema:
S(S#,NAME), storing supplier's name and number SP(P#, S#), storing supplier
and part numbers for a supply and a typical SQL query with nesting, taken
from Date's book [3, sect. 7.2.14]. The query retrieves the name of suppliers
who do not supply product 'P2':
SELECT NAME FROM S WHERE 'P2' * ALL SELECT P# FROM SP WHERE
S#=S. S#
Notice that the clause ALL is used to indicate that only those suppliers should
be retrieved for which there is no supply tuple with P# equal to P2; if the ALL
clause were omitted, then the query would retrieve suppliers having at least
one supply tuple with P# different than P2. The naming transformation produces
the following query, in which attribute names are extended with relation names:
SELECT S.NAME FROM S WHERE 'P2' * ALL SELECT SP.P# FROM SP
WHERE SP.S#=S.S#
This query can be parsed using EG; the preprocessing produces as result the
equivalent query (without the ALL keyword):
(SELECT S.NAME FROM S MINUS SELECT S.NAME FROM S WHERE
'P2' = SELECT SP.P# FROM SP WHERE SP.S#=S.S#)
This query can be parsed using RG; thus, its meaning can be evaluated. We
anticipate the notation for some algebraic operations:
PJ [A ] (projection over a set A of attributes)
SL[p] (selection of tuples satisfying predicate p)
CP (Cartesian product) DF (difference)
JN[jp] (oin with join predicate jp). We use a prefix notation for unary operations
248 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

(e.g., PJ and SL), and an infix notation for binary operations (e.g., CP, DF,
and JN). The meaning evaluation produces the following expression:
(PJ[S.SNAME] S)DF
(PJ [S.SNAME] SL[SP.P#= 'P2']
(PJ[SP.P#,S.NAME,S. S#] SL[SP.S#=S. S#; (S CP SP)))
Finally, the postprocessing step is applied to the above expression. The
postprocessing eliminates useless projections and transforms selections over
Cartesian products into joins, giving:
(PJ [S. SNAME] S) DF
(PJ [S.SNAME] ((SL[SP.P#= 'P2'] S) JN [SP. S#=S. S#] SP))

(b) Determine all 4NF violations for the relation schema R(X, Y, Z, W)
with multivalued dependencies X → → Y and X → → Z. decompose the
relation into 4NF.
Ans. A relation schema R is in 4NF with respect to a set D of functional and
multivalved dependencies if for all multivalued dependencies in D of the form
a → → b where acR and bcR. At last one of the following hold:
a → → b is trival (ie) bca or a aub = R)
a is a superkey for schema R. Since here in example there is no functional
dependencies as the only key or all four attributes x, y,z,w. Thus each of the
non trivial multivalued dependencies x → → y and x → → z voilates 4NF..
We must separate out the attributes of these dependencies, first decomposing
into x,y and xzw. And then further decomposing the latter into xz and xw
because x → → z is still a 4NF violation for xzw. xy, xz and xw. Also we know
that a relation is in 4NF only if it is in BCNF and there are no true MVDs.

(c) The 3-phase commit protocol increases the system’s availability and
doesn’t allow transaction to remain blocked until a failure is repaired.
Justify the statement.
Ans. Refer to Ch–5, Q.No.-73, Page No.-111
The disadvantage with 2PC was that it can block participants in certain
circumstances. For example process that encounter a timeout after voting
COMMIT, but before receiving the global commit or abort message from the coordinator,
are awaiting for the message and doing nothing or in other words are blocked.
But in case of 3PC it does not block the participants on site failures, except for the
case when all sites fail. Thus the basic conditions that this protocol requires are:
No network partitioning
At least one available site
At most k failed sites (called K-resilent)
The basic objective for 3PC is to remove the blocking period for the participant
who have voted commit, and are thus, waiting for the global abort/commit message
MCS-043 GPH Book 249

from the coordinator. This objective is met by adding another phase-called pre-
commit is introduced between the voting phase and global decision phase. If a
coordinator receives all the commit votes from the participants, it issues a global
pre-commit message from the participant. A participants on receiving the global
pre-commit messages knows that this transaction is going to commit definitely.
The coordinator on receiving the acknowledgement of pre-commit message
from all the participants issues the global COMMIT. A Global ABORT is still
handled the same way as that of in 2 PC.
Thus, commit protocols ensure that DDBMS are in consistent state after the
execution of a transaction.

START START
Prepare Prepare

Wait
For Ready
One Vote
Abort All Global
vote commit-vote Abort Pre-commit

Global
Pre-commit Abort Pre-commit
Abort

Acknowledgment
received

Commit Commit

Coordinator Participants

(d) What are cursors? Explain with an example.

Ans. the cursor can be defined as a pointer to the current tuple. It can also be
defined as a portion of RAM allocated for the internal processing that has been
set aside by the database server for database interaction. This portion may be
used for Query processing using SQL.
There are two types of cursors:
(1) Implicit cursors: This cursor is open implicitly by the RDBMS and after
performing operation closed implicitly.
250 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

(2) Explicit cursor : These cursors are declared by the user in embedded SqL
explicitly. Every cursor will have to be defined like:
Declare
Open
Close
For example :
Create cursor C1 is
Select sname, enrolment, course From STUDENT; To Open cursor
Open C1.

Q3. (a) Create an object oriented database using ODL for the following
scheme. Make suitable assumptions about the attributes.

BANK

ACCTS

ACCOUNT
M

A-C

N
CUSTOMER

Answer the following query using OQL. List all the account of a customer
whose name is ‘Q’ “XYZ”.
Ans. The ODL for the following scheme is as follows after taking consideration
into the following assumption.
MCS-043 GPH Book 251

BANK ACCOUNT CUSTOMER

Type Acc_no
Bank_ID
Name Acc_No Cust_name
Branch_ID Balance Address
Acc_No Open_Deete Balance

Now the ODL for the following scheme is:

Class Bank
{ attribute Integer Bank_ID;
attribute String Names;
attribute Integer Branch_ID
attribute Integer AccNo;
};
Class Account
{ attribute String Type;
attribute Integer Acc_No;
attribute Integer Balance;
attribute Date open_date;
};
Class Customer
{ attribute Integer Acc_No;
attribute String cust_name;
attribute Integer Balance;
attribute Struct Address
{String Add1, String city, String State, Integer Pincode}
Address last;
};
In addition to these there will be some relationship set like.
Class Bank
{attribute Inter Bank_ID;
attribute String Name;
attribute Integer Branch_ID;
attribute Integer Acc_No;
relationship set <Account> openst
inverse Account :: Opens by;
};
252 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

OQL:
Select C.Acc_No from customer C Where C. Name = ‘Q’ Or e.Name = ‘xyz’;
This Query is also written in the form of relationship as
Select C.Acc_No From customer C where c.open by. Name =’Q’ Or c.openby.
Name = ‘xyz’;

(b) “A linear join help to exhibit parallelism in query execution”. Is the

statement correct? Justify your answer.
Ans. A Linear Join can act as a tree with no branches. Each table in hierarchy
is related to the table above it until we reach the top table.

Table F

Table D Table E

Table A Table B Table C

Table A,D,F constitute a linear hierarchy. Table CEF form another Linear Join
hierarchy.
In a Linear Join, each pair of tables represent a one-to-many relationship,
which the lower table of the pair in the “one” side and the higher table of the
pair is the “many” side. Linear Join hierarchies can rely on any of the underlying
Join conditions. Key Join, natural join, or On clause Join.
(c) Explain the “Deferred database modification” approach of log-based
recovery.
Ans. The deferred database modification scheme records all the modification
to the Log, but defers all the writes to after partial commit. Let us assume that
transaction executes serially :
A transaction starts by writing <Ti start> record to Log. A write (x) operation
results in a log record <Ti,X,V> being written, where V is the new value of X.
The write is not performed on x at this time, but is defined. When Ti partially
commits, <Ti commit> is written to the Log. Finally, the log records are read
and used to actually execute the previously deferred writes. During recovery
after a crash, a transaction needs to be redone if both <Ti Start> and <Ti commit>
are there in the log. Redoing a transaction Ti (redoTi) sets the value of all data
item updated by the transaction to the new values. Crashes can occur while
the transaction is executing the original update or
while recovery action is being taken.
MCS-043 GPH Book 253

(d) Define Multi-Version two-phase locking.

Refer to Page No.-197, (Multi–Version Two-Phase Locking)

Q4. (a) What is semi-structured data, explain with example. What is

the difference between a well formed XML document and a valid XML
document?
Refer Ch–6, Q.No.-17, Page No.-120 and;
Refer to Ch–6, Q.No.-27, Page No.-122

(b) What are views and what is their significance. How views are created
in SQL explain using one example.
Refer to Ch–4, (View Definition), Page No.-49, and 50

(c) What is data warehousing? Discuss various characteristics of Data

warehousing?
Refer to Page No.-125
Refer to Ch–4, (Characteristics of Data ware housing), Page No.-129

(d) Define multimedia databases and challenges in designing them.

Refer Ch–7, Q.No.-1, Page No.-140
Refer Ch–7, Q.No.-4, Page No.-142

Q5. (a) Differentiate between star scheme and snowflake scheme using
the same example.
Ans. A multidimensional storage model contains two types of tables : The
dimension tables and the fact table. The dimension tables have tuples of
dimension attributes, whereas the fact tables have one tuple each for a rewarded
fact. In order to relate a fact to a dimension, we may have to use pointers. Let
us demonstrate this with the help of an example.
Consider the University data warehouse where one of the data tables is the
student enrolment table. The three dimension in such a case would be
Year
Programme
Region.
The star schema for such a data is
254 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

Dimension Table: Fact Table: Dimension Table:

Programme Enrolment Year

Program code Year Year

Name Programme Semester

Duration Region Start Date

Enrolment

Rcode
Dimension Table: Rcname
Region
Rcaddress
Rcphone

A star schema
Each dimension tables is a table for a single dimensions only and that is why
this schema is known as star schema.
SNOFLAKE Schema : A snowflake schema has normalized but hierarchical
dimensional tables. E.g. in star schema by Region dimension table, the value of
the field Rcphone is multivalued, the Region dimension table is not normalized.
Thus, we can create a snowflake schema for such situation as follows:
Dimension Table: Fact Table: Dimension Table:
Programme Enrolment Year

Program code Year Year

Name Programme Semester

Duration Region Start Date

Enrolment
Rcode

Rcode Rcphone
Dimension Table:
Region Rcname
Rcaddress
MCS-043 GPH Book 255

Data ware housing storage can also utilise indexing to support high performance
access. Dimensional data can be indexed in star schema to tuples in the fact
table by using a join index.

(b) Differentiate between:

(i) Data-mining queries and data base query
Refer to Page No.- 132 (Database Processing Vs. Data Mining Processing)

(ii) Clustering and classification approaches in data-mining.

Refer to Page No.-137(Approaches to Data Mining Problems)

(c) How does Oracle manage database security?

Ans. Refer to Ch–8, Q.No.-24, Page No.-151
While discussing Oracle database security issues we must recognize are secrecy
or confidentiality, integrity, and availability. We know that the client must
connect to the database via the listener. The client uses SQL*Net to “transfer
requests from the client to the server via the underlying protocol and Operating
System.”(Oracle Corporation) Some examples of underlying Operating System
protocols that SQL*Net supports are TCP/IP, SPX, and Digital DEC Pathworks.
There are security issues inherent in any of the underlying Operating System
protocols. As Oracle permissions are based on privileges. Users must access
the database using their username and password. Once connected, users are
able to create objects in their own schema only if they have a quota on their
default tablespace. It is important to realize that users can only create objects
in tablespaces that they have quotas on. An example of a user misusing quotas
would be if he created a table in the tablespace userdata and then filled the
tablespace by adding too many rows to the table. This may cause other users
who had objects in the tablespace userdata to not be able to insert or update
their data. It is important to examine user quotas periodically. There are many
types of privileges associated with an Oracle database. This document will
only examine very basic privileges like select, insert, update, and delete.

(d) What are deadlocks? How are they detected? Explain with the help
of an example.
Refer to Ch–5, Q.No.-21, Page No.-79
 MCS – 43: ADVANCE DATABASE DESIGN
June, 2010

Note : Question number 1 is compulsory. Answer any three questions from the
rest.

Q1. (a) The ABC Bank offers five types of Accounts : loan, checking,
savings, daily interest saving and money market. It operates a number
of branches within the country. A client of the bank can have any number
of accounts. Accounts can be self or a joint account.
(i) Draw an EER diagram for the ABC bank identifying various entities,
attributes and cardinality. Show meaningful relationship that exists
among the entities.
Ans. Entities in the given problem will be Account, Branch, and customer.
Attributes of Account(entity) are Account-number, Type, open-date, opening-
balance. For Branch entity Branch-code, Branch-contact, Branch-Address.
For customer entity SSN, Name, Address etc. In Addition to these there can
be worker entity.
Bank operates number of branches in a city. It also keeps track of branch
details. It maintains branch information like branch-code, branch-address,
branch-contact, branch-city. Branch code is unique for all branches. So branch
is a strong entity.
A Branch can have many accounts while an Account is opened in one Branch
only. Double lines indicates each account entity must have been opened in
branch.

(256)
MCS-043 GPH Book 257
258 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

(ii) Translate the EER diagram to schema Relational Model.

Ans. For every ER-diagram we can construct a relational database which is a
collection of tables.
Conversion of entity sets:- for each strong entity type E in ER diagram , we
create a relation R containing all the simple attributes of E. The primary key of
the relation R will be one of the key attributes of R.
ACCOUNT
Account-no:PK Type Open-Date Open-Balance

BRANCH
Branch-code: Primary key Brach-contact Branch-Address

CUSTOMER
SSN: Primary key Name Address

Here between the table Branch and ACCOUNT there will be I:N relationship
because a Branch can open many accounts. Branch-code is primary key in the
branch table where as Account-number is the primary key in the Account
table. In customer table SSN will be primary key because a particular SSN
can be applied to only one people.
An addition to these there will be some more tables like LOAN, SAVING, D-I-
SAVING, MONEY MARKET, CHECKING ETC.
LOAN
Loan-no: PK Account-no: PK Loan-amount

Here in this table both the Loan-no and Account-no will form composite Primary
key and act as Primary key.
SAVING
MINIMUM-Balance Interest-rate Cheque-book range

MONEY MARKET
Transaction-id Amount Period

DAILY-INTEREST-SAVING

Account-no: Primary key Interest-rate Amount

MCS-043 GPH Book 259

(b) Explain the following protocols for concurrency control in transactions

with the help of an illustration for each :
(i) Tree-protocol
Ans. In a tree based protocol only exclusive locks are permitted. The first
lock by Ti may be on any data item. Subsequently, a data Q can be Locked by
Ti only if the parent of Q is currently locked by Ti. Data items may be unlocked
at any time-following figure shows a tree based protocol for the following
lock (exclusive) – unlock requests from various transactions.
A
C
B
E F
D

G
Tree based protocol:
Transaction T1 Transaction T2 Transaction T3
Lock A Lock B Lock A
Lock B Lock D Lock C
Lock E Lock G Lock F
Unlock A Unlock B Unlock A
Unlock B Unlock D Unlock C
Unlock E Unlock G Unlock F
The tree protocol ensures conflict serialisability as well as freedom from deadlock
for these transactions. Please note that transaction T3 will get A only after it is
set free by Transaction T1 . Similarly, T2 will get B when it is set free by T1 .
Unlocking may occur earlier in the tree-locking protocol than in the two-phase
locking protocol. Thus tree protocol is a protocol with:-
Shorter waiting time and increased concurrency
That is deadlock free and does not require roll back.
Where aborting a transaction can still lead to cascading roll backs.
However, in the tree-locking protocol a transaction may have to lock data time
that is does not access. Thus it has:
Increased locking overhead, and additional waiting time.
Potential decrease in concurrency.
(ii) Timestamp-Based Protocol.
Ans. Time stamp-based Protocols:- Each transaction is issued a timestamp
when it enters the system. If an old transaction Ti has time-stamp Ts(Ti), a
new transaction Tj is assigned time-stamp Ts(Tj) such that Ts(Ti) < Ts(Tj).
This protocol manages concurrent execution in such a manner that the time
260 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

stamp determine the serialisability order. In order to assure such behaviour the
protocols need to maintain for each data Q two timestamp values.
W-timestamp(Q) is the largest time-stamp of any transaction that executed
write (Q) successfully.
R-time-stamp(Q) is the largest time-stamp of any transaction that executed
read (Q) successfully.
The timestamp ordering protocol executes any conflicting read and write
operations an timestamp order.
The timestamp ordering protocol guarantees serialisability if all the arcs in the
precedence graph of the form as shown in following figure

transaction with transaction with

smaller timestamp larger timestamp

Timestamp protocol ensures freedom from a deadlock as no transaction can

wait but the schedule may not be cascade-free, and may not even recoverable.

(c) With he help of a process diagram, explain the various tasks involved
in the Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) process.
Refer to Q.No.-4(a), Page No.-207
(d) Explain the role of ODBC and JDBC with the help of an example.
Ans. Refer to Page No.-179
Refer to Q.No.-3(b)(i), Page No.-190
(e) Is the following XML document well formed? Justify your answer :
<?xml version = “1.0” standalone= “yes” ?>
< employee>
< name > Amit </ name >
< position > Professor </ position>
</ employee >
< employee >
< name > Sumit >/name >
< position > Reader </ position >
</ employee >
Ans. No, the given XML document is not well formed. Here the tag opens at
the beginning and closes at the end of the beginning statement as a well-formed
XML document, these must be one root element that contains all the others.
Q2. (a) What are multimedia databases (MMDBs)? List some of the
applications of MMDBs. Describe various contents of MMDBs. Also,
mention the challenges in designing of MMDBs.
Refer to Ch–7, Q.No.-1, 2, 3 and 4, Page No.-140
MCS-043 GPH Book 261

(b) Define Multi-valued dependencies and Join dependencies. Give an

example of each. State fourth and fifth normal form.
Refer to Q.No.-1(i), Page No.-161
Now Refer to Dec-2009, Q.No.-1(e)
Now Refer to Page No.-183, and 7.

Q2. (c) Consider a relation R (A, B, C) with functional dependencies

AB C and C A. Decompose the relation R into BCNF relations.
Ans. Boyce-codd Normal form is an extension of 3NF:-
Definition:- A relation is in BCNF if it is in 3NF and if every determinant is a
candidate key.
Here the given relation is R(A, B, C) with functional dependencies AB → C
and C → A .
There is one structure of FD’s that causes trouble when we decompose
AB → C and C → A .
There are two keys {A, B} and {A, C}.
The problem is that we use AC and BC as our database schema, we cannot
enforce the functional Dependences. We cannot enforce the FD s AB → C by
checking the FD AB → C by checking FD's in these decomposed relation.

Q3. (a) With the help of a diagram, explain the reference architecture
of Distributed DBMS. How is this different from component Architecture
of DDBMS?
Ans. Refer to Dec-2006, Q.No.-2(i), Page No.-168 and;
Component architecture of DDBMS: Component Architecture of DDBMS
From the viewpoint of commercial implementation a DDBMS would require
client server implementation with the backbone of a network. Thus, such an
architecture has the following components which are not in reference architecture:
Local DBMS Component (Clients and Servers): At a local database site a
DDBMS communicates with a local standard DBMS. This site therefore can
have its own client server architecture. A computer on such a site (also referred
to as a node) may be a client or server depending on its role at that movement
of time.
Data Communications Component: This communication should be
established with remote clients may not be connected to a server directly. It is
the data communication component that enables direct or indirect
communication among various sites. For example, in the Figure 2 the transactions
that are shown occurring on Site 1 will have direct connection to Site 1, but they
will have an indirect communication to Site 2, to access the local sales data of that
site. Thus, a network is necessary for a distributed database system.
262 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

Site 1 Site 2
Database Server Database Server
Distribution Distribution
Schema Schema

Network
Database Link
Connected to....
Identified by.....

Department Employee
HQ Sites
Table Table
Database Database

Local Sales Local Sales

Transaction

Insert into employee@sales (site 2)

Delete from Department...
Select...
From employee@sales (site 1)

Transaction

Find Total
Read from all sites employee@sales
Add to Total
Commit;

Thus, we have clients, servers and the network in the distributed databases.
Global System Catalogue: One of the ways of keeping information about
data distribution is through the system catalogue of the DBMSs. In a DDBMS
we need to keep a global system catalogue. This catalogue itself might be
distributed in implementation. In addition to basic information about the databases
it should keep information on data fragmentation and replication schema.
Database Links: A database in a distributed database is distinct from the
other databases in the system. Each of these distributed databases may have
their own global database name. All these database components would also
have certain local names.
Q3. (b) Explain the following two ways to implement the object-oriented
concepts in DBMS :
(i) To extend the existing RDBMS to include object orientation.
Ans. The RDBMS technology has been enhanced over the period of last
two decades. The RDBMS are based on the theory of relations and thus
are developed on the basis of proven mathematical background. Hence,
they can be proved to be working correctly. Thus, it may be a good idea to
include the concepts of object orientation so that, they are able to support
object-oriented technologies too. The first two concepts that were added
MCS-043 GPH Book 263

include the concept of complex types, inheritance, and some newer types
such as multisets and arrays. One of the key concerns in object-relational
database are the storage of tables that would be needed to represent inherited
tables, and representation for the newer types.
One of the ways of representing inherited tables may be to store the inher-
ited primary key attributes along with the locally defined attributes. In such
a case, to construct the complete details for the table, you need to take a
join between the inherited table and the base class table.
The second possibility here would be, to allow the data to be stored in all the
inherited as well as base tables. However, such a case will result in data
replication. Also, you may find it difficult at the time of data insertion.
As far as arrays are concerned, since they have a fixed size their imple-
mentation is straight forward However, the cases for the multiset would
desire to follow the principle of normalisation in order to create a separate
table which can be joined with the base table as and when required.
(ii) To create a new DBMS that is exclusively devoted to OODBMS.
Ans. The database system consists of persistent data. To manipulate that
data one must either use data manipulation commands or a host language
like C using embedded command. However, a persistent language would
require a seamless integration of language and persistent data.
Please note: The embedded language requires a lot many steps for the
transfer of data from the database to local variables and vice-versa. The
question is, can we implement an object oriented language such as C++ and
Java to handle persistent data? Well a persistent object-orientation would
need to address some of the following issues:
Object persistence: A practical approach for declaring a persistent ob-
ject would be to design a construct that declares an object as persistent.
The difficulty with this approach is that it needs to declare object persis-
tence at the time of creation, An alternative of this approach may be to
mark a persistent object during run time. An interesting approach here would
be that once an object has been marked persistent then all the objects that
are reachable from that object should also be persistent automatically.
Object Identity: All the objects created during the execution of an object
oriented program would be given a system generated object identifier, how-
ever, these identifiers become useless once the program terminates. With
the persistent objects it is necessary that such objects have meaningful object
identifiers. Persistent object identifiers may be implemented using the concept
of persistent pointers that remain valid even after the end of a program.
Storage and access: The data of each persistent object needs to be stored.
One simple approach for this may be to store class member definitions and
the implementation of methods as the database schema. The data of each
object, however, needs to be stored individually along with the schema. A
264 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

database of such objects may require the collection of the persistent point-
ers for all the objects of one database together. Another, more logical way
may be to store the objects as collection types such as sets. Some object
oriented database technologies also define a special collection as class
extent that keeps track of the objects of a defined schema.
Q4. (a) What is a (DW) Data Warehouse? Explain the basic components
of a DW.
Refer to Ch–6, Q.No.-39, Page No.-125
Q4. (b) Consider a Supply Data of an organization having three
dimensions as Supplier, Part and Project. Draw a star schema with supply
as the fact table. Make suitable assumption.
Ans. A multidimensional storage model contains two types of tables i.e. the
dimensional table and the fact table. The dimensional tables have one tuples
each for a recorded fact.
Here in our example of three dimension would be
supplier part project
and the fact table will be suppliers:-
Dimension Table: Fact table: Dimension Table:
Supplier Supply Part
Supplier-no. boucher-no Part-no
Supplier-name Supplier Part-name
Supplier-add Part Part-specification
Project Qty-in-Stock
Qty
Amount Dimension Table:
Project
Project-no
Project-name
The Star schema with supply fact table:- Project-loc
Project-status

Q4. (c) Explain the following in the context of ORACLE/POSTGRESQL:

(i) Triggers – Refer Q.No.-35, Page No.-92
(ii) Security – Refer Dec–2009, Q.No.-5(c)
(iii) Data Dictionary
Ans. Each oracle database has a data dictionary. An oracle data dictionary is a
set of tables and views that are used as a read-only reference on the database.
For example the data dictionary stores information about the logical and physical
structure of the database. A data dictionary stores information like
The valid users of an oracle database
Information about integrity constraints defined for tables in the database
The amount of space allocated for a schema object and how much of it is in use.
A data dictionary is created when a database is created.
MCS-043 GPH Book 265

(iv) Indexing
Refer to Page No.-150
Q5. (a) With reference to special Databases and GIS explain the following:
(i) Application of Geographic Databases
Ans. The application of the geographic data base can be categorized into three
broad categories. These are:
Cartographic Applications:- Used for analysis of cartographic information
in a number of layers. Some of the basic application in this category would be
to analyze crop yields, imigration, facility planning, evaluation of land use
facility and landscape management, traffic monitoring system etc. These
applications need to store data as per the required applications.
3-D Digital Modeling Applications:- Such applications store information about
the digital representation of land, and elevations of ports of earth surface at sample
points. Then, a surface model is fitted in using the interpolation and visualization
techniques-such models are very useful in each science oriented studies.
The third kind of application of such information system is using the geographic
objects applications. Such applications are required to store additional
information about various regions or objects.
(ii) Requirements of GIS
Ans. Requirement of GIS:- The data in GIS needs to be represented in
graphical form, such data would require any of the following formats:
Vector Data:- In such representations, the data is represented using some
geometric objects such as line, square, circle etc. E.g. we can represent a
road using a sequence of line segments.
Raster Data:- Here data is represented using an attribute value for each
pixel or voxel (a three dimensional point) Raster data can be used to represent
three dimensional elevation using a format termed as digital elevation format.
For object related applications a GIS may include a temporal structure that records
information about some movement related detail such as traffic movement.
A GIS must also support the analysis of data. Some of data analysis operation are
(i) analyzing soil erosion (ii) measurement of gradients (iii) computing shortest paths.
(iii) Operations on the data captured in GIS
Ans. Some operations are:- Interpolation for locating elevations at some
intermediate points with reference to same points.
Some operations may be required for data enhancement, smoothing the
data interpreting the terrain etc.
Creating a proximity analysis to determine the distances among the areas of interests.
Performing image enhancement using image processing algorithms for the
raster data.
Performing analysis related to networks of specific type like road network.
266 GullyBaba Publishing House(P) Ltd.

Q5. (b) Consider the following query :

SELECT Empld, EmpName, DeptName, DeptLve
FROM Employee, Department
WHERE Employee. Dept No = Department.
Dept No AND Employee, Salary > 10000
Create a query evaluation plan for the query given above. Make suitable
assumption about the relation and statistics.
Ans. Assumption:-Size of the Employee relation = 1000 tuples.
Size of Department relation = 400 tuples
No. of employees having salary >10000 = 100
Step No. Operation Cost of query Result Size
Processing
1. Employee = Department 1000 × 400 1000
2. Selection operation 1000 100
Q5. (c) Explain Cursors. Explain the role of cursors in Embedded SQL
with the help of an example.
Ans. Refer to Dec–2009, Q.No.-2(d)
Example of embedded cursor:
Excel SQL Begin Declare Sections;
Char enrolno[10], name[26], P-code[4], qrade
int phone; int Sql code;
Char SqLSTATE[6]
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;
/* The connection needs to be established with SqL*/
Printf (“enter the programme code);
Scanf(“%S, & D-code);
EXEC SQL DECLARE CURSOR GUPDATE
Select enrolno, name, Phone, grade from Student where
Progcode = : P-code
For update of grade;
Exec SQL open gupdate;
Exec SQL fetch form Gupdate
INTO: enrlono, : name, : Phone, : grade;
While (SQL CODE = = 0) {
Printf (“enter grade for enrolment number, “%S “, enrolno);
Scanf (“% c “, grade);
Exec SQL
UPDATE STUDENT
Set grade = : grade
Where current of GUPDATE
Exec SQL Fetch from GUPDATE;
}
EXEL SqL Close GUPDATE;
 MCS – 43: ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
December, 2010

Note: Question number 1 is compulsory. Answer any three questions from

the rest.

Q1. (a) Design a generalization specialization hierarchy for a motor

vehicle sales company. The company sells motorcycles, passenger – cars,
vans and buses. Justify your placement of attributes at each level of
the hierarchy.
Ans.
Model
Make
Regn. No.
No. of
Wheels

Engine No. Vehicle Chesis No.

Permit Type
Colour

Two Wheelers Four Wheelers Air

Conditioned

Fuel Type

Motorcycle Passenger Van Bus

Seating Seating
Side Stand Capacity Capacity

(1) The attribute Regn_No, Engine_No, ChesisNo, Make, Model, colour and
No of wheels are common for all types of vehicles.
(2) The attribute side stand is applicable to two wheelers only whether they
have it or not.
(3) The attributes Permit Type, Fuel Type, Air Conditioned are common to all
four wheelers.
(4) Seating capacity varies in vans and buses only,

(b) Explain the role of system catalogue in Database administration.

Ans. The database administration is a specialized database activity that is
performed by a database administrator. The system catalogue has an important
role to play in the database administration. Some of the key areas where the
system catalogue helps the database administrator are defined below:
Enforcement of Database Integrity: System catalogue is used to store
information on keys, constraints, referential integrity, business rules, triggering
events, etc. on various tables and related objects. Thus, integrity enforcement
would necessarily require the use of a data dictionary.
(267)
268 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Enforcement of Security: The data dictionary also stores information on

various users of the database systems and their access rights. Thus,
enforcement would necessarily require the use of a data dictionary.
Support for Database System Performance: The data dictionary contains
information on the indexes, statistics, etc. Such information is very useful for
query optimization. Also such information can be used by the database
administrator to suggest changes in the internal schema.
Data dictionary can also support the process of database application
development and testing (although this is not a direct relationship to database
administration) as they contain the basic documentation while the system are
in the process of being developed.

(c) Explain Hash – Join in the context of query processing with the help
of an example.
Ans. This physical operator supports the hash join algorithm. hash join may
consume more runtime resources, but is valuable when the joining columns
do not have useful indexes or when a relatively large number of rows satisfy
the join condition, compared to the product of the number of rows in the
joined tables.
For example: Hash join assign each tuple of Employee and of Department to a
“bucket” by applying a hash function to its WorkDept (DeptNo) value. Within
each bucket, look for Employee/Department tuple pairs for which WorkDept
= DeptNo.

(d) Explain the role of checkpoints in log-based recovery with the help
of an example.
Refer to Ch–5, Q.No.-32, Page No.-89

(e) Consider Employee records with attributes EmpNo, EmpName,

Department (comprising of DeptNo, DeptName, Deptloc) and salary
(comprising of Basic and HRA). Define this Employee record using object
Definition language.
Ans. Class Department
{
attribute integer DeptNo;
attribute string DeptName;
attribute string Deptloc;
}
Class Salary
{
MCS-043 GPH Book 269

attribute real Basic;

attribute real HRA;
attribute string Deptloc
};
Class Employee
{
attribute integer EmpNo;
attribute string EmpName;
attribute Department Dept;
attribute Salary sal;
}
(f) List five differences between Object Oriented and Object Relational
Databases.
Refer to Dec–2006, Q.No.- 3(i), Page No.-171

(g) Explain the following in the context of ORACLE/POSTGRESQL.

(i) Locking Mechanisms.
Ans. Locking mechanisms
In Oracle the following types of locks are available:

Locking Mechanism

Implicit Explicit

Share
Shared Exclusive
update
Lock Lock
Lock

Implicit locks maintained by Oracle itself when a modification is performed

on database.
Explicit locks lock mechanism is to used by the user explicitly. The syntax
for explicit locking is:
Lock <table name> IN {SHARE | EXCLUSIVE | SHARE UPDATE} MODE
[NO WAIT]
This statement is followed by modifications and then either COMMIT or
ROLLBACK to unlock the table.

(ii) Oracle Instance.

Refer to Dec–2007, Page No.-209, Point No.-4
270 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

(iii) Table spaces.

Refer to Ch–8, Q.No.- 4, Page No.-152

(iv)Indexes.
Refer to Ch–7, Page No.-150[Indexes]

Q2. (a) Explain the basic framework for mobile computing and discuss
the characteristics of mobile databases. Also mention the challenges of
mobile computing.
Ans. Mobile Computing is primarily a distributed architecture. This basic
architecture is shown below:
Mobile
units

Mobile Wireless LAN

Support
Stations

Host Hosts

Mobile
Support Hosts
Station
Wired LAN

Mobile units

A mobile computing environment consists of:

• host Computers which are fixed,
• mobile support stations,
• mobile client units, and
• networks.
Characteristics of Mobile Databases
The mobile environment has the following characteristics:
(1) Communication Latency: Communication latency results due to wireless
transmission between the sources and the receiver. But why does this latency
occur? It is primarily due to the following reasons:
(a) due to data conversion/coding into the wireless formats,
(b) tracking and filtering of data on the receiver, and
(c) the transmission time.
(2) Intermittent wireless connectivity: Mobile stations are not always connected
to the base stations. Sometimes they may be disconnected from the network.
(3) Limited battery life: The size of the battery and its life is limited. Information
communication is a major consumer of the life of the battery.
MCS-043 GPH Book 271

(4) Changing location of the client: The wireless client is expected to move
from a present mobile support station to an other mobile station where the
device has been moved. Thus, in general, the topology of such networks will
keep on changing and the place where the data is requested also changes. This
would require implementation of dynamic routing protocols.
However, some of the challenges for mobile computing are:
(i) Scalability: As the number of stations increase, latency increases. Thus,
the time for servicing the client also increases. The results in increase in latency,
thus more problems are created for data consistency.
The solution: Do data broadcasting from many mobile stations thus, making the
most recent information available to all, thus eliminating the enough latency time.
(ii) Data Mobile problem: Client locations keeps on changing in such networks
thus, keeping track of the location of the client is important for, the data server
and data should be made available to the client from the server which is minimum
latency way from the client.

(b) Explain the role of UML diagrams in database design with the help of
examples.
Refer to June–2008, Q.No.- 1(c), Page No.-213

(c) Explain ACID properties in transactions.

Refer to Ch–5, Q.No.- 15, Page No.-77-78

Q3. (a) State 3NF and BCNF. Explain their differences with the help of
examples.
Ans.Formal Definition: A relation is in Boyce/Codd normal form (BCNF) if
and only if every determinant is a candidate key. [A determinant is any attribute
on which some other attribute is (fully) functionally dependent.]
Boyce-Codd normal form is stricter than 3NF, meaning that every relation in
BCNF is also in 3NF; however, a relation in 3NF is not necessarily in BCNF. A
relation schema is an BCNF if whenever a functional dependency X->A holds
in the relation, then X is a superkey of the relation. The only difference between
BCNF and 3NF is that condition of 3NF (i.e 3NF also require prime attribute),
which allows A to be prime if X is not a superkey, is absent from BCNF.
Consider, as an example, the relation Professor:
Professor (Professor code, Dept., Head of Dept., Parent time)
Assuming that
1. The percentage of the time spent in each department is given.
2. A professor can work in more than one department
3. Each department has only one Head of Department
272 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

The relationship diagram for the above relation is given below. The two possible
composite keys are professor code and Dept. or Professor code and Head of
Department. Observe that department as well as Head of Department are not
non-key attributes. They are a part of composite key.
Head of
Department
Department

Professor code
Percent time

Department Head of Department

Head of Department
Department

Professor code Percent time

Dependency Diagram of Professor Relation

Professor Code Department Head of Dept. Parent
P1 Physics Dinesh 50

P1 Mathematics Krishnan 50
P2 Chemistry Rao 25
P2 Physics Dinesh 75
P3 Mathematics Krishnan 100
The relation given in above table is in 3NF. Observe, however, the names of
Dept. and Head of Dept. are duplicated. Further, if professor P2 resigns,
rows 3 and 4 are deleted. We lose the information that Rao is the Head of
Department in Chemistry.
The normalization of the relation is done by creating a new relation for Dept.
and Head of Dept. and deleting Head of Dept. from Professor relation. The
normalized relations are shown in the following table.
(a)
Professor Departme- Percent
Code nt time
P1 Physics 50
Mathemat
P1 ics 50

P2 Chemistry 25

P2 Physics 75
Mathemat
P3 ics 100
MCS-043 GPH Book 273

(b)
Department Head of Dept.
Physics Dinesh
Mathematics Krishnan
Chemistry Rao
And the dependency diagrams for these new relations in figure. The
dependency diagram gives the important clue to this normalization step as is
clear from the figure below.

Department
Percent time
Professor code

Department Head of Department

Figure : Dependency diagram of Professor relation

(b) Write SQL statement for the following.
(i) Grant select on Employee table to user Amit.
Ans. Grant select on Employee to Amit;

(ii) Revoke Insert, Update and Delete permission on Department table

from user Sumit.
Ans. Revoke Insert, Update, Delete on Department from Sumit.

(c) Define a trigger CHECK_KEY that does not allow duplicate values
in attribute EmpNo. in Employee table.
Ans. Create trigger check_key before Insert on Employee for each row
Declare
c integer:
Begin
Select count (Emp. No) into c From Employee where EmpNo = : new.
Emp_No;
If c>0 Then raise_application_error (-22000, ‘Duplicate Key value’);
Endif
end;

(d) Explain the following in the context of data mixing with the help of
an example.
274 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

(i) Classification.
Refer to Ch–6 Q.No.-55, Page No.-134

(ii) Clustering.
Refer to Ch–6, Q.No.-56, Page No.-134

Q4. (a) Explain the following locking protocols in the context of

distributed systems :
(i) Centralized 2PL
(ii) Distributed 2PL
Refer to June–2007, Q.No.2(a)(iii),Page No.-188

(b) Explain the following in the context of XML:

(i) XML Tags.
Ans. A key aspect of dealing with XML documents is to be able to easily
access their content. XPath, a W3C recommendation since 1999, provides an
easy notation for specifying and selecting parts of an XML document. The
JSTL XML tag set, listed in Table , is based on XPath.
Are a Function Tags
out
Core parse
set

XM L choose
Flow Control when
otherwise
forE ach
if
transform
Transformation para m

The XML tags use XPath as a local expression language; XPath expressions
are always specified using attribute select. This means that only values specified
for select attributes are evaluated using the XPath expression language. All
other attributes are evaluated using the rules associated with the global
expression language.

(ii) Document Type Declarations (DTD).

Refer to Ch–6, Q.No.-16, Page No.-120

(iii) XML Schema.

Ans. An XML schema is a description of a type of XML document, typically
expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents
MCS-043 GPH Book 275

of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed by
XML itself. These constraints are generally expressed using some combination
of grammatical rules governing the order of elements, Boolean predicates that
the content must satisfy, data types governing the content of elements and
attributes, and more specialized rules such as uniqueness and referential integrity
constraints. There are languages developed specifically to express XML
schemas. The Document Type Definition (DTD) language, which is native to
the XML specification, is a schema language that is of relatively limited capability,
but that also has other uses in XML aside from the expression of schemas.
Two more expressive XML schema languages in widespread use are XML
Schema (with a capital S) and RELAX NG.

(iv) X Query.
Refer to Ch–6, Q.No.-38, Page No.-125

Q5. Explain the following with the help of an example, if needed:

(a) Multidimensional data modeling for Data warehouse.
Ans. Multidimensional structure is defined as “a variation of the relational
model that uses multidimensional structures to organize data and express the
relationships between data”. The structure is broken into cubes and the cubes
are able to store and access data within the confines of each cube. “Each cell
within a multidimensional structure contains aggregated data related to elements
along each of its dimensions”. Even when data is manipulated it remains easy
to access and continues to constitute a compact database format. The data
still remains interrelated. Multidimensional structure is quite popular for analytical
databases that use online analytical processing (OLAP) applications. Analytical
databases use these databases because of their ability to deliver answers to
complex business queries swiftly. Data can be viewed from different angles,
which gives a broader perspective of a problem unlike other models.
Figure : Diagram of the Multidimensional Model
Cube

Measures Dimensions

Dimension Hierarchies
Attributes Levels

(b) GNOME databases and their applications.

Ans. GNOME-DB is the database application of GNOME Office, the office
276 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

suite of the GNOME desktop. The project aims to provide a free unified data
access architecture to the GNOME project for all Unix platforms. GNOME-
DB is useful for any application that accesses persistent data (not only
databases, but data), since it now contains a data management API. GNOME-
DB is useful for any application that accesses persistent data (not only
databases, but data), since it now contains a pretty good data management
API. GNOME-DB’s production corresponds to the Libgda library which is
mainly a database and data abstraction layer, and includes a GTK+ based UI
extension, and some graphical tools.
(c) Domain Key Normal Form (DKNF).
Ans. We can also always define stricter forms that take into account additional
types of dependencies and constraints. The idea behind domain-key normal
form is to specify, (theoretically, at least) the “ultimate normal form” that
takes into account all possible dependencies and constraints. A relation is said
to be in DKNF if all constraints and dependencies that should hold on the
relation can be enforced simply by enforcing the domain constraints and the
key constraints specified on the relation.
For a relation in DKNF, it becomes very straightforward to enforce the
constraints by simply checking that each attribute value in a tuple is of the
appropriate domain and that every key constraint on the relation is enforced.
However, it seems unlikely that complex constraints can be included in a
DKNF relation; hence, its practical utility is limited.
(d) Log - Based Recovery algorithm.
Refer to Ch–5, Q.No.- 29, Page No.-85
 MCS – 43: ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
June, 2011

Note: Question number one is compulsory. Answer any three questions from
the rest.

Q1. (a) Which MVDs (multivalued dependency) hold for the following
table:
P-No. Colour Size
P1 C1 S1
P1 C2 S1
P1 C1 S2
P1 C2 S2
P1 C1 S3
P1 C2 S3
P2 C3 S1
P2 C3 S3

Each product (P) comes in a range of colours (C) and sizes(S)

Ans. P-No-> Colour
P-No-> Size
Colour-> Size
Size->P-No
Size->Colour

(b) The organization called ABC undertakes several kinds of projects.

Each employee can move on one or more projects. Each project is
undertaken on the request for several projects. Each project has only
one client. A project can use a number of items from different
manufacturers and an item may be used by several projects. Before
delivery of items to a client, it is tested by testing group in the
organization.
Draw an E-R diagram and convert it into a relational schema. Also
identify primary key in relational schema. Also identify primary key in
each relation.

(277)
278 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Ans. Emp No. Name P.No. P. Name Item No. Name

M N M N
Employee Move Project Uses Item Desc
to
M

Designation
sc Date of
Cost
Purchase
from

has Qty.
N
delivered tested
Manufacturer

Client C Add.
M. No. M Name Address

C.No. C Name

Relational Schema
Employee (EmpNo, Ename, Designation)
Project (P.No, PName, PDesc)
Client (C.No, CName, CAddr)
Item (ItemNo, Name, Desc)
Manufacturer (M-No., MName, Address)
Moveto (EmpNo, P.No)
has (P.No, CNo, delivered, tested)
uses (P.No, ItemNo, M_No)

(c) Discuss the shadow paging recovery scheme.

Refer to June–2008, Q.No.- 5(a), Page No.-223

(d) Describe object definition language with the help of an example.

Ans. Object Definition Language (ODL) is the specification language defining
the interface to object types conforming to the ODMG Object Model. Often
abbreviated by the acronym ODL.
This language’s purpose is to define the structure of an Entity-relationship
diagram.
Class declarations
Interface < name > { elements = attributes, relationships, methods }
Element Declarations
attributes ( < type > : < name > );
relationships ( < rangetype > : < name > );
Type Date Tuple {year, day, month}
Type year, day, month integer
Class manager
MCS-043 GPH Book 279

attributes(id : string unique

name : string
phone : string
set employees : Tuple { [Employee], Start_Date : Date })
Class Employee
attributes(id : string unique
name : string
Start_Date : Date
manager : [Manager])

(e) How does embedded SQL differ from Dynamic SQL? With the help
of an example, describe the implementation of cursors and triggers.
Refer to Ch–4, Q.No.- 10, Page No.-57 & Ch–5, Q.No.-36, Page No.-92

(f) How does Oracle manage database security?

Refer to Ch–8, Q.No.- 24, Page No.-159

(g) When is it useful to have replication or fragmentation of data in

distributed system? Explain.
Ans. Examine the nature of distribution. Find out whether an organization
needs to have a database at each branch office or in each city or possibly at a
regional level. It has direct implication from the viewpoint of fragmentation.
For example, in case database is needed at each branch office, the relations
may fragment on the basis of branch number.
Analyze the most important transactions in the system and identify where
horizontal or vertical fragmentation may be desirable and useful.
Identify the relations that are not to be fragmented. Such relations will be
replicated everywhere. From the global ER diagram, remove the relations that
are not going to be fragmented.

Q2. (a) Distinguish between the followings with examples.

(i) Time stamping and Two-Phase locking.
Ans. The Two-Phase Locking Protocol
One protocol that ensures serializability is the two-phase locking protocol.
This protocol requires that each transaction issue lock and unlock requests in
two phases:
1. Growing phase. A transaction may obtain locks, but may not release any lock.
2. Shrinking phase. A transaction may release locks, but may not obtain any
new locks.
Initially, a transaction is in the growing phase. The transaction acquires locks
as needed. Once the transaction releases a lock, it enters the shrinking phase,
and it can issue no more lock requests.
Now refer to Dec–2008, Q.No.-1(c), Page No.-227
280 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

(ii) Data mining queries and database queries.

Refer to Ch–6, Q.No.-5 & Page No.-132 [Database Processing Vs. Data
Mining Processing]

(b) Consider the following relations:

Teacher(T#, T Name)
Practical-Paper (P#, P-Name,Tname)
Conducts (T#, P#)
Write the relational algebra expression for the following queries.
(i) Get those teacher numbers (T#) who are not conducting practical
number P2.
Ans. πT # (σP #<> 2 (Teacher  Conducts  Pr actical Paper))

(ii) Get details of those teachers who are conducting practical numbers
P1 to P4.
Ans. πTeacher # (Teacher  (Conducts ÷ (πP # (σP =
#> ' P1' Λ P =
# < ' P4 ' (CONDUCTS)) )) �

(c) What problems occur in the databases system when transactions do

not satisfy ACID properties? Explain explicitly using suitable examples.
Ans. Atomicity failure
The transaction subtracts 10 from A and adds 10 to B. If it succeeds, it would
be valid, because the data continues to satisfy the constraint. However, assume
that after removing 10 from A, the transaction is unable to modify B. If the
database retains A’s new value, atomicity and the constraint would both be
violated. Atomicity requires that both parts of this transaction complete or
neither.
Consistency failure
Consistency is a very general term that demands the data meets all validation
rules. In the previous example, the validation is a requirement that A + B = 100.
Also, it may be implied that both A and B must be integers. A valid range for A
and B may also be implied. All validation rules must be checked to ensure
consistency.
Assume that a transaction attempts to subtract 10 from A without altering B.
Because consistency is checked after each transaction, it is known that A + B
= 100 before the transaction begins. If the transaction removes 10 from A
successfully, atomicity will be achieved. However, a validation check will
show that A + B = 90. That is not consistent according to the rules of the
database. The entire transaction must be undone.
Isolation failure
To demonstrate isolation, we assume two transactions execute at the same
MCS-043 GPH Book 281
time, each attempting to modify the same data. One of the two must wait until
the other completes in order to maintain isolation.
Consider two transactions. T1 transfers 10 from A to B. T2 transfers 10 from
B to A. Combined, there are four actions:
• subtract 10 from A
• add 10 to B.
• subtract 10 from B
• add 10 to A.
If these operations are performed in order, isolation is maintained, although T2
must wait. Consider what happens, if T1 fails half-way through. The database
eliminates T1’s effects, and T2 sees only valid data.
By interleaving the transactions, the actual order of actions might be: A “ 10, B
“ 10, B + 10, A + 10. Again consider what happens, if T1 fails. T1 still subtracts
10 from A. Now, T2 adds 10 to A restoring it to its initial value. Now T1 fails.
What should A’s value be? T2 has already changed it. Also, T1 never changed
B. T2 subtracts 10 from it. If T2 is allowed to complete, B’s value will be 10
too low, and A’s value will be unchanged, leaving an invalid database. This is
known as a write-write failure, because two transactions attempted to write
to the same data field.
Durability failure
Assume that a transaction transfers 10 from A to B. It removes 10 from A. It
then adds 10 to B. At this point, a “success” message is sent to the user.
However, the changes are still queued in the disk buffer waiting to be committed
to the disk. Power fails and the changes are lost. The user assumes that the
changes have been made.

Q3. (a) What is ODBC? What are requirements of ODBC? Describe

the components required for implementation of ODBC.
Refer to Q.No.-5(iii), Page No.-179 & Ch–7, Q.No.- 15 &17, Page No.-145

(b) What are the different types of index in PostgreSQL? Explain each
one of them.
Refer to Page No.-150[Indexes]

(c) What is the difference between document type definition and XML
schema? Explain with an example.
Refer to Dec–2009, Q.No.- 1(c), Page No.-244

Q4. (a) What do you understand by query optimization? What are query
trees? Explain with an example.
Ans. Query tree is an internal representation of an SQL statement where the
282 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

single parts that built it are stored separately.

Consider the following query on COMPANY database: “Find the name of
employee born after 1967 who work on a project named ‘Greenlife’ “.
The SQL query is:
SELECT Name
FROM EMPLOYEE E, JOIN J, PROJECT P
WHERE E.EID = J.EID and PCode = Code and Bdate > ’31-12-1967’ and
P.Name = ‘Greenlife’;
The query tree for this SQL query is
π NAME

σ Pcode = Code

σ E.EID = J.EID σPName = ' GreenLife'

X P

σBdate = '31−12 −1967 '

Figure : query tree for query in example

(b) What is multiversion concurrency control? Explain how multiversion

concurrency control can be achieved based on time stamp ordering?
Ans. Refer to June 2007, Q.No.-5(a), Page No.-196

(c) List steps involved in building of Dataware house.

Ans. The data warehouse technologies use very diverse vocabulary. Although
the vocabulary of data warehouse may vary for different organizations, the
data warehousing industry is in agreement with the fact that the data warehouse
lifecycle model fundamentally can be defined as the model consisting of five
major phase – design, prototype, deploy, operation and enhancement.
(1) Design: The design of database is to be done for available data inventories,
DSS analyst requirements and analytical needs. It needs to produce a robust
star schema or snowflake schema. Key activities in the design phase may
include communication with the end users, finding the available catalogues,
defining key performance and quality indicators, mapping of decision-making
MCS-043 GPH Book 283

processes as per the information needs at various end user levels, logical and
physical schema design, etc.
(2) Prototype: A data warehouse is a high cost project, thus, it may be a good
idea to deploy it partially for a select group of decision-makers and database
practitioners in the end user communities. This will help in developing a system
that will be easy to accept and will be mostly as per the user’s requirements.
(3) Deploy: Once the prototype is approved, then the data warehouse can be
put to actual use. A deployed data warehouse comes with the following
processes;
(4) Operation: Once deployed the data warehouse is to be used for day-to-
day operations. The operation in data warehouse includes extracting data,
putting it in database and output of information by DSS.
(5) Enhancement: These are needed with updating of technology, operating
processes, schema improvements, etc. to accommodate the change.

Q5. (a) What are views? How are they implemented? Can views be used
for data manipulation? Explain with the help of an example.
Refer to Ch–4, Q.No.-1-3, Page No.-48

(b) Describe normalization using join dependency with the help of an

example.
Refer to Dec–2008, Q.No.- 4(b), Page No.-232

(c) Explain the following terms in the context of DBMS:

(i)Multilevel Security
Refer to Ch–5, Q.No.- 61, Page No.-104

(ii) Auditing and Control

Ans. The auditing process is relevant in the database environment to verify
that the automated operations are properly implemented and executed. Since
data entry and maintenance is done online, the history of the evolution of a
piece of data is no longer available in the database, which will contain the latest
value only.
In addition to the above, functions that were previously separated and controlled
by distinct parts of an organization (for, example initiation of a transaction and
recording the financial and operational part of the transaction) are integrated
into the database environment. This integration of operations, while reducing
redundancy, causes the loss of independent scrutiny and corrections.
Furthermore, in an online system where a number of transactions are executed
concurrently, it is very difficult to reproduce the same sequence of processing.
All these factors point to need for an audit trail in the database environment.
284 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

The audit trail to be maintained for audit purposes has some similarity with the
data collected for recovery operations. Thus for each update operation, the
before and after image of the data objects undergoing modification are recorded.
All logons, read operations, and suspect or illegal operations are recorded.
This information can be used to analyze the practice of the users of the database,
detect any attempted violations, help correct errors in design or execution,
and improve the control procedure.
The control of the database starts with the design of the database and the
application programs that will be using the data. One of the first control principles
is that of separating the responsibilities. This can be practiced by assigning
separate teams for the design and implementation of the program and for its
validation and installation.
The integrity control mechanisms should be integrated in the database and the
data entry function should be validated by the application programs.

(iii) Redo log files

Ans. Every Oracle database has a set of two or more redo log files. The set of
redo log files is collectively known as the redo log for the database. A redo log
is made up of redo entries (also called redo records)
The primary function of the redo log is to record all changed made to the data.
If a failure prevents modified data from being permanently written to the data
files, then the changes can be obtained from the redo log, so work is never
lost. To protect against failure involving the redo log itself, Oracle allows a
multiplexed redo log so that two or more copies of the redo log can be maintained
on different disks.
The information in a redo log file is used only to recover the database from a
system or media failure that prevents database data from being written to the
data files. For example, if an unexpected power shortage terminates database
operation, then the data in the memory cannot be written to the data files, and
the data is lost. However, lost data can be recovered when the database is
opened, after power is restored. By applying the information in the most recent
redo log files to the database data files, Oracle restores the database to the time
when the power failure had occurred. The process of applying the redo log
during a recovery operation is called rolling forward.

(iv) Characteristics of DBMS

Ans. (1) Reduction or Redundancies : In database approach data can be
stored at a single place or with controlled redundancy under DBMS, which
saves space and does not permit inconsistency.
(2) Shared Data : A DBMS allows the sharing of database under its control
by any number of application programs or users. A database belongs to the
entire organisation and is shared by all authorized user.
MCS-043 GPH Book 285

(3) Data Independence : Database Management systems separates data

descriptions from data. Hence it is not affected by changes. This is called
Data Independence, where details of data are not exposed. DBMS provides
an abstract view and hides details. For example, logically we can say that the
interface or window to data provided by DBMS to a user may still be the
same although the internal structure of the data may be changed.
(4) Improved Integrity : Data Integrity refers to validity and consistency of
data. Data Integrity means that the data should be accurate and consistent.
This is done by providing some checks or constraints. These are consistency
rules that the database is not permitted to violate. Constraints may apply to
data items within a record or relationships between records.
(5) Efficient Data Access : DBMS utilises techniques to store and retrieve
the data efficiently at least for unforeseen queries. A complex DBMS should
be able to provide services to end users, where they can efficiently retrieve
the data almost immediately.
(6) Multiple User Interfaces : Since many users having varying levels of
technical knowledge use a database, a DBMS should be able to provide a
variety of interfaces. This includes–
(a) query language for casual users,
(b) programming language interfaces for application programmers,
(c) forms and codes for parametric users,
(d) menu driven interfaces, and
(e) natural language interfaces for standalone users, these interfaces are still
not available in standard form with commercial database.
(7) Representing complex relationship among data : A database may include
varieties or data interrelated to each other in many ways. A DBMS must have
the capability to represent a variety of relationships among the data as well as
to retrieve and update related data easily and efficiently.
 MCS – 43: ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
December, 2011

Note: Question number one is compulsory. Answer any three questions from
the rest.

Q1. (a) Identify the functional dependencies which hold for the following table:

Emp No. Name Address Dept Dept. Manager

E1 N1 A1 D1 E1
E2 N2 A2 D1 E1
E3 N1 A2 D1 E1
E4 N3 A3 D2 E9
E9 N4 A4 D2 E9

Ans. Partial Dependency

Emp no-> Name
Emp no->Dept
Transitive Dependency
Empno->name and name->address therefore, empno->address
Multivalued dependency
Emp no->> Dept
(b) Construct an E-R diagram for a training institute which imparts soft skills.
The institute maintains records about instructors, students, classes, assignments,
results (Theory as well as practicals) class timings for each student. The number of
subjects, in which the candidate is enrolled and past performances in different
subjects, is recorded. Document all assumptions that you make about the mapping
constraints.
Ans. Assumptions:
(1) Instructor instructs a class. One instructor must instruct at least one class.
(2) Instructor’s name, age, id, gender and address are recorded, id being the primary
key.
(3) The instructor must have at least one student to teach.
(4) Student’s ID, name, age and gender are also recorded.
(5) Instructor and students work in a class. Both instructor and students must be
enrolled in at least one class.
(6) Instructor teaches subjects to students.
(7) An instructor can teach many subjects.
(8) A student can enroll for many subjects.
(9) Subjects include name, credit and subject code with them.
(10) A student gets result on the basis of their marks. Marks can be represented as
percentage or grades.

(287)
288 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

age
Name Address

Id Instructor gender
(M, N)

M N
M
takes Instructs teaches

N M
N

age
(N, M) Name (N, M) (N ,M)
Class has Students enrol Subject code
Id M M for N
1
Time Room gender
gets Name Credit
% code

1
Marks
Results

(c) How is the check pointing information used in the recovery operation following
a system crash in DBMS? Explain.
Ans. Checkpoint-Recovery is a common technique for incorporating a program or
system with fault tolerant qualities, and grew from the ideas used in systems which
employ transaction processing. It allows systems to recover after some fault
interrupts the system, and causes the task to fail, or be aborted in some way. While
many systems employ the technique to minimize lost processing time, it can be
used more broadly to tolerate and recover from faults in a critical application or task.
The basic idea behind checkpoint-recover is the saving and restoration of system
state. By saving the current state of the system periodically or before critical code
sections, it provides the baseline information needed for the restoration of lost
state in the event of a system failure. While the cost of checkpoint-recovery can be
high, by using techniques like memory exclusion, and by designing a system to
have as small a critical state as possible may minimize the cost of checkpointing
enough to be useful in even cost sensitive embedded applications.
When a system is checkpointed, the state of the entire system is saved to non-
volatile storage. The checkpointing mechanism takes a snapshot of the system state
and stores the data on some non-volatile storage medium. Clearly, the cost of a
checkpoint will vary with the amount of state required to be saved and the bandwidth
available to the storage mechanism being used to save the state.
(d) Explain the concept of inheritance in object oriented database system, with the
help of an example.
Ans. Inheritance is a way to reuse code of existing objects, or to establish a subtype
from an existing object, or both, depending upon programming language support.
In classical inheritance where objects are defined by classes, classes can inherit
attributes and behavior from pre-existing classes called base classes, superclasses,
parent classes or ancestor classes. The resulting classes are known as derived
classes, subclasses or child classes.
MCS-043 GPH Book 289

Example:
Vehicle Truck Bus
Char* number_plate; int license; int seats;
Char* model; float price;
date data_last_overhual;
date next_overhual;
(e) What are assertions? Explain with an example.
Refer to Ch-4, Q.No.-1, Page No.-48
(f) How can you protect your database from statistical query attacks? Explain.
Ans. One way to protect your database is to not to construct SQL queries as
Strings within application code. If SQL queries are constructed this way, then the
application is taking text directly from a web control on the web page and generating
a SQL statement from it. Good hackers can enter SQL queries within the web control
that will instruct the SQL to perform some task other than what was originally
expected.
(g) Explain Clustering in data mining.
Refer to Ch-6, Q.No.-56, Page No.-134
Q2. (a) Distinguish between the followings with appropriate examples.
(i) Centralized two phase locking and Distributed two phase locking.
Refer to June-2007, Q.No.-2(a)(iii), Page No.-188
(ii) XML and HTML
Refer to June-2007, Q.No.-2(a)(ii), Page No.-188
(b) Consider the following database employee (emp_name, street, city), working
(emp_name, factory, name_salary) factory (factory_name, city) Manager
(emp_name, manager_name) Write the relational algebra expressions for the
following queries.
(i) Find the names, streets and cities of all factory employees who work for factories
Fl and F5 and earn more than 25000.
Refer to Ch-5, Q.No.-11(iv), Page No.-73
(ii) Find all the factory employees who live in the same city as the factory where
they are working.
Refer to Ch-5, Q.No.-11(ii), Page No.-73
(c) With the help of an example explain insertion and deletion of aromatics.
Ans. Insertion Anomaly
The insertion anomaly occurs when a new record is inserted in the relation. In this
anomaly, the user cannot insert a fact about an entity until he has an additional fact
about another entity.
Example: A table which stores records for a company’s sales people & the clients
for whom they are responsible. Because client is a required field - if a newly hired
sales representative must complete several weeks of training before being allowed
to call on clients, it is not possible to record him in the table during training. Or, if we
do add new hires, we must create “dummy” clients as placeholders.
290 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Deletion Anomaly: The deletion anomaly occurs when a record is deleted from the
relation. In this anomaly, the deletion of facts about an entity automatically deleted
the fact of another entity.
Modification Anomaly: The modification anomaly occurs when the record is updated
in the relation. In this anomaly, the modification in the value of specific attribute
requires modification in all records in which that value occurs.
Example: Let’s say ‘Gully’ takes on a temporary research assignment that requires
her to give up her existing clients for next 6 months. Because we can not delete just
the client value, we are faced with the choice of deleting her record completely from
the sales Rep. table.
Q3. (a) Describe the reference architecture of a distributed DBMS with the help of
a block diagram.
Refer to Dec-2006, Q.No.-2(i), Page No.-168
(b) How does postgre SQL perform storage and indexing of tables? Briefly discuss
the type of indexes involved in postgre SQL.
Refer to Ch-7, Q.No.-27, Page No.-148
(c) What is semi structured data? Explain with an example.
Refer to Ch-6, Q.No.-17, Page No.-120
Example:
• name: Peter Wood
• email: [email protected], [email protected]
• name:
o first name: Mark
o last name: Levene
• email: [email protected]
Q4. (a) Define Hash join and explain the process and cost calculation of Hash join
with the help of an example.
Refer to June-2008, Q.No.-1(d), Page No.-213
(b) Describe two phase commit protocol in distributed databases.
Refer to Ch-5, Q.No.-72, Page No.-111
(c) List the features of semantic database.
Refer to June-2008, Q.No.-2(c), Page No.-219
Q5. (a) Discuss the 5th normal form and domain key normal form with a suitable
example in each.
Refer to Ch-1, Q.No.-10, Page No.-7 & Dec-2010, Q.No.-5(c), Page No.-276
(b) What do you mean by deadlock in DBMS? How can you detect a deadlock?
Suggest a technique that can be used to prevent it.
Refer to Ch-5, Q.No.-24, Page No.-83 & Q.No.-21 , Page No.-79
(c) What are challenges in designing multimedia databases? Discuss.
Refer to Ch-7, Q.No.-4, Page No.-143
 MCS – 43: ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
June, 2012

Note: Question number one is compulsory. Answer any three questions from
the rest.

Q1. (a) Is the following XML document well formed? Justify your answer:
<?xml version = “1.0” standalone = “yes” ?>
<employee>
<name>Amita</name>
<department>English</department>
</employee>
<employee>
<name>Sumita</name>
<department>Hindi</department>
</employee>
Refer to June-2010, Q.No.-1(e), Page No.-260
(b) Determine all 4NF violations for the relation schema R (X, Y, Z, W) with
multivalued dependencies X →→ Y and X →→ Z. Decompose the relation in to 4NF..
Ans. Fourth normal form (4NF) is a normal form used in database normalization.
Introduced by Ronald Fagin in 1977, 4NF is the next level of normalization after
Boyce–Codd normal form (BCNF). Whereas the second, third, and Boyce–Codd
normal forms are concerned with functional dependencies, 4NF is concerned with a
more general type of dependency known as a multivalued dependency. A Table is in
4NF if and only if, for every one of its non-trivial multivalued dependencies
X →→ Y, X is a superkey—that is, X is either a candidate key or a superset.
A multivalued dependency X →→ Y signifies that if we choose any x actually
occurring in the table (call this choice xc), and compile a list of all the xcyz
combinations that occur in the table, we will find that xc is associated with the same
y entries regardless of z.
(c) What are triggers? Explain the significance of triggers with the help of an
example in SQL.
Refer to Ch-5, Q.No.-35, Page No.-92
(d) What is Data Warehousing? Discuss various characteristics of Data
Warehousing.
Refer to Dec-2008, Q.No.-1(b), Page No.-227 & Ch-6, Q.No.-41, Page No.-129
(e) Create an object oriented database (using ODL) for the following class diagram,

Teacher (1, m) (1, n) Student

Name: String Code: String
Teaches
Type: String Name: String
ID: Integer Detail: String

(291)
292 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

Ans. Teacher
Name Type ID Code Name Detail
Sita English T01 C01 Hari I year
Mukesh Maths T02 C05 Megha IIIyear
(f) Explain with the help of an example, the log based recovery scheme, using
deferred database modification approach.
Refer to Ch-5, Q.No.-29, Page No.-85
(g) Explain the role of query optimizer in oracle.
Refer to Ch-5, Q.No.-1, Page No.-68
(h) Why do you need 3 Phase Commit (3PC) Protocol in case of distributed
Databases? Explain the 3PC protocol with the help of a diagram.
Refer to Ch-5, Q.No.-73, Page No.-111
Q2. (a) What is multilevel security? What are typical security levels?
Refer to Ch-5, Q.No.-61, Page No.-104 & Q.No.-63 , Page No.-106
(b) How database Queries differ from data mining Queries? Explain the K – means
clustering in data mining algorithm with the help of an example.
Refer to Page No.-132 [Database Processing Vs. Data Mining Processing] & Ch-6,
Q.No.-56, Page No.-134
(c) Consider the following Query
Select student_id, student_name, subject, marks
From STUDENT, RESULT
Where STUDENT. student_id = RESULT.
Student_id
And RESULT. marks > 60
Create a Query evaluation plan for the above Query, assume suitable relations and
statistics.
Ans. Query Evaluation plan:
Student.s_id = Result.s_id

Result.marks>60

Select.s_id,s_ name, sub, marks

Q3. (a) What are multimedia databases? Discuss the challenges in designing the
multimedia databases.
Refer to Ch-7, Q.No.-1, Page No.-140 & Q.No.-4, Page No.-142
(b) “2 Phase locking protocol uses waiting, where as time stamping method uses
Roll back of Transaction, to avoid non serializable execution”. By considering the
same transaction schedule, compare the above two execution strategies for
concurrent transactions.
Refer to Dec-2009, Q.No.-1(b), Page No.-243 & June-2011, Q.No.-2(a)(i),
Page No.-279
MCS-043 GPH Book 293

(c) Consider the following relations:

Student (id, name, age, programme)
(fee-paid (id, date, amount)
(i) Create a view using SQL for a student whose id is “001”. The student is allowed
to see information about himself/herself.
Ans. CREATE VIEW Stud AS
SELECT * FROM Student
WHERE id = 001
(ii) The student has only read-access to his/her data. Write the appropriate SQL
code for the above.
Ans. Select * from Stud
(iii) Create another view for Administrator who can access and modify all the data.
Ans. CREATE VIEW Admin AS
SELECT * FROM Student, fee-paid
WHERE student.id = feepaid.id
Q4. (a) Consider a supply data of an organization having three dimensions as
SUPPLIER, PART and PROJECT where a supplier “s” supplies part “p” to project
“r” in quantity “q”. Draw a star schema with SUPPLY as fact table. Make suitable
assumptions. How does star schema differs from snow flake schema?
Ans.

Supplier Dimension Part Dimension

S_id(PK) P_id (PK)
S_name Name
Address Color
Weight

Supply Fact
S_id (FK)
Pr_id (FK)
P_id (FK)
Q_ID (FK)
Su_id(PK)

Quanity Dimension Project Dimension

Q_ID (PK) Pr_id (PK)
No_of_item Name
location

Snowflake Schema Star Schema

Ease of maintenance/change: No redundancy and hence more Has redundant data and hence
easy to maintain and change less easy to maintain/change
Ease of Use: More complex queries and hence Less complex queries and easy
less easy to understand to understand
Query Performance: More foreign keys-and hence more More foreign keys-and hence
query execution time more query execution time
Normalization: Has normalized tables Has De-normalized tables
Type of Datawarehouse: Go od t o us e f or s mal l d ata Good for large data warehouses
warehouses / data marts
Joins: Higher number of Joins Fewer Joins
294 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

(b)With the help of a diagram, explain the reference architecture of Distributed

DBMS.
Refer to Dec-2006, Q.No.-2(i), Page No.-168
(c) List the characteristics and challenges in implementation of mobile databases.
Refer to Dec-2010, Q.No.-2(a), Page No.-270
Q5. (a) What are the different types of index implementations available in POST
gre SQL? Explain each one of them.
Refer to Page No.-150[Indexes]
(b) Explain the following:
(i) Dynamic SQL
Refer to Ch-4, Q.No.-10, Page No.-57
(ii) OLAP and its types
Ans. Refer to Page No.-179[OLAP]
The different types of OLAP are defined based on the underlying design on which
the OLAP model is developed. When the OLAP database resides on a relational
database then that is called ROLAP, Relational OLAP. When the OLAP data is
stored as independent proprietary format by creating multi-dimensional cubes,
they are called MOLAP that is Multidimensional OLAP. When an OLAP design
uses the hybrid of OLAP and MOLAP, it is called HOLAP, Hybrid OLAP. HOLAP
uses both the technologies to analyze the data where users can go from MOLAP to
ROLAP by drilling through the data.
(iii) Spatial databases
Refer to Page No.-192[Spatial Databases]
(iv) Semantic databases
Refer to June-2008, Q.No.-2(c), Page No.-219
(c) What is the significance of creating Data Dictionary in DBMS? Explain the
statistics stored in the Data Dictionary, with the help of an example.
Refer to Ch-4, Q.No.-20, Page No.-65

To give people the experience of happiness and comfort with your

vibrations of peace and happiness is true service.
 MCS – 43: ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
December, 2012

Note: Question number one is compulsory. Answer any three questions from
the rest.

Q1. (a) Given the following semi structured data in XML, create the DTD
(Document Type Declaration) for it:
<DOCUMENT>
<STUDENT>
<NAME> RAJESH </NAME>
<CLASS> X-A </CLASS>
<SCHOOL> K.V; R.K.PURAM,
DELHI</SCHOOL>
</STUDENT>
<STUDENT>
<NAME> SANJAY</NAME>
<CLASS> XI-C </CLASS>
<SCHOOL) GURUKUL, GHAZIBAD
</SCHOOL>
<STUDENT>
</DOCUMENT>
Ans. < ? xml version = “1.0” encoding = “UTF-8” stand alone = “yes” ?>
<! DOCUMENT document [
<! ELEMENT document (student) * >
<! ELEMENT student (name, class, school)>
<! ELEMENT name (# PCDATA) >
<! ELEMENT class (# PCDATA) >
<! ELEMENT school (# PCDATA)>]>
(b) How BCNF is different from 3NF. Explain with the help of an example.
Consider a relation R(A, B, C) with functional dependencies AB → C
and C → A. Decompose the relation ‘R’ into BCNF relations.
Refer to Dec-2010, Q.No.-3(a), Page No.-271 & June-2010,
Q.No-2(c), Page No.-261
(c) What are views and what is their significance? How views are managed
in SQL, explain using an example?
Refer to Ch-4, Page No.-49[View] & Q.No.-3, Page No.-50
(d) What is data mart? How is it different from data warehouse? How the
management of data in a database, is different from the management of
data in a data warehouse. Explain using example.
Ans. Refer to Dec-08, Q.No.- 3(b) Page No.-231, & Ch-6, Q.No.-49 ,
Page No.-131
(295)
296 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
As one of the oldest components associated with computers, the database
management system (DBMS), is a computer software program that is designed
as the means of managing all databases that are currently installed on a system
hard drive or network. Different types of database management systems exist,
with some of them designed for the oversight and proper control of databases
that are configured for specific purposes. Here are some examples of the various
incarnations of DBMS technology that are currently in use, and some of the
basic elements that are parts of DBMS software applications.
Data is the most valuable enterprise asset. A good integrated data management
strategy will enhance an organisation’s ability to develop valuable insights
that provides greater business value. This strategy is driven by the following
needs:
• Need Integrated Data: Disparate data sources lead to information silos
resulting in decision deficiencies
• Need Accurate Data: Lack of data standards lead to data quality issues and
therefore distorted insights
• Need Data Governance: Inadequate definitions, unclear ownership and lack
of standards can lead to inconsistencies in organisational data management.
(e) Consider the following three transactions
T1 T2 T3
Read (x) Read (x) Read (x)
x=x–1000 display (x) Y : = (x)
Write (x) display (x)
Insert shared and exclusive locks in T1, T2 and T3 such that the transactions
when executed concurrently, do not encounter and concurrency related
problem.
Refer to June-2009, Q.No.-1(a), Page No.-234
(f) What is Datagrid? Show typical structure of datagrid. What are the
application areas of datagrid?
Ans. Refer to Ch-7, Q.No.-20, Page No.-146
Applications:
A data grid includes most of relational database capabilities including schema
integration formal conversion of data, distributed query support, etc.
(g) What are Web-databases? How do you create them?
Ans. The term web database can be used in at least two different way:
Definition 1: A web database may be defined as the organised listing of web
pages for a particular topic. Since the number of web pages may be large for a
topic, a web database would require strong indexing.
Definition 2: A web database is a database that can be accessed through the
web.
Now refer to Ch-7, Q.No.-12, Page No.-145
MCS-043 GPH Book 297
(h) Explain shadow paging recovery scheme with the help of diagram.
Refer to June-08, Q.No.-5(a), Page No.-223

Q2. (a) Illustrate using an example the Apriori algorithm for association
rule mining.
Refer to Ch-6, Q.No.-60 & 61, Page No.-138-139
(b) Discuss, how Oracle manages database security?
Refer to Ch-8, Q.No.-24, Page No.-159
(c) Consider the following SQL Query on the employee relation.
SELECT LNAME, FNAME
FROM EMPLOYEE
WHERE SALARY > (SELECT MAX (SALARY) FROM EMPLOYEE
WHERE DNO = 5)
Derive an execution plan for the Query. Give a measure of Query Cost.
Make suitable assumptions.
Ans.
π LNAME,FNAME

σ Salary > g man(sal)

Employee g man (sal)

σ DNo=5

Employee
Figure: Query Execution Plan

Measurement of Query Cost:

Assumptions
(1) Employee table is not sorted.
(2) Employee table has N blocks
(3) Average seek time = t s
(4) Average block read cost = br
Query Cost = ( N × t s × br ) + ( N × t s × br )
for main query for subquery
298 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
Q3. (a) What are mobile databases? Discuss the characteristics of mobile
databases. Give an application of mobile database.
Ans. Refer to Ch-7, QNo.-10 & 14, Page No.-144-145
Applications of mobile databases:
(1) Electronic vallet (e-vallet)
(2) Mobile cash (m-cash)
(b) Explain how the 3 phase commit protocol increases the systems
availability and doesn’t allow transaction to remain blocked until a failure
is repaired, with a suitable example.
Refer to Dec-2009, Q.No.-2(c), Page No.-248
(c) What is meant by the term “ETL”? Discuss the transformations
required during the ETL process.
Ans. ETL refers to the methods involved in accessing and manipulating data
available in various sources and loading it into a target data warehouse. Initially
the ETL was performed using SQL programs, however, now there are tools
available for ETL processes.
Transformations are useful for transforming the source data according to the
requirements of the data warehouse. The process of transformation should
ensure the quality of the data that needs to be loaded into the target data
warehouse. Some of the common transformations are:
Filter Transformation: Filter transformations are used to filter the rows in a
mapping that do not meet specific conditions. For example, the list of employees
of the Sales department who made sales above `50,000/- may be filtered out.
Joiner Transformation: This transformation is used to join the data of one or
more different tables that may be stored on two different locations and could
belong to two different sources of data that may be relational or from any
other sources like XML data.
Aggregator Transformation: Such transformations perform aggregate
calculations on the extracted data. Some such calculations may be to find the
sum or average.
Sorting Transformation: requires creating an order in the required data, based
on the application requirements of the data warehouse.

Q4. (a) What is “tuning a database”? What are the goals of tuning in
relational database system? Why is Query tuning required?
Ans. Database tuning describes a group of activities used to optimise and
homogenise the performance of a database. It usually overlaps with query
tuning, but refers to design of the database files, selection of the database
management system (DBMS), operating system and CPU the DBMS runs on.
The goal is to maximise use of system resources to perform work as efficiently
and rapidly as possible. Most systems are designed to manage work efficiently,
but it is possible to greatly improve performance by customising settings and
the configuration for the database and the DBMS being tuned.
MCS-043 GPH Book 299
Sql Statements are used to retrieve data from the database. We can get same
results by writing different sql queries. But use of the best query is important
when performance is considered. So you need to sql query tuning based on the
requirement. Here is the list of queries which we use regularly and how these
sql queries can be optimised for better performance.
SQL Tuning/SQL Optimisation Techniques:
(1) The sql query becomes faster if you use the actual columns names in
SELECT statement instead of than ‘*’.
(2) HAVING clause is used to filter the rows after all the rows are selected. It
is just like a filter. Do not use HAVING clause for any other purposes.
(3) Sometimes you may have more than one subqueries in your main query.
Try to minimise the number of subquery block in your query.
(4) Use operator EXISTS, IN and table joins appropriately in your query.
(a) Usually IN has the slowest performance.
(b) IN is efficient when most of the filter criteria is in the sub-query.
(c) EXISTS is efficient when most of the filter criteria is in the main query.
(5) Use EXISTS instead of DISTINCT when using joins which involves tables
having one-to-many relationship.
(6) Try to use UNION ALL in place of UNION.
(7) Be careful while using conditions in WHERE clause.
(8) Use DECODE to avoid the scanning of same rows or joining the same
table repetitively. DECODE can also be made used in place of GROUP BY or
ORDER BY clause.
(9) To store large binary objects, first place them in the file system and add the
file path in the database.
(10) To write queries which provide efficient performance follow the general
SQL standard rules.
(a) Use single case for all SQL verbs
(b) Begin all SQL verbs on a new line
(c) Separate all words with a single space
(d) Right or left aligning verbs within the initial SQL verb
(b) Explain the following two ways to implement the object oriented
concepts in DBMS:
(i) To extend the existing RDBMS to include object orientation
Ans. The RDBMS technology has been enhanced over the period of last two
decades. The RDBMS are based on the theory of relations and thus are
developed on the basis of proven mathematical background. Hence, they can
be proved to be working correctly. Thus, it may be a good idea to include the
concepts of object orientation so that, they are able to support object-oriented
technologies too. The first two concepts that were added include the concept
of complex types, inheritance, and some newer types such as multisets and
arrays. One of the key concerns in object-relational database are the storage of
300 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
tables that would be needed to represent inherited tables, and representation
for the newer types.
One of the ways of representing inherited tables may be to store the inherited
primary key attributes along with the locally defined attributes.
The second possibility here would be, to allow the data to be stored in all the
inherited as well as base tables. However, such a case will result in data
replication.
(ii) To create a new DBMS that is exclusively devoted to Object Oriented
DBMS
Ans. The database system consists of persistent data. To manipulate that data
one must either use data manipulation commands or a host language like C
using embedded command. However, a persistent language would require a
seamless integration of language and persistent data.
A practical approach for declaring a persistent object would be to design a
construct that declares an objects as persistent. The difficulty with this approach
is that it needs to declare object persistence at the time of creation, An alternative
of this approach may be to mark a persistent object during run time.
All the objects created during the execution of an object oriented program
would be given a system generated object identifier, however, these identifiers
become useless once the program terminates. With the persistent objects it is
necessary that such objects have meaningful object identifiers. Persistent object
identifiers may be implemented using the concept of persistent pointers that
remain valid even after the end of a program.
(c) Explain data fragmentation in DDBMS with the help of an examples.
Ans. DATA FRAGMENTATION
Data fragmentation allows you to break a single object into two or more
segments or fragments. The object might be a user’s database, a system
database, or a table. Each fragment can be stored at any site over a computer
network.
Information about data fragmentation is stored in the distributed data catalog
(DDC), from which it is accessed by the TP to process user requests
There are three types of data fragmentation strategies:
• Horizontal fragmentation refers to the division of a relation into subsets
(fragments) of tuples (rows). Each fragment is stored at a different node, and
each fragment has unique rows. However, the unique rows all have the same
attributes (columns). In short, each fragment represents the equivalent of a
SELECT statement, with the WHERE clause on a single attribute.
• Vertical fragmentation refers to the division of a relation into attribute
(column) subsets. Each subset (fragment) is stored at a different node, and
each fragment has unique columns—with the exception of the key column,
which is common to all fragments.
MCS-043 GPH Book 301
• Mixed fragmentation refers to a combination of horizontal and vertical
strategies. In other words, a table may be divided into several horizontal subsets
(rows), each one having a subset of the attributes (columns).
To illustrate the fragmentation strategies, let’s use the CUSTOMER table for
the XYZ Company, depicted in Figure bellow.
Table name: CUSTOMER
CUS_NUM CUS_NAME CUS_ADDRESS CUS_STATE CUS_LIMIT CUS_BAL CUS_RATING CUS_DUE
10 Sinex, Inc. 12 Main St. TN 3500.00 2700.00 3 1245.00
11 Martin Crop. 321 Sunset Blvd. FL 6000.00 1200.00 1 0.00
12 Mynux Corp. 910 Eagle St. TN 4000.00 3500.00 3 3400.00
13 BTBC, Inc. Rue du Monde. FL 6000.00 5890.00 3 1090.00
14 Victory, Inc. 123 Maple St. FL 1200.00 550.00 1 0.00
15 NBCC Crop. 909 High Ave. GA 2000.00 350.00 2 50.00

Q5. (a) Explain the following in context of ORACLE/PostGRESQL.

(i) Triggers (ii) Security (iii) Data dictionary
Refer to June-2010, Q.No.-4(c), Page No.-264
(b) Explain the following:
(i) Embedded SQL
Ans. The embedded SQL statements can be put in the application program
written in C, Java or any other host language. These statements sometime may
be called static.
The term ‘static’ is used to indicate that the embedded SQL commands, which
are written in the host program, do not change automatically during the lifetime
of the program. Thus, such queries are determined at the time of database
application design. For example, a query statement embedded in C to determine
the status of train booking for a train will not change. However, this query
may be executed for many different trains.
(ii) Deductive Databases
Refer to Page No.-180
(iii) OLAP
Refer to Page No.-179
(iv) Join dependency
Refer to Dec-2009, Q.No.-1(e), Page No.-244
(c) What is multiversion concurrency control? Explain, how multiversion
concurrency control can be achieved by using Time Stamp Ordering.
Refer to June-2011, Q.No.-3(b), Page No.-282
 MCS – 43: ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
June, 2013

Note: Question number one is compulsory. Answer any three questions from
the rest.

Q1. (a) Consider the following instance of a relation:

Employee Name Project Name Equipment
Sanjay Inventory control Computer
Sanjay Secure website Mobile
Sanjay Secure website Computer
Sanjay Inventory control Mobile
Harish Intranet Computer
Harish Secure website Computer

You may assume that projects are independent of equipments that may
be allocated to a person. Also assume that employee name, project name
and equipment are unique. Perform the following tasks for the description
given above:
(i) Identify the primary key of the relation. Justify your selection.
Ans. The primary key of the relation is {Employee Name, Project Name,
Equipment} because there is no FD exist in the relation therefore all the
attributes have to take in the primary key.
(ii) Identify the FDs and MVDs in the relation. Give reasons for your
selection.
Ans. There is no FD exist in the relation. The MVDs are (Employee Name
→→ Project Name,
Employee Name →→ Equipment, Project Name →→ Equipment,
Project Name →→ Employee Name, Equipment →→ Project Name,
Equipment →→ Employee Name)
(iii) Normalise the relation upto 4th Normal Form (4NF). Show that your
decomposition is lossless.
Ans. Loseless 4NF decomposition are
EP
Employee Name Project Name
Sanjay Inventory Control
Sanjay Secure Website
Harish Intranet
Harish Secure Website

(302)
MCS-043 GPH Book 303
PE
Project Name Equipment
Inventory Control Computer
Secure Website Mobile
Secure Website Computer
Inventory Control Mobile
Intranet Computer

EE
Employee Name Equipment
Sanjay Computer
Sanjay Mobile
Harish Computer

The above decomposition is loseless because ( EP  PE  EE ) ≡ EPE

(b) Consider the following two tables:
Employee Project
EID Name Project Project Project Name
1 Mohan P1 P1 DBMS
2 Shyam P2 P2 OS
3 Deep P3 P3 Networks
4 Deepak P4 P4 OOPS
. .
. .
. .

Consider the query

“List the names of all the employees working on DBMS project.”
(i) Draw the query tree for the query.
Ans. π name ( σ project name = ‘DBMS’ (EMPLOYEE  PROJECT))

π name

σproject name = 'DBMS'

Employee Project
304 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
(ii) Assume that hash join is to be used to join the two tables, show the
process of joining the two, tables using the hash join.
Ans.
Employee Table Employee Project Project Table
Partition Partition
EID Name Project Project Project Name
1 Mohan P1 P1 P1 P1 DBMS
2 Shyam P2 P2 P2 P2 OS
3 Deep P3 P3 Networks
4 Deepak P3 P3 OOPS
P4 P4
. . . P 4 P4 . .
. . . . .

(c) Assume that a departmental store has many branches, it has many
products and the sales information is recorded for every year. For example,
Year Product Code Branch Code Sales amount
2009 A001 B001 5000
2009 A001 B002 6000
2010 A001 B002 3000
2010 A002 B002 2000
.
.
.
.

Identify the dimension tables and fact tables and create the star schema
for above.
Ans.
Dimension Table: Dimension Table:
Year Product
Year Fact Table: Product Code
Quarter Sales PName

Year
Product Code Dimension Table:
Branch Code Branch
Sales Amount
Branch Code
BName
Location
Figure: Star Schema
MCS-043 GPH Book 305
(d) Differentiate between the following:
(i) JDBC versus ODBC
Refer to Page No.-190 [JDBC] & Page No.-179 [ODBC]
(ii) B - Tree indexes versus R - Tree indexes used in postgre SQL
Ans. B-Tree Indexes: These are the default type index. These are useful for
comparison and range queries.
R-Tree indexes: Such index are created on built-in spatial data types such as
box, circle for determining operations like overlap etc.
(e) What is a system catalogue? Write SQL command to show all the table
names in a database.
Ans. The system catalogue is a collection of tables and views that contain
important information about a database. It is the place where a relational
database management system stores schema metadata, such as information
about tables and columns, and internal bookkeeping information. A system
catalogue is available for each database. Information in the system catalogue
defines the structure of the database.
The terms system catalogue and data dictionary have been used interchangeably
in most situations.
(f) Consider that the adjustment of salary of the faculty members is done
as follows, where Fac_Salary i represents the salary of ith faculty member:
Transaction 1: Fac_Salary i: = Fac_Salary i + 1025
Transaction 2: Fac_Salary i: = Fac_Salary i * 1.1
If the above two transactions are run concurrently, what type of problems
can occur. Justify.
Ans. If the given two transactions run concurrently, the lost update problem
may occur. For example, consider the following schedule:
T1 T2 fac_salary i
Read (fac_salary i) 5000
Read (fac_salary i) 5000
fac_salary ∗ = 1.1
fac_salary + = 1.25
write (fac_salary i) 5500
write(fac_salary i) 6025

In the above schedule the update made by transaction T2 is overwritten by

transaction T1 . (Loss of update made by T2 )
(g) What is a multimedia database? What are the challenges in designing
a multimedia database?
Refer to Ch-1, Q.No.-1 & 4, Page No.-140-142
306 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
Q2. (a) A University has many programmes. A student can enrol only one
of these programme as full time or part time student. Create an EER
diagram for the above. Make suitable assumptions. Convert the EER
diagram into suitable relations.
Ans.

Enrollment No.
Student id Name
Prog-Code PName
M 1. Programme
Date of Birth Student Enrolled in
Mode
Duration Fee
Qualification d
Date of Admission

Full Time Part Time

Student Student

EER to Relational mapping:

Student (Student_id, Name, Date of Birth, mode)
Qualification (Student_id, Qualification)
Programme (Prog-code, PName, Duration, fee)
enrolled in (Enrol-no, Student_id, Prog-code, Date of admi)
(b) What is the need of exclusive and shared mode locks? Explain how
these locks may be used in transaction management with the help of an
example?
Ans. A lock based mechanism is used to maintain consistency when more than
one transaction processes is executed. This mechanism controls concurrent
access to data items. As per this mechanism the data items can be locked in
two modes.
(1) Exclusive (X) mode: Data item can be both read as well as written. X-lock
is requested using lock-X instruction.
(2) Shared (S) mode: Data item can only be read. S-lock is requested using
lock-S instruction.
Lock requests are made to the concurrency-control manager. The transaction
can proceed only after request is granted. The Lock-compatibility matrix shows
when lock request will be granted (True).
Unlocked S X
S True True True
X True False False
MCS-043 GPH Book 307
In general, a transaction may be granted a lock on an item if the requested lock
is compatible with locks already held on the item by other transactions. Any
number of transactions can hold shared locks on an item, but if any transaction
holds an exclusive lock on the item, then no other transaction may hold any
lock on the item. If a lock cannot be granted, the requesting transaction is
made to wait till all incompatible locks held by other transactions have been
released. The lock is then granted. The following is an example of a transaction
that requests and is granted/permitted locks:
T2 : lock-S(X);
read(X);
unlock (X);
lock-S(Y);
read (Y);
unlock (Y);
display (X + Y)
Locking as above is not sufficient to guarantee serialisability–if X and Y are
updated in-between the read of X and Y by some other transaction, the displayed
sum would be wrong. A locking protocol is a set of rules to be followed by all
transactions while requesting and releasing locks. Locking protocols restrict
the set of possible schedules.
(c) What is data mining? Explain with the help of an example situation.
What is classification approach of data mining? How is it different then
clustering?
Ans Data mining is the process of automatic extraction of interesting (non
trivial, implicit, previously unknown and potentially useful) information or
patterns from the data in large databases.
Example:
Now that we have defined data, information and knowledge let us define some
of the problems that can be solved through the data mining process.
Mr Ramniwas Gupta manages a supermarket and the cash counters, he adds
transactions into the database. Some of the questions that can come to Mr.
Gupta’s mind are as follows:
(a) Can you help me visualise my sales?
(b) Can you profile my customers?
(c) Tell me something interesting about sales such as, what time sales will be
maximum etc.
He does not know statistics, and he does not want to hire statisticians.
The answer of some of the above questions may be answered by data mining.
The classification task maps data into predefined groups or classes. The class
of a tuple is indicated by the value of a user-specified goal attribute. Tuples
308 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
consists of a set of predicating attributes and a goal attribute. The task is to
discover some kind of relationship between the predicating attributes and the
goal attribute, so that the discovered knowledge can be used to predict the
class of new tuple(s).

Q3. (a) Explain the process of log based recovery using immediate database
modification scheme with the help of an example.
Ans. Log-Based Recovery
A log is maintained on a stable storage media. The log is a sequence of log
records, and maintains a record of update activities on the database. When
transaction Ti starts, it registers itself by writing a < Ti start> log record.
Before Ti executes write(X), a log record < Ti X,V1,V2> is written, where V1
is the value of X before the write (undo value), and V2 is the value to be written
to X (redo value).
• Log record notes that Ti has performed a write on data item X. X had value
V1 before the write, and will have value V2 after the write.
• When Ti finishes it last statement, the log record < Ti commit> is written. We
assume for now that log records are written directly to a stable storage media
(that is, they are not buffered).
Two approaches for recovery using logs are:
• Deferred database modification.
• Immediate database modification.
Immediate Database Modification: The immediate database modification
scheme allows database updates on the stored database even of an uncommitted
transaction. These updates are made as the writes are issued (since undoing
may be needed, update logs must have both the old value as well as the new
value). Updated log records must be written before database item is written
(assume that the log record is output directly to a stable storage and can be
extended to postpone log record output, as long as prior to execution of an
output (Y) operation for a data block Y all log records corresponding to items
Y must be flushed to stable storage).
The recovery procedure in such has two operations instead of one:
• undo (Ti) restores the value of all data items updated by Ti to their old values,
moving backwards from the last log record for Ti ,
• redo (Ti) sets the value of all data items updated by Ti to the new values,
moving forward from the first log record for Ti .
When recovering after failure:
• Transaction Ti needs to be undone if the log contains the record < Ti start>,
but does not contain the record < Ti commit>.
• Transaction Ti needs to be redone if the log contains both the record < Ti start>
and the record < Ti commit>.
Undo operations are performed first, then redo operations.
MCS-043 GPH Book 309
Example:
Consider the log as it appears at three instances of time.
<T1 start> <T1 start> <T1 start>
<T1, X10000, 9000> <T1, X10000, 9000> <T1, X10000, 9000>
<T1, Y8000, 9000> <T1, Y8000, 9000> <T1, Y8000, 9000>
<T1, Commit> <T1, Commit>
<T2 start> <T2 start>
<T2, Z20000, 19000> <T2, Z20000, 19000>
<T2, Commit>
(a) (b) (c)

Recovery actions in each case above are:

(a) undo (T1): Y is restored to 8,000 and X to 10,000.
(b) undo (T2): and redo (T1): Z is restored to 20,000, and then X and Y are set
to 9,000 and 9,000 respectively.
(c) redo (T1) and redo (T2): X and Y are set to 9,000 and 9,000 respectively.
Then Z is set to 19,000
(b) (i) What is difference between serial schedule and serialisable schedule?
What are the conditions for a schedule of transactions to be serialisable,
give an example of a serialisable schedule?
Ans.A serial schedule is when all the operations of one transactions appear
together (not mixed with the operations of any other transactions on the
schedule).
A serialisable schedule is a weaker term–it is a schedule where the operations
of different transactions may be mixed together on the schedule, so long as
they are conflict-equivalent to some serial schedule.
A schedule can be called as serialisable schedule if it satisfies either view-
serializability and/or conflict-serializability.
View-serialisability of a schedule is defined by equivalence to a serial schedule
(no overlapping transactions) with the same transactions, such that respective
transactions in the two schedules read and write the same data values (“view”
the same data values).
Conflict-serializability is defined by equivalence to a serial schedule
(no overlapping transactions) with the same transactions, such that both
schedules have the same sets of respective chronologically ordered pairs of
conflicting operations (same precedence relations of respective conflicting
operations).
Example:
the following schedule is a conflict serialisable schedule:
w1 ( A ) ,r2 ( A ) , w1 ( B) ,w 3 ( C ) ,r2 ( C ) ,r4 ( B ) , w 2 ( D ) , w 4 ( E ) ,r5 ( D ) , w 5 ( E )
310 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
(ii) What are the different types of θ - join operations available in relational
algebra?
Ans. Natural join (  )
Natural join (  ) is a binary operator that is written as (R  S) where R and
S are relations. The result of the natural join is the set of all combinations of
tuples in R and S that are equal on their common attribute names. For an
example consider the tables Employee and Dept and their natural join:
Employee Dept Employee ∞ Dept
Name EmpId DeptName DeptName Manager Name EmpId DeptName Manager
Harry 3415 Finance Finance George Harry 3415 Finance George
Sally 2241 Sales Sales Harriet Sally 2241 Sales Harriet
George 3401 Finance Production Charles George 3401 Finance George
Harriet 2202 Sales Harriet 2202 Sales Harriet

θ -join and equijoin

Consider tables Car and Boat which list models of cars and boats and their
respective prices. Suppose a customer wants to buy a car and a boat, but she
does not want to spend more money for the boat than for the car. The θ -join
(  θ ) on the relation Car Price ≥ Boat Price produces a table with all the
possible options. When using a condition where the attributes are equal, for
example price, then the condition may be specified as Price=Price or
alternatively (Price) itself.
Car ∞ Boat
Car Boat CarPrice ≥ BoatPrice
CarModel CarPrice BoatModel BoatPrice CarModel CarPrice BoatModel BoatPrice
CarA 20,000 Boat1 10,000 CarA 20,000 Boat1 10,000
CarB 30,000 Boat2 40,000 CarB 30,000 Boat1 10,000
CarC 50,000 Boat3 60,000 CarC 50,000 Boat1 10,000
CarC 50,000 Boat2 40,000

If we want to combine tuples from two relations where the combination

condition is not simply the equality of shared attributes then it is convenient to
have a more general from of join operator, which is the θ -join (or theta-join).
The θ -join is a binary
R  S R  S
operator that is written as a θ b or u θ v where a and b are attribute names, θ
is a binary relation in the set { < , ≤ , = , > , ≥} , v is a value constant, and R and S
are relations. The result of this operation consists of all combinations of tuples in
R and S that satisfy the relation θ . The result of the θ -join is defined only if
the headers of S and R are disjoint, that is, do not contain a common attribute.
The simulation of this operation in the fundamental operations is therefore as
follows:
σθ ( R × S )
R  θ S =
MCS-043 GPH Book 311
In case the operator is the equality operator (=) then this join is also called an
equijoin.
Outer join
An outer join does not require each record in the two joined tables to have a
matching record. The joined table retains each record–even if no other matching
record exists. Outer joins subdivide further into left outer joins, right outer
joins, and full outer joins, depending on which table’s rows are retained (left,
right, or both).
Left outer join
The result of a left outer join (or simply left join) for table A and B always
contains all records of the “left” table (A), even if the join-condition does not
find any matching record in the “right” table (B). This means that if the ON
clause matches 0 (zero) records in B (for a given record in A), the join will still
return a row in the result (for that record) —but with NULL in each column
from B. A left outer join returns all the values from an inner join plus all values
in the left table that do not match to the right table.
For example, this allows us to find an employee’s department, but still shows
that employee(s) even when they have not been assigned to a department
(contrary to the inner-join example above, where unassigned employees were
excluded from the result).
Right outer join
A right outer join (or right join) closely resembles a left outer join, except with
the treatment of the tables reversed. Every now from the “right” table (B) will
appear in the joined table at least once. If no matching row from the “left”
table (A) exists, NULL will appear in columns from A for those records that
have no match in B.
A right outer join returns all the values from the right table and matched values
from the left table (NULL in the case of no matching join predicate). For
example, this allows us to find each employee and his or her department, but
sill show departments that have no employees.
Full outer join
Conceptually, a full outer join combines the effect of applying both left and
right outer joins. Where records in the FULL OUTER JOINed tables do not
match, the result set will have NULL values for every column of the table that
lacks a matching row. For those records that do match, a single row will be
produced in the result set (containing fields populated from both tables).
For example, this allows us to see each employee who is in a department and
each department that has an employee, but also see each employee who is not
part of a department and each department which doesn’t have an employee.
312 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
(iii) Explain the concept of “cursor” and “Trigger” in SQL.
Refer to Ch-5, Q.No.-36, Page No.-93 & 94

Q4. (a) Consider the following DTD in XML:

<[
<?xml version =”1.0" encoding =”UTF – 8"?>
<!DOCTYPE Customer>
<!ELEMENT Customer (Person, Address+)>
<!ELEMENT Person (F name, L name)>
<!ELEMENT F name (# PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT L name (# PCDATA)>
<! ELEMENT Address (# PCDATA)>
]>
Create at least two customer records in XML format using the DTD.
Ans. <DOCUMENT>
<CUSTOMER>
<PERSON>
<FNAME> Ramesh </FNAME>
<LNAME> chand </ LNAME>
</PERSON>
<Address> Ashok Vihar <Address>
</Customer>
<Customer>
<PERSON>
<Fname> Anil </Fname>
<Lname> Kapoor </Lname>
</Person>
<Address> Juhu, Mumbai </Address>
<Address> Delhi </Address>
</Customer>
</Document>
(b) Define the term join dependency with the help of an example.
Refer to Dec-2008, Q.No.-4(b), Page No.-232
(c) Explain Horizontal and Vertical Fragmentation in distributed DBMS.
Ans. Horizontal Fragmentation: refers to the division of a relation into subsets
(fragments) of tuples (rows). Each fragment is stored at a different node, and
each fragment has unique rows. However, the unique rows all have the same
attributes (columns). In short, each fragment represents the equivalent of a
SELECT statement, with the WHERE clause on a single attribute.
Vertical fragmentation: refers to the division of a relation into attribute
(column) subsets. Each subset (fragment) is stored at a different node, and
MCS-043 GPH Book 313
each fragment has unique columns—with the exception of the key column,
which is common to all fragments. This is the equivalent of the PROJECT
statement SQL.
(d) Explain the role of the following files in oracle.
(i) Control files (ii) Data files
Refer to Page No.-208

Q5. (a) Define the following giving an example/diagram, if needed.

(i) Data Grid
Refer to Ch-7, Q.No.-20, Page No.-146
(ii) Data Mart
Refer to Dec-2008, Q.No.-3(b), Page No.-231
(iii) Deadlock
Refer to Chapter-5, Q.No.-24, Page No.-83
(iv) Check Point
Refer to Page No.-162[Check Point]
(v) Referential Integrity constraint
Ans. This constraint identifies any column referencing the PRIMARY KEY
in another table. It establishes a relationship between two columns in the same
table or between different tables. For a column to be defined as a Foreign Key,
it should be a defined as a Primary Key in the table which it is referring. One
or more columns can be defined as Foreign key.
Syntax to define a Foreign key at column level:
[CONSTRAINT constraint_name] REFERENCES Referenced_Table_ name
(column_name)
Syntax to define a Foreign key at table level:
[CONSTRAINT constraint_name] FOREIGN KEY (column_name)
REFERENCES referenced_table_name(column_name);
(b) What are the different types of security features needed for a multilevel
security system? Explain the process of partitioning and encryption in a
multilevel security system.
Ans. MULTILEVEL SECURITY
System may have the following three security features:
• Security of different objects may be different from the other attribute values
of that tuple or security may be different from the other values of the attributes.
• Thus, every individual element is the micro item for security.
• In addition, security against statistical queries may also need to be provided.
• A number of security level needs to be defined for such security.
There are many techniques to support multi-level security. Two important
methods of these are:
Partitioning: In the approach the original database is divided into partitions.
Each of the partitions has a different level of security.
314 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
However, the major drawback of this approach is that the database looses the
advantage of a relation.
Encryption: Encryption of critical information may help in maintaining
security as a user who accidentally receives them cannot interpret the data.
Such a scheme may be used when a user password file is implemented in the
database design. However, the simple encryption algorithms are not secure,
also since data is available in the database it may also be obtained in response
to a query.
 MCS – 43: ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
December, 2013

Note: Question number one is compulsory. Answer any three questions from
the rest.

Q1. (a) Consider the following situation:

“A company has two employee named “A” and “B”. The company has
two projects P1 and P2 project P1 uses languages C and C++, whereas
project P2 uses languages C and JAVA. Employee whose name is “A”
works on both the projects P1 and P2, whereas employee named “B”
works on project P2 only.”
(i) Represent the information given above as a relation/table S (employee
name, project, language).
(ii) List the FDs and MVDs in the table above.
(iii) Normalise the table upto 4th Normal Form.
(b) Define the term-“view” with the help of an example.
(c) Consider the following relations.
Supplier (sid, Sname)
parts (pid, pname)
Supp-part (sid, pid, quantity)
(i) Write a relational algebraic expression for the following query:
“List the names of the supplier’s who have supplied the part whose
pname is “Bolt”.
(ii) Draw the query tree for the query given above.
(d) How is a checkpoint useful in log based recovery? Explain it with the
help of an example/diagram
(e) Represent the following using Object Definition language (ODL)
Book Issued to Student
Book ID SID
Title SNAME
Author Received by
Please note that diagram indicates that a book is issued to a student
who receives it. The attributes of Book objects are Book ID, Title and
Author; and the attributes of student objects are SID and SNAME.
(f) What is a data warehouse? Why is it needed by an organisation?
Explain the process of Data Extraction, Transformation and Loading
(ETL) in the context of a data warehouse
(g) What is ODBC? Why is it needed? What are the various components
needed to implement ODBC?

(315)
316 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
(h) What are control files in Oracle? What does a control file contain?
What is the role of control file in starting an instance of oracle. What is
the purpose of redo log file during this time.

Q2. (a) Draw an EER diagram for the following situation: A vehicle can
be owned by an Individual or an organisation. In case the vehicle is
owned by an organisation then the database should store the name and
designation of contact person in the organisation, the office address,
and the name of the organisation along with name of the head. However,
for an individual owner just name, address and phonenumber of owner
needs to be recorder. “You may assume that the basic information that
is to be stored about the vehicle should be-vehicle registration number
type, date of model, date of purchase.”
(b) Convert the EER diagram created in part (a) to equivalent RDBMS
tables having proper keys and constraints.
(c) Define the term data mining. How data mining is different from
Knowledge Discovery in data bases (KDD)? Explain the steps of KDD
with the help of an example.
(d) Explain any three common database security failures. Explain with
the help of an example, how SQL can be used to enforce access control
in a database.

Q3. (a) Assume the following three transactions:

T1: “Increment the X account by an amount `1000/- and Decrement Y
is account by an amount. `1000/-”
T2: Decrement X account by an amount of `2000/- and increment Z’s
account by `2000/-
T3: Add the amount present in the accounts X, Y and Z to Total amount
use the shared (s) mode and exclusive (k) mode locks to write the
pseudo code of transactions T1, T2 and T3, such that they can be executed
concurrently. Explain your answer.
(b) What is embedded SQL? Give an example of embedded SQL
statement in ‘C’ language. What is the role of cursor in embedded
SQL? Explain with the help of an example.
(c) Differentiate between the following:
(i) JDBC versus ODBC
(ii) Distributed Database versus centralized Database
(iii) Redo versus undo

Q4. (a) Consider the following XML document:

<?xml version = “1.0”encity =”UTF — 8"?>
<Customer>
<name>
MCS-043 GPH Book 317
<fname>Lokesh </fname>
<lname> Jain </lname>
</name>
<type>Home</ type>
<phone>297511</ phone>
</customer>
<customer>
<name>
<fname> Ramesh</fname>
<lname>Nagesh</ lname>
</name>
<type> Company</type>
<phone>293575</phone>
<phone>33333</ phone>
</ customer>
Write the DTD for the XML document given above.
(b) What is the role of a trigger? Explain with the help of an example.
How is a trigger different to a stored procedure? Explain.
(c) Consider the following Relation schema R (Faculty, Dean,
Department, Chairperson, professor, Rank, student) and the following
set of functional dependencies:
Faculty → Dean
Dean → Faculty
Department → Chairperson
Professor → Rank, chairperson
Department → Faculty
Student → Department, Faculty, Dean
Professor, Rank → Department, Faculty
Obtain 3NF decomposition of the above relation schema and show each
step explicitly

Q5. (a) Explain the following with the help of an example/diagram, if

needed.
(i) Role of system catalogue
(ii) Nested loop join
(iii) Timestamp and its use
(iv) Deadlock
(v) Fragmentation and allocation schema
(vi) Snoflake schema in data warehouse
(b) Explain the multidimensional Data Modeling for a Datawarehouse
with an example.
 MCS – 43: ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
June, 2014

Note: Question number one is compulsory. Answer any three questions from
the rest.

Q1. (a) Explain lossless decomposition and dependency preserving.

Consider the following relation scheme:
R (A, B, C, D, E, F) and FDs
A → BC,C → A,D → E,F → A,E → D
Is the decomposition of R into R1 (A, C, D), R 2 (B, C, D) and R 3 (E, F, D)
lossless and dependency preserving.
Ans. Lossless means functioning without a loss. In other words, retain
everything. Important for databases to have this feature.
• Let R be a relation schema.
• Let F be a set of functional dependencies on R.
• Let and form a decomposition of R.
• The decomposition is a lossless-join decomposition of R if at least one of the
following functional dependencies are in F+
(1) R1  R 2 → R1
( 2 ) R1  R 2 → R 2
A decomposition D = {R 1 ,R 2 ,..., R n } of R is dependency-preserving with respect
to F if the union of the projections of F on each R i in D is equivalent to F; that

is if ( F1 ∪ F2 ∪... ∪ Fn ) = F+
+

Example:
• R(A B C D)
• FD1 :A → B
• FD 2 :B → C
• FD3 :C → D
• Decomposition:
R 1 (A B C) R 2 (C D)

• FD1 :A → B
• FD 2 :B → C
• FD3 :C → D
(318)
MCS-043 GPH Book 319
R1 (A B C)
FD1
FD2
• FD1 :A → B
• FD 2 :B → C
• FD3 :C → D
R1 (A B C)

FD3
• FD1 :A → B
• FD 2 :B → C
• FD3 :C → D
R1 (A B C)
FD1
FD2
Have all 3 functional dependencies. Therefore, it’s preserving the dependencies.
Yes, the decomposition of R into (A, C, D), (B, C, D) and (E, F, D) lossless
and dependency preserving.
(b) What is meant by a schedule in the context of concurrent transactions
in Database? Also explain serial and serialisable schedules with the
help of a suitable example.
Ans. A schedule is a collection of many transactions which is implemented as
a unit. Depending upon how these transactions are arranged in within a
schedule, a schedule can be of two types:
• Serial: The transactions are executed one after another, in a non-preemptive
manner.
• Concurrent: The transactions are executed in a preemptive, time shared
method.
In Serial schedule, there is no question of sharing a single data item among
many transactions, because not more than a single transaction is executing at
any point of time. However, a serial schedule is inefficient in the sense that
the transactions suffer for having a longer waiting time and response time, as
well as low amount of resource utilisation.
Let us consider there are two transactions T1 and T2,whose instruction sets
are given as following. T1 is the same as we have seen earlier, while T2 is a
new transaction.
320 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.

T1 T2 T1 T2
Read (A) Read (A)
A = a – 100 Write (A) Temp = a*0.1 Read (C)
Read (B) C = C+ Temp
B = B + 100 Write (B) Write (C)
T2 is a new transaction which deposits to account C 10% of the amount in
account A.
If we prepare a serial schedule, then either T1 will completely finish before T2
can begin, or T2 will completely finish before T1 can begin. However, if we
want to create a concurrent schedule, then some Context Switching need to
be made, so that some portion of T1 will be executed, then some portion of T2
will be executed and so on. For example say we have prepared the following
concurrent schedule.
T1 T2 T1 T2
Read (A) Read (B)
A = A – 100 B=B+100
Write (A) Write (B)

In concurrent schedule, CPU time is shared among two or more transactions

in order to run them concurrently. However, this creates the possibility that
more than one transaction may need to access a single data item for read/
write purpose and the database could contain inconsistent value if such
accesses are not handled properly.
Serializability: When several concurrent transactions are trying to access
the same data item, the instructions within these concurrent transactions
must be ordered in some way so as there are no problem in accessing and
releasing the shared data item.
There are two aspects of Serializability which are described here:
(1) Conflict Serializability
(2) View Serializability
T1 T2 T1 T2
Write (Q) Write (Q)
Read (Q) Read (R)
Read (R) Read (Q)
Write (Q) Write (Q)
Figure: Conflict Serializability
MCS-043 GPH Book 321

T1 T2 T1 T2
Write (Q) Write (Q)
Read (Q) Read (R)
Read (R) Read (Q)
Write (Q) Write (Q)
Figure: Views Serializability
(c) Define locking in concurrency control. Discuss the various types of
locking techniques.
Ans. Locking is Technique used to control concurrent access to Data. Locking
is the one of the most widely used technique to ensure Serializability. Principle
used in locking Technique is as follows. “A transaction must contain a read
or write lock on data item before it can perform a read or write operation”.
The basic rules implemented in locking technique are as follows
• If a transaction has read lock on a data item. It can performer only read
operation not write.
• If a transaction has read lock on a data item and other transaction want to
use it then it can implement only read lock not write lock on this data.
• If a transaction has write lock on a data item. It can performer Both read
operation and write operation.
• If a transaction has write lock on a data item and other transaction want to
use it then it can’t implement neither read lock nor write lock on this data.
Types of locking Technique
• The two Phase locking protocol
• Time Stamping Protocol
• Validation Based protocol
The two Phase locking protocol:
The two-phase locking protocol is used to ensure the Serializability in Database.
This protocol is implemented in two phase:
• Growing Phase-  
In this phase we put read or write lock based on need on the data. In this
phase we does not release any lock.
• Shrinking Phase-
This phase is just reverse of growing phase. In this phase we release read and
write lock but doesn’t put any lock on data.

Lock point

Growing phase Shrinking phase

322 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
Time Stamping Protocol: In Time stamping Protocol we select sequence of
transaction in advance by using Time stamping concept. We add a special
variable time stamp (a unique, fixed non decreasing ) to each transaction in
system. This number can be system clock value. When a new transaction
entered in the system, current value of cock is assigned to transaction as time
stamp value. Value of time stamp is incremented every time after a new
transaction interred in the system.
Example: If there are two transaction t1 and t2 in system. Transaction t1 has
s1 time stamp value and transaction t2 has s2 time stamp value and s1<s2. In
this case Transaction t1 processed first then transaction t2.
Validation Based protocol: Two-phase locking protocol and Time stamping
Protocol are slow in working because they worked in two steps, so we use
validation based protocol which is faster than Two-phase locking protocol
and Time stamping Protocol.
In Validation based protocol, it doesn’t update entire data base in one step. It
keeps local copies of all updates during transaction execution. It works in
three steps
(1) Read Phase: In this step transaction is activated and it reads last committed
value from DB and put these values in local variables. All updates implemented
in these local variables of database.
(2) Validation Phase: In this step it checks read value during the first phase
against current values. It also check consistency of data base after modification
performed in database.
(3) Write Phase: If validation phase say that data base is in consistent state
then all update made by transaction which are in local variable are applied in
database for permanent storage. If validation phase say that database is not
consistent or it violate serializability then it discard/rollback all updates and it
restart transactions.
(d) How does Boyce-codd Normal form differ from 3NF? Why is it
considered stronger than 3NF, explain using a suitable example.
Ans. Normalisation is a process that is carried out to minimise the redundancies
that are present in data in relational database. This process will mainly divide
large tables in to smaller tables with fewer redundancies. These smaller tables
will be related to each other through well-defined relationships. In a well
normalised database, any alteration or modification only a single table. Third
normal form (3NF) was introduced in 1971 by Edgar F. Codd, who is also
the inventor of normalisation. Boyce-codd Normal form (BCNF) was
introduced in 1974 by codd and Raymond F. Boyce.
Both 3NF and BCNF are normal forms that are used in relational databases to
minimise redundancies in tables. In a table that is in the BCNF normal form,
MCS-043 GPH Book 323
for every non-trivial functional dependency of the form A is a super-key
whereas, a table that compiles with 3NF should be in the 2NF, and every non-
prime attribute should directly depend on every candidate key of that table.
BCNF is considered as a stronger normal form than the 3NF and it was
developed to capture some of the anomalies that could not be captured by
3NF. Obtaining a table that compiles with the BCNF form will require
decomposing a table that is in the 3NF. This decomposition will result in
additional join operations (or Cartesian products) when executing queries.
This will increase the computational time. On the other hand, the tables that
comply with BCNF would have fewer redundancies than tables that only
comply with 3NF. Furthermore, most of the time, it is possible to obtain a
table that comply with 3NF without hindering dependency preservation and
lossless joining. But this is not always possible with BCNF.
Example:-

For every functional

Dependency X→Y in a set F
Of functional dependencies 3NF has some redundancy
BCNF does not
Over relation R, either:
Unfortunately, BCNF is not dependency
–Y is a subset of X or, preserving, but 3NF is
–X is a super key of R
–Y is a subset of K for some key K of R

Account Client Office

Account Office
A Joe 1
A 1
B Mary 1
B 1
A John 1
C 2
C Joe 2
Client, Office → Client, Account → Office
Office, Account
Account → Office Lossless-
dependencies
Account Client
A Joe
B Mary
A John
C Joe
Non-trivial FDs
324 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
Q2. (a) Discuss the five basic operations of relational algebra with suitable
example for each.
Ans. There are five basic operations:
(1) Union,
(2) Difference,
(3) Cartesian Product,
(4) Projection,
(5) Selection.
Union- The Union of relations and S is defined as:
R  S= { x ,..., x
1 n : x1 ,..., x n ∈R V x1 ,..., x n ∈S}.
It is the set of tuples that are in R or S. This operation may be applied to the
relations of the same arity only, so all the tuples in the result have the same
number of components (values).
Difference- The Difference of relations R and S, defined as:
R – S= { x ,..., x
1 n ∈R: x1 ,..., x n ∉S}.
It is the set of tuples which are in R but not in S. It is required that R and S
have the same arity.
Cartesian Product-The Cartesian Product of relations R and S is defined as:
R×S= { x ,..., x
1 n , y1 ,..., y m : x1 ,...,x n ∈R ∧ y1 ,..., y m ∈S}.
Assume that R has arity n and S has arity m. R X S is defined as the set of all
possible (n + m) tuples which first n components form a tuple in R and last m
form a tuple in S. The result has the arity equal to n + m.
Projection- The Projection is denoted as p. Assuming that there is a relation R
of arity K, then:
π i1 , i2 ,..., i m ( R ) .
It denotes the projection of R onto components i1 ,i 2 ,....i n where I j are distinct
integers in range 1……. k. That is the set of m-tuples ( a1 ,a 2 ,......a m ) such that
there is some k-tuple ( b1 ,b 2 ,......b m ) in R for which a i = bij for j=1, 2, ….., m.
Selection- The S election is denoted as:
σ
F ( R ).
Where R is a relation and F is a formula involving:
• Operands that are constants or component numbers; component i is
represented by $ i,
• The arithmetic comparison operators <, = , >.
• The logical operators Ù (and), Ú (or), Ø(not).
Then σ F ( R ) is the set of tuples t in R such that, when for all i the i-th
component of t is substituted for any occurrences of $i in formula F, the
formula F becomes true. As for projection if a relation has named columns,
then the formula in the selection can refer to columns by name instead of by
number. The arity of σ F ( R ) is the same as the arity of R..
MCS-043 GPH Book 325
(b) Describe the architecture of distributed databases with the help of a
diagram.
Ans. Distributed database systems are very diverse in nature; hence it may be
a good idea to define reference architecture for such database systems.
Reference architecture may also define the following additional schema for
distributed database systems:
• A set of global schemas that would define application interface. Thus, a
global schema can be further divided into:
• Global external schema
• Global conceptual schema
• Fragmentation and allocation schema will determine various fragments and
their allocation to various distributed database sites.
• Finally, it would require basic schemas as proposed by ANSI/SPARC
architecture for local databases.
Global External Schema

Global External Schema Global External Schema Global External Schema

Figure: Architecture for Distributed database system

326 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
Example:
Maunfacturing Headquarters
Distributed Database

MFG.ACME.COM HQ.ACME.COM

SALES.ACME.COM

Sales

Q3. (a) Consider the following scheme for project database:

Project (PR_NO, PR_Name, PR_Manager)
Employee (Emp_NO, Emp_Name)
Assigned_To (PR_NO, Emp_NO)
(i) Write the DDL statements for the Project Database. Clearly specify
the primary and foreign keys.
(ii) Write the following queries in SQL:
(a) List the details of employees working on PR_NO “A34” and “B64”.
(b) Delete the record of employee whose Emp_NO is “E64221”.
(c) List the name of employees who are working on a project for which
“Ramesh” is a Project Manager.
Ans. (i) CREATE TABLE Project (
PR_NO INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
PR_Name VARCHAR (50) NOT NULL,
PR_Manager VARCHAR (50) NOT NULL,
);
CREATE TABLE Employee (
Emp_NO INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
Emp_Name VARCHAR (50) NOT NULL,
);
MCS-043 GPH Book 327
CREATE TABLE Assigned (
PR_NO INTEGER FOREIGN KEY,
Emp_NO INTEGER FOREIGN KEY,
);
(ii)
(a) SELECT Emp. Emp_NO, Emp. Emp_Name FROM Employee Emp,
Assigned A
WHERE Emp.Emp_NO=A.Emp_NO (SELECT * FROM Assigned A
WHERE A.PR_NO= “A34” AND
A.PR_NO= “B64”
);
(b) DELETE from Employee
WHERE Emp_NO= “E64221”;
(c) SELECT Emp_Name from Employee, Project, Assigned
WHERE Assigned. PR_NO=Project.PR_NO and PR_Manager=” Ramesh”;
(b) Define weak entity set in ER diagram. How are keys of the weak
entities identified? Discuss the mapping of strong entity set and weak
entity set into relations.
Ans. Weak entity is an entity that cannot be uniquely identified by its attributes
alone. In entity relationship diagrams a weak entity set is indicated by a bold (or
double-lined) rectangle (the entity) connected by a bold (or double-lined)
type arrow to a bold (or double-lined) diamond (the relationship). This type
of relationship is called an identifying relationship and in IDEF1X notation it
is represented by an oval entity rather than a square entity for base tables.
An identifying relationship is one where the primary key is populated to the
child weak entity as a primary key in that entity.
Weak entities do not have sufficient attributes to form a primary key on its
own. It is represented by a double rectangle. It contains a partial key or
discriminator represented by a dashed underline. The member of weak entity
set is called as subordinate entity set. The primary key of weak entity set is a
combination of partial key and primary key of the strong entity set.
The line connecting weak entity set with the identifying relationship is double.
Payment_date

Loan_number amount Payment_number Payment_amount

Loan_
Loan Payment
Payment

Figure: Strong and weak entity set relation

328 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
Q4. (a) Describe the term MVD (Multi-Valued Dependency) and JD
(Join Dependency) in the context of relational DBMS by giving are
example. Also, differentiate between 4 NF and 5 NF with an example.
Ans. A multivalued dependency is a full constraint between two sets of attributes
in a relation. In contrast to the functional independency, the multivalued
dependency requires that certain tuples be present in a relation. Therefore, a
multivalued dependency is also referred as a tuple-generating dependency.
The multivalued dependency also plays a role in 4NF normalisation.
MVD Formal definition
Let R be a relation scheme and X and Y are subsets of R,
X ->> Y
holds if for all pairs of tuples s and t in r, such that
s[X] = t[X] there also exist tuples u and v where
s[X] = t[X] = u[X] = v[X]
s[Y] = u[Y]
t[R-XY] = u[R-XY]
s[R-XY] = v[R-XY]
t[Y] = v[Y]
MVD Example
Course ->> Instructor
Course ->> Text
Course (Y) Instructor (X) Text (R-XY)
Intro Kruse Intro to CS
Intro Wright Intro to CS
CS1 Thomas Intro to Java
CS1 Thomas CS Theory Survey
CS2 Rhodes Java Data Structures
CS2 Rhodes Unix
CS2 Kruse Java Data Structures
CS2 Kruse Unix
Join dependencies are particularly important in connection with the
decomposition technique for schema design and normalisation. The main
goal of the decomposition technique is to avoid redundancies due to data
dependencies by decomposing a relation into smaller parts. A good
decomposition should have the lossless join property, meaning that no
information should be lost after the decomposition.
A join dependency (JD) over a relation schema R [U] is an expression of the
form È” [ X1 ,...,X n ] , where X1 U....UX n = U. An instance I of R [U] satisfies È”
[ X1,...,Xn ] if
MCS-043 GPH Book 329
In other word, an instance satisfies the join dependency if it is equal to the
join o I = π x1 ( I )  ... π x n ( I ) f its projections on the sets of attributes
X1 ,......,X n . X1,……,Xn.
Difference between 4NF and 5nf:-
Fourth normal form requires that a table be BCNF and contain no multi-
valued dependencies. 4NF solves the problem of multivalued dependencies,
which we would encounter with our above Sales table when a customer
purchased multiple products with a single order – we would have numerous
rows that were dependent on one another without any clear definition of that
dependency in the table.
Fifth normal form, also known as join-projection normal form (JPNF), states
that no non-trivial join dependencies exist. 5NF states that any fact should be
able to be reconstructed without any anomalous results in any case, regardless
of the number of tables being joined. A 5NF table should have only candidate
keys and its primary key should consist of only a single column.
Example:
Branch_staff_owner
Branch_No S_Name O_Name
B003 AnnBeech Carol Farrel
B003 David Ford Carol Farrel
B003 AnnBeech TinaMurphy
B003 David Ford TinaMurphy

Branch_staff_owner Branch_staff_owner
Branch_No S_Name Branch_No O_Name
B003 AnnBeech B003 Carol Farrel
B003 David Ford B003 TinaMurphy

(b) How are data marts different from data warehouse? Explain the
different types of data marts.
Ans. Data Warehouse:
• Holds multiple subject areas
• Holds very detailed information
• Works to integrate all data sources
• Does not necessarily use a dimensional model but feeds dimensional models.
330 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
Data Mart:
• Often holds only one subject area- for example, Finance, or Sales
• May hold more summarised data (although many hold full detail)
• Concentrates on integrating information from a given subject area or set of
source systems
• Is built focused on a dimensional model using a star schema.
There are two types of data marts:
1. Independent or stand-alone data mart and
2. Dependent data mart.
Stand-alone data mart
A Stand-alone data mart focuses exclusively on one subject area and it is not
designed in an enterprise context.
Dependent data mart
According to Bill Inmon, a dependent data mart is a place where its data
comes from a data warehouse. Data in a data warehouse is aggregated,
restructured, and summarised when it passes into the dependent data mart.
(c) Explain, Business Intelligence in context of data warehousing.
Ans. A data warehouse is an integrated collection of data and can help the
process of making better business decisions. Several tools and methods are
available to that enhances advantage of the data of data warehouse to create
information and knowledge that supports business decisions. Two such
techniques are-
• Decision-support systems
• Online analytical processing
Decision-support systems- The DSS is a decision support system and NOT
a decision-making system. DSS is a specific class of computerised information
systems that support the decision-making activities of an organisation. A
properly designed DSS is an interactive software based system that helps
decision makers to compile useful information from raw data, documents,
personal knowledge, and/or business models to identify and solve problems
and make decisions.
Online analytical processing- It is an approach for performing analytical queries
and statistical analysis of multidimensional data. OLAP tools can be put in the
category of business intelligence tools along with data mining. Some of the
typical applications of OLAP may include reporting of sales projections, judging
the performance of a business, budgeting and forecasting etc.
OLAP tools require multidimensional data and distributed query-processing
capabilities. Thus, OLAP has data warehouse as its major source of information
and query processing.
MCS-043 GPH Book 331
Q5. Explain the following with the help of examples or illustration.
(a) Postages SQL
(b) Deadlock Recovery
(c) Semantic Query Optimisation
(d) Spatial and Multimedia Databases
Ans. (a) Postgre SQL is a decision many must make when approaching
open-source relational database management systems. It is time-proven
solutions that compete strongly with proprietary database software.
PostgreSQL was assumed to be a more densely featured database system
often described as an open-source version of Oracle. PostgreSQL can
compress and decompress its data on the fly with a fast compression scheme
to fit more data in an allotted disk space. The advantage of compressed data,
besides saving disk space, is that reading data takes less IO, resulting in
faster data reads.
(b) Deadlock Recovery: A set of two or more processes are deadlocked if
they are blocked (i.e., in the waiting state) each holding a resource and waiting
to acquire a resource held by another process in the set. A process is
deadlocked if it is waiting for an event which is never going to happen.

A B
T1 T2

Deadlock depends on the dynamics of the execution. All of the following four
necessary conditions must hold simultaneously for deadlock to occur:
Mutual exclusion: only one process can use a resource at a time.
Hold and wait: a process holding at least one resource is waiting to acquire
additional resources which are currently held by other processes.
No preemption: a resource can only be released voluntarily by the process
holding it.
circular wait: a cycle of process requests exists (i.e., P0 is waiting for a
resource hold by P1 who is waiting for a resource held by Pj ... who is
waiting for a resource held by P(n-1) which is waiting for a resource held by
Pn which is waiting for a resource held by P0). Circular wait implies the hold
and wait condition. Therefore, these conditions are not completely independent.
(c) Semantic Query Optimisation: Semantic query optimisation is the process
of transforming a query issued by a user into a different query which, because
of the semantics of the application, is guaranteed to yield the correct answer
for all states of the database. While this process has been successfully applied
in centralised databases, its potential for distributed and heterogeneous systems
is enormous, as there is the potential to eliminate inter-site joins which are the
single biggest cost factor in query processing. Further justification for its use
is provided by the fact that users of heterogeneous databases typically issue
332 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
queries through high-level languages which may result in very inefficient
queries if mapped directly, without consideration of the semantics of the
system.
(d) Spatial and Multimedia Databases: A spatial database is a database that
is optimised to store and query data that represents objects defined in a
geometric space. Most spatial databases allow representing simple geometric
objects such as points, lines and polygons. Some spatial databases handle
more complex structures such as 3D objects, topological coverages, linear
networks, and TINs. While typical databases are designed to manage various
numeric and character types of data, additional functionality needs to be added
for databases to process spatial data types efficiently. These are typically
called geometry or feature. The Open Geospatial Consortium created
the Simple Features specification and sets standards for adding spatial
functionality to database systems.
A multimedia database is a system able to store and retrieve objects made up
of text, images, sounds, animations, voice, video, etc. The wide range of
applications for MMDBs leads to a number of different problems with respect
to traditional database systems, which only consider textual and numerical
attributes.
These problems include:
• data modeling;
• support for different data types;
• efficient data storing;
• data compressing techniques;
• index structures for non-traditional data types;
• query optimisation;
• presentation of objects of different types.
 MCS – 43: ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
December, 2014

Note: Question number one is compulsory. Answer any three questions from
the rest.

Q1. (a) How do UML diagrams help in designing the database? Discuss
with the help of an example.
(b) How does data granularity affect the performance of concurrency
control? Do you think that data granularity and database security are
interrelated? Justify your answer.
(c) Compare and contrast the distributed DBMS environment with the
centralised DBMS environment.
(d) What are semantic databases? List the features of semantic
databases. Explain the process of searching the knowledge in these
databases.
(e) What is shadow paging? Give two advantages and two disadvantages
of shadow paging.
(f) What is a data warehouse? Describe the process of ETL for a data
warehouse.
(g) What are data marts? Briefly discuss the method of creating the
data marts.
(h) Explain the role of Query Optimiser in Oracle.

Q2. (a) Explain the algorithm and cost calculation for Simple Hash Join.
(b) Differentiate between the following:
(i) Embedded SQL and Dynamic SQL
(ii) XML and HTML
(iii) 2 PC and 3 PC Protocol
(iv) Data Warehousing and Data Mining

Q3. (a) Give suitable example to discuss the Apriori algorithm for finding
frequent itemsets.
(b) Write a short note, with suitable example, for each of the following:
(i) Vendor-Specific Security
(ii) Multilevel Security

Q4. (a) What are cursors, stored procedures and triggers? Give SQL
syntax for each and discuss the utility aspect of each.

(333)
334 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
(b) Explain Join-Dependency with the help of an example. With which
normal form is it associated? Functional dependency and Multivalued
dependency are special types of join dependencies. Justify.

Q5. (a) What do you mean by Deadlock? How can we prevent Deadlock?
Write an algorithm that checks whether the concurrently executing
transactions are in deadlock or not.
(b) Compare and contrast Relational DBMS with Object-Relational DBMS
and Object-Oriented DBMS. Suggest one application for each of these
DBMS.
 MCS – 43: ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
June, 2015

Note: Question number one is compulsory. Answer any three questions from
the rest.

Q1. (a) What is multivalued dependency? How is 4 NF related to

multivalued dependency? Is 4 NF decomposition dependency preserving?
Justify your answer.
(b) Differentiate between Assertions and Views. Discuss each with a
suitable example.
(c) What is UML? How does UML have an edge over the other database
designing tools? Describe database designing by using a UML class
diagram.
(d) What do you mean by the term database transaction? Briefly discuss
the properties of database transactions performed in a concurrent
environment.
(e) Describe the reference architecture of a distributed DBMS, with the
help of a block diagram.
(f) How does database differ from a data warehouse? How does processing
in database differ from that in data warehouse?
(g) What is Datagrid? Describe the structure of datagrid, with the help
of a block diagram. Why is the datagrid required?
(h) What do you mean by tuning of SQL? Briefly discuss each step
involved in the tuning of SQL.

Q2. (a) Describe the phases of Query processing by using a block

diagram. Discuss the process of Query optimisation, by using suitable
example.
(b) Compare and contrast the following:
(i) Inclusion dependencies and Template dependencies
(ii) XML and HTML
(iii) Centralised 2PL and Distributed 2PL
(iv) K-Means clustering and Nearest Neighbour clustering

Q3. (a) Discuss classification as a tool in Data Mining. Describe the ID

3 algorithm for classifying data sets with a suitable example.
(b) What do you mean by Multiversioning? What are the various schemes
available for multiversioning? Describe any two schemes in detail.

(335)
336 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
Q4. (a) How does PostgreSQL perform storage and indexing of tables?
Briefly discuss the types of indexes involved in PostgreSQL.
(b) What is SQLJ? What are the requirements of SQLJ? Briefly describe
the working of SQLJ. “Can SQLJ use dynamic SQL?” If yes, then
how? Otherwise, specify the type of SQL if can use.

Q5. (a) Write short notes on any two of the following:

(i) JDBC
(ii) PJNF
(iii) Spatial Databases
(b) What do you mean by Multilevel Security? Discuss the methods
involved in the support of multilevel security.
(c) What is Audit trail? Give four benefits provided by Audit trail in the
context of DBMS.
(d) Discuss the constraints associated with Generalisation in an E-R
Model.
 MCS – 43: ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
December, 2015

Note: Question number one is compulsory. Answer any three questions from
the rest.

Q1. (a) Consider the following situation:

A subject can be taught by several teachers. The subject has defined
textbooks (may be one or more). The following represents this
information:
Course Can be taught by Textbooks to be used
MCS-01 • Mr. X • C.J. Date book
• Mr. Y • IGNOU material
• Korth book
MCS-02 • Mr. A • Fundamentals
• Mr. B • IGNOU material
Perform the following tasks for the above:
(i) Represent the data shown above in a relation Course_Teacher_Text
(Course, Teacher, Text).
(ii) Identify the FDs and MVDs in the relation created as above. Also
identify the primary key.
(iii) Normalise the relation into 4NF.
(iv) Show that the normalisation of relations as above will result in
lossless decomposition.
(b) Consider the following relations:
Student (enrolmentno, name, programme)
Result (enrolmentno, subjectcode, marks)
Consider the query on these relations:
“List the enrolment number, name, subject code and marks of a student
whose enrolment number is “120000111”.”
(i) Represent the query using SQL.
(ii) Convert the SQL query into equivalent relational algebraic query.
(iii) Draw the query tree for the above relational algebraic query.
(iv) Using the query tree, transform the relation algebraic query to an
equivalent relation algebraic query, which may reduce the query
evaluation cost.
(c) Differentiate between object relational database management system
and object oriented database management system.
(d) What is a star schema in the context of a data warehouse? Explain
with the help of an example.
(337)
338 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
(e) Explain the use of JDBC with the help of an example. Compare
JDBC with ODBC.
(f) Explain the data integrity and triggers in Oracle database management
system.

Q2. (a) A University has many Professors. Some of these Professors

are full time employees, whereas some of them are visiting faculties.
Every Professor teaches one or more courses. University stores the
name, qualification and experience of every Professor. In case the
Professor is a full time Professor his/her date of employment is stored.
In case the Professor is a visiting Professor his/her host institution’s
name is recorded. Every course of the University has a course name,
credits and course code.
(i) Draw an EER diagram for the University as defined above.
(ii) Convert the EER diagram to equivalent relations having proper
keys and constraints.
(b) Explain any two security failures that are possible in a database
system. What is meant by table access control in the context of database
security? Explain two SQL commands that can be used for access control
with the help of examples.
(c) List any four transaction management features of PostgreSQL.

Q3. (a) Consider the following transactions:

T1: Transfer `5,000 from Account A to Account B. You may assume that
the required amount is available in Account A.
T2 : Add an amount `1,000 as interest in both the accounts-Account A
and Account B.
(i) Write the pseudocode of the two transactions. You must assume
read-before-write protocol.
(ii) What are the different problems that can occur if both the
transactions are executed concurrently?
(iii) Rewrite the pseudocode of transactions including Lock and Unlock
statements to ensure that the transactions execute without any
concurrency related problem.
(b) What is Data Mining? Why is it useful? What is meant by
classification in data mining? Explain with the help of an example.
(c) List the features of the following database models:
(i) Mobile databases
(ii) Multimedia databases
MCS-043 GPH Book 339
Q4. (a) Explain the utility of XML with the help of an XML document
that shows the list of customers of an organisation. You need to store
customer name, current address and one or more phone numbers for
each customer. Create the customer list with at least two customers.
Also create the DTD that verifies the created XML document.
(b) What is meant by the term “View” in the context of Database
Management System?
Why is it used?
Consider a student database:
Student (enrolmentno, name, programme)
Course (course_code, course_name)
Registration (enrolmentno, course_code)
Create a view for a student whose registration number is “101” and
shows the list of all the courses registered by him/her. The list should
show the course_code and course_name registered by the student whose
enrolment number is “101”.
(c) Define the following giving their purpose:
(i) Object definition language
(ii) Semi-structured data
(iii) Data Mart

Q5. Explain each of the following with the help of an example/diagram,

if needed:
(a) Knowledge database
(b) Data Dictionary
(c) Data Replication in distributed database
(d) Properties of transactions
(e) Checkpoints in the context of database recovery
 MCS – 43: ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
June, 2016

Note: Question number one is compulsory. Answer any three questions from
the rest.

Q1. (a) What are Triggers? Explain the significance of triggers with the
help of an example.
(b) Explain the Log-Based recovery scheme, using deferred database
modification approach. Give a suitable example in your explanation.
(c) What are mobile databases? List the characteristics of mobile
databases. Discuss the challenges of implementing mobile databases.
(d) List the index implementation available in PostgreSQL. Explain
each index available in PostgreSQL.
(e) What is Data Dictionary? What is the significance of creating Data
Dictionary in DBMS? Explain the statistics stored in the Data Dictionary.
(f) What are Database Security features? Discuss with example how
Oracle manages database security.
(g) What are web databases? How do you create them? List the steps.
(h) What are views? What is the significance of views in DBMS? How
are views managed in SQL? Explain with an example.

Q2. (a) How do Database Queries differ from Data Mining Queries?
Explain K-Means Clustering algorithm for Data Mining, with suitable
example.
(b) Explain any two of the following:
(i) OLAP and its types
(ii) Spatial Databases
(iii) Dynamic SQL
(c) Explain Data fragmentation in distributed DBMS, with the help of
an example.

Q3. (a) Discuss the term ‘Association rule mining’. Write the Apriori
algorithm for association rule mining. Illustrate it using an example.
(b) Explain any two of the following with suitable examples:
(i) Semantic Databases
(ii) Temporal Databases
(iii) Embedded SQL
(c) Discuss 4NF with suitable example. Is 4NF decomposition dependency
preserving? Justify.

(340)
MCS-043 GPH Book 341
Q4. (a) In PostgreSQL, explain how B-Tree Indexes are different from
R-Tree Indexes.
(b) Discuss any three of the following with suitable examples:
(i) UML Class Diagram
(ii) Query Optimization
(iii) Assertion
(iv) Multiversioning

Q5. (a) What are checkpoints? How are checkpoints used in log-based
recovery? Explain with the help of an example and a diagram.
(b) What are control files in Oracle? What does a control file contain?
What is the role of control file in starting an instance of Oracle? Discuss
the role of redo log file in starting an instance of Oracle.
(c) Describe ID3 algorithm for classifying datasets, with suitable
example.
 MCS – 43: ADVANCED DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
December, 2016

Note: Question number 1 is compulsory. Answer any three questions from the
rest.

Q1. (a) What is a Data warehouse? How is it different from a Database?

What are the characteristics of a Data warehouse?
(b) What are multimedia databases? Discuss the challenges in the
designing of multimedia databases.
(c) How does Distributed DBMS differ from Centralized DBMS? Explain
the reference architecture of Distributed DBMS.
(d) Discuss the term multilevel security in DBMS. What are the typical
security levels?
(e) Explain 3-phase commit protocol. Why do we need 3-phase commit
protocol in Distributed DBMS?
(f) What is meant by the term ‘ETL’? Discuss the transformations
required during the ETL process.
(g) Explain shadow paging recovery scheme, with the help of a diagram.
(h) What is a Datagrid? Elaborate the structure of a datagrid? What
are the application areas of a datagrid?

Q2. (a) What do you understand by the term ‘Database Tuning’? What
are the goals of tuning a database? What is the requirement of tuning
the database queries?
(b) What is multiversion concurrency control? How can multiversion
concurrency control be achieved by using time stamp ordering?
(c) How do you perform cost calculation for simple Hash-Join?

Q3. (a) What are mobile databases? Discuss the characteristics of mobile
databases. Give an application of mobile databases.
(b) Explain the following:
(i) PJNF
(ii) SQLJ
(iii) Audit Trail
(iv) Deductive Database
(c) What do you understand by ‘Transaction’ in DBMS? Discuss the
properties of concurrent transactions performed in DBMS.

(342)
MCS-043 GPH Book 343
Q4. (a) Differentiate between following:
(i) XML and HTML
(ii) JDBC and ODBC
(iii) Clustering and Classification
(iv) Serial schedule and Serializable schedule
(b) Explain “log based” recovery using immediate database modification
scheme. Give suitable example for explanation.
(c) Discuss the concept of exclusive locks and shared locks. How are
these two locks used in transaction management? Discuss with an
example.

Q5. (a) Define the term Data mining. How is data mining different
from Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD)? Explain the steps of
KDD with the help of an example.
(b) How are object oriented databases different from relational
databases? Write an ODL syntax to create a class Employee that also
references the Project class.
(c) Explain the role of Query optimizer in Oracle.
(d) What are web databases? Discuss the steps required in creating a
web database.

.
 MCS – 43: ADVANCED DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
June, 2017

Note: Question number 1 is compulsory. Answer any three questions from the
rest.

Q1. (a) Consider the following relations:

Customer ( c_id, cust_name, cust_phone)

Purchase ( c_id, item_code, quantity)

Consider the query “List the c_id, cust_name, cust_phone, item_code
and quantity of all the items purchased by the customer whose c_id =
“C001”.”
Perform the following tasks for the above:
(i) Write the above query using relational algebra and draw the query
tree for the same.
(ii) Transform the query tree to an equivalent query tree such that the
query evaluation cost may be reduced.
(b) What is join dependency? When is join dependency considered as
trivial? Explain with suitable example.
(c) How does embedded SQL differ from dynamic SQL? Give an example
for each.
(d) Discuss the term “ETL”. List the transformations required to
perform the ETL process.
(e) What is OLAP? How does OLAP support query processing in a data
warehouse?
(f) Differentiate between XML schema and Document type definition.
Give suitable examples for each.
(g) Construct an EER diagram for the following description:
“A University maintains records of its students and the programmes in
which they have enrolled. It stores student id, name, address, and phone
number of a student and programme code, programme name and
duration of a programme. A student is either a full time student or a
part time student (only one of the types). A student can register for
many programmes and a programme can have many students.”
(h) Write the SQL commands for giving permission to a user named
“DBM” for creating new tables. Also write the command if the above
permission is to be removed.
(344)
MCS-043 GPH Book 345

Q2. (a) What are Multivalued dependencies? When can we say that
multivalued dependency is trivial? Discuss with a suitable example.
(b) List the various UML diagrams. How do UML class diagrams
contribute to Database Design?
(c) What is a system catalogue? Discuss the role of system catalogues
in Database Administration.

Q3. (a) What is semi-structured data? Explain with an example. How

does a valid XML document differ from a well-formed XML document?
(b) What is Data Warehousing? Discuss the various characteristics of
Data Warehousing.
(c) What is query optimization? Why is a query expressed in relational
algebra preferred over a query expressed in SQL? What are the factors
that contribute to the cost of a query?

Q4. (a) Differentiate between the following:

(i) Spatial Databases and Temporal Databases
(ii) 2-phase commit and 3-phase commit
(b) What is a datagrid? What is the utility of a datagrid? Draw a block
diagram to describe the structure of a datagrid.
(c) How do clustering and classification differ? Describe Bayesian
classification, with suitable example.

Q5. Explain any five of the following:

(a) K-mean Clustering
(b) SQLJ and its requirements
(c) Statistical Database Security
(d) Buffer Management
(e) Data Marks
(f) GNOME Databases
(g) JDBC
 MCS – 43: ADVANCED DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
December, 2017

Note: Question number 1 is compulsory. Answer any three questions from the
rest.

Q1. (a) How does Data-mining differ from the technique of Knowledge
Discovery in Database (KDD)? Can we use these two techniques
interchangeably or alternatively? Justify.
Refer to Ch-6, Q.No.-51(ii), Page No.-133 & Dec.-2009, Q.No.-1(d), Page
No.-244
(b) Explain the index implementations available in PostgreSQL, with
suitable examples.
Refer to Ch-7, Q.No.-27, Page No.-148
(c) Consider the following data:

Employee Project Code on Tools that

Code (EC) which employee employee can
works (PC) work on (TC)
E1 P1 T1
P2 T2
E2 P3 T2
P4 T3

Employee with code E1 works on two projects, P1 and P2, and can use
two tools T1 and T2. Likewise, E2 works on projects P3 and P4 and can
use tools T2 and T3. You may assume that projects and tools are
independent of each other, but depend only on employee.
Perform the following tasks for the data:
(i) Represent the data as above in a relation, namely,
Employee_Project_Tool (EC, PC, TC).
(ii) List all the MVDs in the relation created in part (i) above. Also
identify the primary key of the relation.
(iii) Normalise the relation created in part (i) into 4NF.
(iv) Join the relations created in part (iii) above and show that they will
produce the same data on joining as per the relation created in part (i).
Same as June-2013, Q.No.-1(a), Page No.-302
(d) What is Granularity in databases? How does granularity relate to
the security of databases? In a concurrent environment, how does
granularity affect the performance?
Ans. Granularity could be defined as any entity whose data fields could be
sub divided.
(346)
MCS-043 GPH Book 347

For e.g. when you take an entity called as a person. A person’s identity could
be further divided into following:
• Name, Address, Gender, City, State, Country etc.
• This means that a person as an entity has high granularity. Since there are
many sub divisions of the same entity.
• But if we were to choose gender-this could simply be maximum 3 values-
• Male, Female and Transgender
• This means that Gender as a field/attribute has low granularity.
Now, Refer to June-2008, Q.No.-1(f), Page No.-217
(e) What are Semantic databases? Give the features of semantic
databases. Discuss the process of searching the knowledge in these
databases.
Refer to June-2008, Q.No.-2(c), Page No.-219
(f) Illustrate the concept of Shadow Paging with suitable example. Give
the advantages and disadvantages of shadow paging.
Refer to June-2008, Q.No.-5(a), Page No.-223
(g) How does Clustering differ from Classification? Briefly discuss one
approach for both, i.e., clustering and classification.
Refer to Ch-6, Q.No.-54, 56, Page No.-134 & Dec-2006, Q.No.-4(a), Page
No.-174

Q2. (a) What are Alerts, Cursors, Stored Procedures and Triggers? Give
the utility of each. Explain each with suitable code of your choice.
Refer to Ch-5, Q.No.-36, Page No.92
(b) What is Simple Hash Join? Discuss the algorithm and cost calculation
process for simple hash join. Explain how Hash Join is applicable to
Equi Join and Natural Join.
Refer to June-2008, Q.No.-1(d), Page No.-213

Q3. (a) Differentiate between the following:

(i) Database Queries and Data-mining Queries
Refer to Ch-6, Q.No.-50, Page No.-132
(ii) Star Schema and Snowflake Schema
Give example for each while differentiating.
Refer to Dec-2009, Q.No.-5(a), Page No.253
(b) What are Deadlocks? How are they detected? Explain with the help
of an example.
Refer to Ch-5, Q.No.-21, Page No.79
348 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
(c) What are Mobile Database? Explain the characteristics of mobile
databases. Give an application of mobile databases.
Refer to Ch-7, Q.No.-10, 14, Page No.-144, 145 & Dec.-2012, Q.No.-3(a),
Page No.298

Q4. (a) What are Views in SQL? What is the significance of views?
Give an example code in SQL to create a view.
Refer to Ch-4, Q.No.-1, Page No.-48
(b) (i) Create an XML document that stores information about students
of a class. The document should use appropriate tags/attributes to store
information like student_id (unique), name (consisting of first name
and last name), class (consisting of class no. and section) and books
issued to the student (minimum 0, maximum 2). Create at least two
such student records.
Refer to Gullybaba.com (Download section)
(ii) Create the DTD for verification of the above student data.
Refer to Gullybaba.com (Download section)
(c) Explain the features and challenges of multimedia databases.
Refer to Ch-7, Q.No.-1, 4, Page No.-140, 142

Q5. (a) What is Data Dictionary? Give the features and benefits of a
data dictionary. What are the disadvantages of a data dictionary?
Refer to Ch-4, Q.No.-18, 19, 20, Page No.-64, 65
(b) What is the utility of Multi-Version schemes in databases? Discuss
any one multi-version scheme, with suitable example.
Refer to June.-2007, Q.No.-5(a), Page No.196
(c) What is Association Rule Mining? Write Apriori Algorithm for finding
frequent itemset. Discuss it with suitable example.
Refer to Ch-6, Q.No.-59, 60, Page No.-137, 138
Must Read
R
vo'; i<+sa

GULLYBABA PUBLISHING
HOUSE PVT. LTD.
New Syllabus Based

IGNOU
100%
Guidance for
IGNOU EXAM

HELP BOOKS
B.A., B.COM, B.A. FOUNDATION, M.A., M.COM.,
BCA, B.ED., M.ED., AND OTHER SUBJECTS

IAS, PCS, UGC & All University Examinations

Chapter wise Researched

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Solved papers & very helpful for your assignments preparation ds fy, jkeck.k

Hindi & English Medium

GULLYBABA PUBLISHING HOUSE PVT. LTD. Join us on Facebook at

2525/193, 1st Floor, Onkar Nagar-A, Tri IGNOU Helpbooks
Nagar, Delhi-110035, (From Kanhaiya Nagar For any Guidance &
Metro Station Towards Old Bus Stand) Assistance Call:
Email : [email protected]
Web : www.gullybaba.com
9350849407
 MCS – 43: ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
June, 2018

Note: Question number one is compulsory. Answer any three questions from
the rest.

Q1. (a) What are Cursors, Stored Procedures and Triggers? Explain
each with the help of an example code.
(b) Differentiate between Logical and Physical Database design.
(c) What is a View? Explain any two strategies for implementing the
Views.
(d) What is Hash join? How is Hash join between two relations computed?
Explain the algorithm and cost calculation for simple hash join.
(e) Differentiate between a database management system and a data
warehouse. What is the need for a data warehouse?
(f) What is granularity of data? How does granularity of data items
affect the performance of concurrency control?
(g) Differentiate between Centralised DBMS and Distributed DBMS.
(h) What is Timestamp Ordering? Explain timestamp based protocol
for serialisable schedule.

Q2. (a) What is Data Mining? How does Data Mining differ from OLTP?
Discuss Classification as a technique for data mining.
(b) What are Data Marts? Briefly discuss the significance of data marts.
(c) What is XML? How does XML differ from HTML? What are the
advantages of XML ? Create an XML schema for a list of students and
their marks.

Q3. (a) Differentiate between Two-phase commit protocol and Three-

phase commit protocol in distributed databases. “The three-phase
commit protocol increases the system’s availability and does not allow
transactions to remain blocked until a failure is repaired.” Justify the
statement.
(b) What are Semantic Databases? List the features of semantic
databases. Explain the process of searching the knowledge in semantic
databases.
(c) What is a Data Dictionary? List some, features of a data dictionary.
What are the various approaches to implement a Distributed Database
Catalogue?

(350)
MCS-043 GPH Book 351
Q4. (a) What is Shadow Paging? Illustrate with an example. Give the
advantages and disadvantages of shadow paging.
(b) Define Multi-valued Dependency. What is Trivial Multi-valued
Dependency? State the fourth normal form.
(c) Explain any one clustering technique for data mining.
(d) What is Query Optimisation? Briefly discuss the techniques of Query
Optimisation with suitable examples.

Q5. (a) Explain the following:

(i) Dynamic SQL
(ii) OLAP
(iii) Spatial Databases
(iv) Temporal Databases
(b) What are Mobile Databases? List the characteristics and challenges
of mobile databases.
(c) Explain Join Dependency with the help of an example. To which
normal form does it correspond? “Functional Dependencies and
Multivalued Dependencies are special types of Join Dependencies.”
Justify the statement.
 MCS – 43: ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
December, 2018

Note: Question number one is compulsory. Answer any three questions from
the rest.

Q1. (a) Explain the process of Query optimisation with suitable example.
(b) What is the difference between Document Type Definition (DTD)
and XML Schema? Explain using an example.
(c) Explain Data mining in the context of knowledge discovery in
databases.
(d) What is Join dependency? Explain it with the help of an example.
What is trivial join dependency’?
(e) Consider a small institute in which students register for programmes
run by the institute. A programme can be a full or part time programme
or both. Every student necessarily registers in at least one programme
and at most three programmes, Assuming suitable attributes, design
an EER Diagram for the same.
(f) Explain the reference architecture for distributed database
management system.
(g) What are triggers? Explain the utility of triggers in DBMS. Give
suitable SQL code for triggers.
(h) What is a System catalogue? What is the information stored in
catalogue of RDBMS?

Q2. (a) Compare and contrast the following:

(i) JDBC and ODBC B-Tree Indexes and R-Tree Indexes used in Postgre
SQL.
(b) What is multiversion two-phase locking? Explain with an example.
(c) What are the different type of security features, needed for a
multilevel security system? Explain the encryption technique for a
multilevel security system.

Q3. (a) Describe the following with suitable example or a diagram:

(i) Data Grid
(ii) Data Mart
(iii) Deadlock
(iv) Checkpoint
(v) Referential Integrity Constraint
(b) What are views? What is their significance in DBMS? How are views
created in SQL? Explain it with the help of an SQL statement.
(352)
MCS-043 GPH Book 353
Q4. (a) Differentiate between the following:
(i) Centralised and Distributed Databases
(ii) Clustering and Classification approaches in Data Mining
(iii) Star Schema and Snowflake Schema
(b) What are deadlocks? How are deadlocks detected? Explain with the
help of an example.

Q5. (a) What is semi-structured data? Explain with the help of an

example. What is the difference between a well formed XML document
and a valid XML document?
(b) What is data warehousing? Discuss various characteristics of data
warehousing?
(c) What are multimedia databases? Discuss the challenges of designing
multimedia databases.
(d) What is multi-valued dependency? State the fourth normal form.
 MCS – 43: ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
June, 2019

Note: Question number 1 is compulsory. Answer any three questions from the
rest.

Q1. (a) What is a data warehouse? Describe the process of ETL for data
warehouse.
Refer to Dec-2008, Q.No.-1(b), Page No.-227

(b) What is the significance of cursors in embedded SQL? Explain with

the help of an example.
Refer to Dec-2008, Q.No.-2(a), Page No.-231

(c) What is OLAP ? How does OLAP differ from OLTP?

Refer to Dec-2006, Q.No.-5(iv), Page No.-179
Parameters OLTP OLAP
Process It is an online transactional OLAP is an online analysis and
system. It manages database data retrieving process.
modification.
Characteristic It is characterised by large It is characterised by a large
numbers of short online volume of data.
transactions.
Functionality OLTP is an online database OLAP is an online database
modifying system. query management system.
Method OLTP uses traditional OLAP uses the data
DBMS. warehouse.
Query Insert, Update, and Delete Mostly select operations
information from the
database.
Table Tables in OLTP database are Tables in OLAP database are
normalised. not normalised.
Source OLTP and its transactions Different OLTP databases
are the sources of data. become the source of data for
OLAP.
Data Integrity OLTP database must OLAP database does not get
maintain data integrity frequently modified. Hence,
constraint. data integrity is not an issue.
Response time It’s response time is in Response time in seconds to
millisecond. minutes.
Data quality The data in the OLTP The data in OLAP process
database is always detailed might not be organised.
and organise.
Usefulness It helps to control and run It helps with planning,
fundamental business tasks. problem-solving, and decision
support.
Operation Allow read/write operations. Only read and rarely write.
Audience It is a market orientated It is a customer orientated
process. process.
Query Type Queries in this process are Complex queries involving
standardised and simple. aggregations.
Back-up Complete backup of the data OLAP only need a backup
combined with incremental from time to time. Backup is
backups. not important compared to
OLTP

(354)
MCS-043 GPH Book 355

Design DB design in application DB design is subject oriented,

oriented. Example: Database Example: Database design changes
design changes with industry like with subjects like sales, marketing,
Retail, Airline, Banking, etc. purchasing, etc.
User type It is used by Data critical users Used by Data knowledge users like
like clerk, DBA & Data Base workers, managers, and CEO.
professionals.
Purpose Designed for real time business Designed for analysis of business
operations. measures by category and
attributes.
Performance Transaction throughput is the Query throughput is the
metric performance metric performance metric.
Number of This kind of Database users This kind of Database allows only
users allows thousands of users. hundreds of users.

Productivity It helps to increase user’s self- Help to increase productivity of the

service and productivity business analysts.
Challenge Data Warehouses historically An OLAP cube is not an open SQL
have been a development project server data warehouse. Therefore,
which may prove costly to build. technical knowledge and
experience is essential to manage
the OLAP server.
Process It provides fast result for daily It ensures that response to the query
used data. is quicker consistently.
Characteristic It is easy to create and maintain. It lets the user create a view with
the help of a spreadsheet.
Style OLTP is designed to have fast A data warehouse is created
response time, low data uniquely so that is can integrate
redundancy and is normalised. different data sources for building a
consolidated database.

(d) What are data marts? What is the significance of creating data
marts?
Refer to Dec-2008, Q.No.-3(b), Page No.-231

(e) What in join dependency? Explain with an example trivial join

dependency.
Refer to Dec-2008, Q.No.-4(b), Page No.-232

(f) What is the effect of data granularity over database security ? Give
suitable example.
Refer to June-2008, Q.No.-1(f), Page No.-217

(g) What is the significance of creating views ? How is a view created

using SQL ? Explain using an example.
Refer to Ch-4,(view definition), Page No.-49, 50
356 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
(h) How is hash-join of two relations r and s computed ?
Refer to Dec-2006, Q.No.-1(iii), Page No.-163

Q2.(a) Explain the terms lossless decomposition and dependency

preserving decomposition. Consider a relation R (A , B, C, D, E, F) with
functional dependency set
FD = { A → BC, C → A, D → E, F → A, E → D}

If R is decomposed into R1 (A, C, D); R 2 (B, C, D,); R 3 (E, F, D), then

check whether the decomposition is both lossless and dependency
preserving.
Refer to June-2014, Q.No.-1(a), Page No.-318

(b) How do distributed databases differ from the centralized databases?

Describe the architecture of distributed databases with the help of a
diagram.
Ans. The main differences between centralised and distributed databases
arise due to their respective basic characteristics. Differences include but are
not limited to:
• Centralised databases store data on a single CPU bound to a single certain
physical/geographical location. Distributed databases, however, rely on a central
DBMS which manages all its different storage devices remotely, as it is not
necessary for them to be kept in the same physical and/or geographical location.
• As outlined above, centralised databases are easier to maintain up to date
than distributed databases. This is so because distributed databases require
additional (often manual) work to keep the data stored relevant, and to avoid
data redundancy, as well as to improve the overall performance.
• If data is lost in a centralised system, retrieving it would be much harder. If,
however, data is lost in a distributed system, retrieving it would be very easy,
because there is always a copy of the data in a different location of the
database.
• Designing a centralised database is generally much less complex than
designing a distributed database, as distributed database systems are based on
a hierarchical structure.
Now, Refer to June-2014, Q.No.-2(b), Page No.-325

Q3. (a) What is multivalued dependency ? How is multivalued

dependency related to 4NF? Explain with suitable example.
Refer to June-2007, Q.No.-1(a), Page No.-181
MCS-043 GPH Book 357
(b) Justify the statement “BCNF is stronger than 3NF”.
Refer to June-2014, Q.No.-1(d), Page No.-322

(c) Differentiate between star schema and snowflake schema.

Refer to Dec-2009, Q.No.-5(a), Page No.-253

(d) Differentiate between ODBC and JDBC. What are the components
required for implementing ODBC in a system?
Refer to June-2009, Q.No.-3(b), Page No.-238 and Refer to Ch-7,
Q.No.-17, Page No.-145

Q4. (a) What is k-means clustering ? How does it differ from nearest
neighbour clustering ?
Ans. In the K-Means clustering, initially a set of clusters is randomly chosen.
Then iteratively, items are moved among sets of clusters until the desired set
is reached. A high degree of similarity among elements in a cluster is obtained
by using this algorithm. For this algorithm a set of clusters Ki={ti1,ti2,…,tim}
is given , the cluster mean is:
mi = (1/m)(ti1 + … + tim)
where ti represents the tuples and m represents the mean
The K-Means algorithm is as follows:
Input:
D= {t1,t2,…tn} //Set of elements
A //Adjacency matrix showing distance between elements.
k //Number of desired clusters.
Output:
K //Set of Clusters
K-Means Algorithm:
Assign initial values for means m1,m2..mk;
Repeat
Assign each item ti to the cluster which has the closest mean;
Calculate new mean for each cluster;
Until convergence criteria is met.
Now, Refer to Dec-2006, Q.No.-4(a), Page No.-174

(b) What is Audit Trail ? Give benefits of audit trail in context of DBMS.
Refer to Ch-5, Q.No.-60, Page No.-103

(c) Discuss classification as a tool of data mining. Describe ID 3 algorithm

for classifying datasets with a suitable example.
358 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
Ans. ID3 Algorithm for Classification
This algorithm creates a tree using the algorithm given below and tries to
reduce the expected number of comparisons.
Algorithm: ID3 algorithm for creating decision tree from the given training
data.
Input: The training data and the attribute-list.
Output: A decision tree.
Process:
Step 1: Create a node N
Step 2: If sample data are all of the same class, C (that is probability is 1) then
return N as a leaf node labeled class C
Step 3: If attribute-list is empty then return N as a leaf node label it with the
most common class in the training data; // majority voting
Step 4: Select split-attribute, which is the attribute in the attribute-list with
the highest information gain;
Step 5: label node N with split-attribute;
Step 6: for each known value Ai, of split-attribute // partition the samples
Create a branch from node N for the condition: split-attribute = Ai; // Now
consider a partition and recursively create the decision tree:
Let xi be the set of data from training data that satisfies the condition:
split-attribute = Ai if the set xi is empty then attach a leaf labeled with the most
common class in the prior set of training data; else attach the node returned
after recursive call to the program with training data as xi and new attribute
list = present attribute-list – split-attribute;
End of Algorithm.
Now, Refer to Ch-6, Q.No.-55, Page No.-134

Q5. (a) How does PostgreSQL perform storage and indexing? Discuss
the types of indexes involved in PostgreSQL with suitable examples.
Refer to Ch-7, Q.No.-27, Page No.-148

(b) What is SQLJ? Give requirements of SQLJ. Discuss the working of

SQLJ. “Can SQLJ use dynamin SQL?” If yes, then how? Otherwise,
specify the type of SQL it can use.
Refer to Ch-4, Q.No.-11, Page No.-58
 MCS – 43: ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
December, 2019

Note: Question number one is compulsory. Answer any three questions from
the rest.

Q1. (a) What are triggers? What is the utility of triggers in DBMS?
Explain with the help of an example.
(b) Discuss data mining in the context of knowledge discovery in
databases.
(c) What are mobile databases? Give characteristics of mobile databases.
(d) What is shadow paging? Give advantages and disadvantages of shadow
paging.
(e) Differentiate between logical database design and physical database
design.
(f) How hash join is applicable to Equi Join and Natural Join?
(g) What is an ETL process? Describe the different transformations
performed during ETL process.
(h) Compare Assertions and Views. Discuss each with a suitable example.

Q2. (a) Differentiate between the following:

(i) Centralized 2 PL and Distributed 2 PL
(ii) XML and HTML
(iii) Inclusion dependencies and Template dependencies
(iv) Spatial databases and temporal databases
(b) What do you understand by the term “Multiversioning”? What are
the various schemes available for multiversioning? Explain any two
scheme.

Q3. (a) What is Join Dependency? How join dependency relates to SNF?
(b) What is a Datagrid? Give a block diagram to describe the structure
of datagrid. What is the utility of datagrid?
(c) What is a serializable schedule? How does serializable schedule differ
from a serial schedule? What are the problems, associated with both
schedules? Explain the time stamp based protocols for serializable
schedule.

Q4. (a) Why Database query expressed in relational algebra is preferred

over the query expressed in SQL? Explain with suitable example.

(359)
360 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
(b) What are the common database security failures? Give SQL
commands, to grant permission for database access. Why statistical
databases are more prone to security breach? Explain with the help of
an example.
(c) What is OLAP? Discuss the different implementations of OLAP.
(d) Discuss the different types of structural diagrams in UML.

Q5. (a) Explain Centralized two-phase commit protocol in Distributed

Environment. Give the algorithm for both coordinator and participants.
(b) Write short notes on the following:
(i) OLTP
(ii) Embedded SQL
(iii) Dynamic SQL
(iv) Clustering approaches
(v) Semantic databases
 MCS – 43: ADVANCED DATABASE DESIGN
June, 2020

Note: Question number one is compulsory. Answer any three questions from
the rest.

Q1. (a) What is join dependency? When a join dependency is referred

as trivial? Explain with the help of an example.
(b) What are views in DBMS? Discuss their significance in DBMS. How
views are created in SQL with the help of an example.
(c) What is query optimization? Discuss the role of query optimization
in Oracle.
(d) What is Audit Trail? Give four benefits of Audit trail, in context of
DBMS.
(e) What is shadow paging? Give advantages and disadvantages of shadow
paging.
(f) What are “deadlocks? How are they detected? Explain with the help
of an example.
(g) What is XML? What are the advantages of XML? Create and XML
schema for list of students and their marks.
(h) What are mobile databases? List the characteristics and challenges
in implementing mobile database.

Q2. (a) Discuss the following with the help of a suitable example for
each:
(1) Triggers
(ii) Alerts
(iii) Cursors
(iv) Procedures
(v) Functions
(b) Compare and contrast Database Queries and Data Mining Queries.
Give example for each.
(c) Explain K-means algorithm with the help of an example.

Q3. (a) Differentiate between clustering and classification in data

mining.
(b) Explain log based recovery scheme, using deferred database
modification approach with the help of an example.
(c) What is multilevel security? What are typical security levels?

(361)
362 GullyBaba Publishing House (P) Ltd.
(d) What is Data Dictionary in DBMS? Discuss its significance in DBMS.
Give an example of a data dictionary entry.

Q4. (a) Explain the following:

(i) Dynamic SQL
(ii) OLAP and its types
(iii) Spatial Database
(iv) Semantic Database
(b) What are B-Tree Indexes? How do B-Tree Indexes differ from R-
Tree Indexes? Give example for each.
(c) Compare and contrast the following:
(i) JDBC and ODBC
(ii) ER Diagram and EER Diagram.

Q5. (a) What are Exclusive mode locks? How do Exclusive mode locks
differ from shared mode locks? How are these locks used in transaction
management? Give suitable example to support your discussion.
(b) What is multivalued dependency? How is 4NF related to multivalued
dependency? Is 4NF decomposition dependency preserving? Justify your
answer.
(c) Explain the role of the following files in Oracle:
(i) Control Files
(ii) Data Files