P.O.

BOX 342-01000 THIKA

EMAIL: [email protected]
Web: www.mku.ac.ke

DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY

COURSE CODE: BIT1201

COURSE TITLE: DATABASE SYSTEMS

Instructional manual for BBIT- Distance learning

By Joshua Agola
Bb

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 Purpose: To introduce the concept of relational database and techniques and
tools for developing and utilizing databases in business

Course Objectives
By the end of the course unit the learner should be able to:
 Explain the principles underlying relational database
 Design and develop a practical database system
 Use structured query language (SQL) to access and manipulate data

Course Content
WEEK 1 & 2
1. Overview of Database Systems
 The file system environment
 Database system environment
 Types of database systems
 Advantages of database systems
 Disadvantages of database systems

WEEK 3
2. Database Architecture and Environment
 The database life cycle
 Types of DBMS and components of DBMS
 Functions of DBMS
 Benefits of DBMS

WEEK 4 & 5
3. Conceptual Data Models
 Types of data models
 The ER model
 Data normalization
WEEK 6 & 7
4. Relational Database Systems
 Relational data structures
 Relational languages (SQL, PL/SQL)
WEEK 8
5. Transaction Management and Concurrency Control
 Properties of transactions
 Interference between concurrent transactions
 Schedules and Serialization
 Concurrency control techniques

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 WEEK 9

6. Distributed Databases
 Distributed Database
 Approaches
 File servers
 Distributed DBMS
WEEK 10 & 12
7. Database Recovery Management
 Causes of database failure
 Transaction and Recovery
 Recovery protocol
WEEK 12 & 13
8. Security Integrity and control
 Objectives of security
 Types of Security breaches
 Protection from Security
 Breaches
WEEK 14
9. Latest developments
 Developments
 Applications

Assessment
Cats, Assignments and Projects 30%
Final Exam 70%

References
 Conolly, Begg & Strachan, Database Systems, Addison Wesley
 Date, An Introduction to Database Systems, Addison Wesley
 The Internet

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CHAPTER ONE: OVERVIEW OF DATABASE SYSTEMS ................................. 7
1.1 Review Of Traditional Processing And It’s Limitations ....................... 7
1.2 Evaluation of the DBMS ..................................................................................... 9
1.3 Types Of Database Systems................................................................................ 9
1.4 Advantages Of The Database Systems ............................................................. 10
1.5 Disadvantages Of Database Systems ................................................................ 11
File System Environment .............................................................................................. 12
Database System Environment ..................................................................................... 12
1.6 The Database System Environment .................................................................. 12

CHAPTER TWO: DATABASE ARCHITECTURE AND ENVIRONMENT .......... 16

2.1 Abstraction and Data Integration ...................................................................... 16
Data Independence ........................................................................................................ 19
2.3 Components Of The DBMS ............................................................................. 20
2.4 Typical DBMS Functions ....................................................................................... 21
2.5 Overall System Structure .................................................................................. 23
Major Components Of Dbms ........................................................................................ 24
Database Life Cycle (DBLC)........................................................................................ 24
CHAPTER THREE: CONCEPTUAL DATA MODEL............................................... 26
3.1 Types Of Data Models ...................................................................................... 26
3.2 The E- R Model (Entity Relationship) .............................................................. 27
3.2.1 E-R Model Basic Concepts ............................................................................... 28
3.2.2 Characteristics Of Attributes............................................................................. 28
3.2.3 Relationship Sets............................................................................................... 29
Types Of Relationships ................................................................................................. 29
Exercise. ........................................................................................................................ 30
3.3 Entity-Relationship Diagram ............................................................................ 30
Exercise. ........................................................................................................................ 31
3.4 Entity modeling (Diagrammatic representation) relationships ......................... 32
Exercise ......................................................................................................................... 32
Exercise ......................................................................................................................... 33
3.5 DATA NORMALIZATION ............................................................................. 35
3.5.1 Advantages of Normalisation Approach ........................................................... 37
3.5.2 Disadvantages ................................................................................................... 37
Exercise ......................................................................................................................... 37
Pharmacy drug dispensing card ................................................................ 38

CHAPTER FOUR: RELATIONAL DATABASE SYSTEM .................................. 39

4.1 Relational Data Structure .................................................................................. 39
Properties of Relations .................................................................................................. 39
4.2 Relational Database Language .......................................................................... 41
Structured Query Language .......................................................................................... 41
Components of SQL ..................................................................................................... 41
4.2.1 Basic Structure Of SQL Statement ................................................................... 41

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 FROM ........................................................................................................... 42
Select clause .................................................................................................................. 42
From Clause .................................................................................................. 43
Ordering Display of Tuples .......................................................................................... 43
4.2.2 Aggregate Functions ......................................................................................... 44
Null Values ................................................................................................................... 44
4.2.3 Tuple Variables ................................................................................................. 44
4.2.4 String Operations .............................................................................................. 45
4.2.5 SQL and Set ......................................................................................................... 46
UNION .......................................................................................................... 46
UNION ALL ................................................................................................. 46
EXCEPT ....................................................................................................... 46
4.4.6 VIEWS .............................................................................................................. 47
4.4.7 Modification Of The Database.......................................................................... 47
4.2.7 Schema Definition in SQL ................................................................................ 49

CHAPTER FIVE: TRANSACTIONS MANAGEMENT AND CONCURRENCY

CONTROL .......................................................................................................... 50
5.1 Properties of Transactions................................................................................. 50
5.2 Interference between Concurrent transactions .................................................. 50
5.3 Schedules And Serialisation ............................................................................. 52
5.4 Concurrency Control Techniques ..................................................................... 52
Techniques To Control Deadlocks................................................................................ 54
Validation Phase ................................................................................... 55

CHAPTER SIX: DISTRIBUTED DATABASES .................................................. 56

6.1 File Servers ....................................................................................................... 56
6.2 Distributed Database Approaches ..................................................................... 56

CHAPTER SEVEN: DATABASE RECOVERY MANAGEMENT ....................... 64

Levels of Backups ......................................................................................... 64
7.1 Causes Of Database Failures ............................................................................ 64
7.2 Transaction And Recovery ............................................................................... 65
7.2.1 Causes Of Failures ........................................................................................ 65
7.3 Recovery Protocols ........................................................................................... 67

CHAPTER EIGHT: SECURITY, INTEGRITY AND CONTROL .......................... 68

8.1 Objectives of IS security ......................................................................................... 68
8.2 Accidental Loss ....................................................................................................... 71
8.3 Malicious Damage .................................................................................................. 71
8.4 Protection. ............................................................................................................... 71
8.5 Authorization .......................................................................................................... 72

CHAPTER NINE : QUERY OPTIMIZATION. ..................................................... 73

9.1 The optimization process. ................................................................................. 73

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 9.2 Relational Algebra. ........................................................................................... 74

CHAPTER TEN : LATEST DEVELOPMENTS IN DATABASE TECHNOLOGY.

............................................................................................................................ 75
10.1 Developments ................................................................................................... 75
10.2 Applications ...................................................................................................... 77
Decision-support Systems ............................................................................................. 77
Data analysis ................................................................................................................. 77
Data mining ................................................................................................................... 77
Data warehousing.......................................................................................................... 77
Spatial and geographical Databases .............................................................................. 77
Multimedia databases.................................................................................................... 77
Mobility and personal databases ................................................................................... 78
Distributed information systems ................................................................................... 78
The World Wide Web ................................................................................................... 79

APPENDIX ......................................................................................................... 80
Sample Questions.......................................................................................................... 80
Question 1 ............................................................................................................. 80
Question 10. ...................................................................................................... 82

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 CHAPTER ONE: OVERVIEW OF DATABASE SYSTEMS

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter the learner should be able to:

 Evaluate the differenence between Flat file systems and Database systems

 Data management, which focuses on data collection, storage and retrieval, constitutes a core
activity for any organisation.
 To generate relevant information efficiently you need quick access to data (raw facts) from
which the required information is produced.
 Efficient data management requires the use of a computer database. A database is a shared,
integrated computer structure that houses a collection of: -

i. End -user data i.e. raw facts of interest to the user.

ii. Meta -data i.e. raw facts of interest to the user
iii. Meta data i.e. data about data through which the data is integrated. The Meta data
provides a description of the data characteristics and the set of relationships that link
the data found within the database. The database resembles a very well organized
electronic filing cabinet in which powerful software referred to as DBMS helps manage
the cabinet’s contents.

1.1 Review Of Traditional Processing And It’s Limitations

 Consider a saving bank enterprise that keeps information about all customers and savings
accounts in permanent system files at the bank.
 The bank will need a number of applications e.g.

i. Program to debit or credit an account

ii. A program to add a new account
iii. A program to find the balance of an account
iv. A program to generate monthly statements
v. Any new program would be added as per the banks requirements

 Such a typical filing /processing system has the limitation of more and more files and
application programs being added to the system at any time. Such a scheme has a number of
major disadvantages:
i. Data redundancy and inconsistency - Since the files and application programs are
created by different programmers over a long period of type, the files are likely to have
different formats and the programs may be written in several programming languages.
Moreover, the same piece of information may be duplicated in several files. This
redundancy leads to higher storage and access costs. It may also lead to
inconsistency i.e. the various copies of the same data may no longer agree.
 ii. Difficulty in accessing - Suppose that one of the bank officers needs to find out the
names of all customers who live within the city's 78-phone code. The officer would ask
the data processing department to generate such a list. Such a request may not have
been anticipated while designing the system originally and the only options available
are:-

 Extract the data manually

 Write the necessary application, therefore do not allow the data to be
accessed conveniently and efficiently

iii. Data isolation - Since data is scattered in various files and files may be in different
formats, it may be difficult to write new applications programs to retrieve the
appropriate data.
iv. Concurrent access anomalies - Interaction of concurrent updates may result in
inconsistent data e.g. if 2 customers withdraw funds say 50/= and 100/= from an
account at about the same time the result of the concurrent execution may leave the
account in an incorrect state.
v. Security problems - Not every user of the database system should be able to access
all the data. Since application programs are added to the system in an ad-hoc
manner, it is difficult to enforce security constraints.
vi. Integrity - The data value stored in the database must satisfy certain types of
consistency constraints e.g. a balance of a bank account may never fall below a
prescribed value e.g. 5,000/=. These constraints are enforced in a system by adding
appropriate code in the various application programs. However, when new constraints
are added there is need to change the other programs to enforce.

Conclusion.
These difficulties among others have prompted the development of DBMS.

1.2 Evaluation of the DBMS

Unlike the file system with may separate and unrelated files, the Database consists of logically
related data store in a single data repository. The problems inherent in file systems make using
the database system very desirable and therefore, the database represents a change in the way
the end user data are stored accessed and arranged.

1.3 Types Of Database Systems

i. Single User database systems

This is a database system that supports one user at a time such that if user A is using the
database, users B & C must wait until user A complete his or her database work.
If a single user database runs on a personal computer it’s called a desktop database.
ii. Multi-user database

This is a database that supports multiple users at the same time for relatively small number e.g. 50
users in a department the database is referred to as a workgroup database. While one, which
supports many departments is called an enterprise database.

iii. Centralized Database system

This is a database system that supports a database located at a single site.
iv. Distributed database system

This is a database system that supports a database distributed across several different sites.

v. Transactional DBMS/Production DBMS

This is a database system that supports immediate response transaction e.g. sale of a product.

vi. Decision Support DBMS

It focuses primarily on the production of information required to make a tactical or strategic decision
at middle and high management levels.

1.4 Advantages Of The Database Systems

1. Centralized Control - Via the DBA it is possible to enforce centralized management and
control of data. This means that necessary modifications, which do not affect other application
changes, meet the data independence DBMS requirement.

2. Reduction of redundancies - Unnecessary duplication of data is avoided effectively reducing

total amount of data required, consequently the reduction of storage space. It also eliminates
extra processing necessary to trace the required data in a large mass of data. It also
eliminates inconsistencies. Any redundancies that exist in the DBMS are controlled and the
system ensures that his multiple copies are consistent.

3. Shared data - In a DBMS, sharing of data under its control by a number of application
programs and user is possible e.g. backups.

4. Integrity - Centralized control can also ensure that adequate checks are incorporated to the
DBMS provide data integrity. Data integrity means that the data contained in the database is
both accurate and consistent e.g. employee age must be between 28-25 years.

5. Security - Only authorized people must access confidential data. The DBA ensures that
proper access procedures are followed including proper authentication schemes process that
the DBMS and additional checks before permitting access to sensitive data. Different levels of
security can be implemented for various types of data or operations.
6. Conflict Resolution - The DBA is in a position to resolve conflicting resolve conflicting
requirements of various users and applications. It is by choosing the best file structure and
access method to get optimum performance for the response. This could be by classifying
applications into critical and less critical applications.

7. Data Independence - It involves both logical and physical independence logical data
independence indicates that the conceptual schemes can be changed without affecting the
existing external schemes. Physical data independence indicates that the physical storage
structures/devices used for storing the data would be changed without necessitating a change
in the conceptual view or any of the external use.

1.5 Disadvantages Of Database Systems

1. Cost - in terms of:

 The DBMS - software

 Purchasing or developing S/W
 H/W
 Workspace (disks for storage)
 Migration (movement from tradition separate systems to an integrated one)

2. Centralization Problems

You would require adequate backup incase of failure

You would require increased severity of security breeches and disruption of operation of the
organisation because of downtimes and failures.

3. Complexity of Backup and recovery

 File System Environment

Personnel Sales Accounts

Department Department Department

employees customer sales inventory accounts

______________________________________________________________________________
Personnel
Department DATABASE
Employees
Customers
Sales Integrated
Sales Department DBMS Inventory
Accounts System

Accounting
Department

Database System Environment

The database eliminates most of the file systems' data inconsistencies, anomalies and structural
dependency problems.

The current generation of DBMS software stores not only the data structures in a central location
but also stores the relationships between the database components
The DBMS also takes care of defining all the required access paths of the required component.

1.6 The Database System Environment

The term database system refers to an organisation of components that define and regulate the
collection storage, management and use of data within a database environment.
The database system is composed of 5 major parts i.e.
a. Hardware d. Procedures
b. Software e. Data
c. People
Hardware
This identifies all the systems physical devices e.g. the composition peripherals, storage devices
etc.

Software
These are a collection of programs used by the computers within the database system.
i. O.S - manages all hardware components and makes it possible for all other and
software to run on the composition.
ii. The DBMS - manages the database within the database system e.g. Oracle, DB2, Ms
Access etc.
iii. Applications programs and utilities to access and manipulate data in the DBMS.

People
These are all database systems users:-
1. Systems administrator - Oversees the database systems general operations.
2. Database administrator (DBA) - Manages the DBMS use and ensures that the database is
functioning properly. His functions include:

i. Scheme definition - The original database scheme is created by writing a set of

definitions, which are translated by DDL compiler to a set of tables that are
permanently stored in the data dictionary.
ii. Storage structure and Access Methods Definitions - By writing a set of definitions for
appropriate storage structures and access methods, which are translated by the data
storage and definition language compiler.
iii. Scheme and physical organisation modifications - Modification to either the database
schema or description of the physical storage organisation are accompanied by writing
a set of definitions which are used by either the DDL compiler or the data storage and
definition language compiler to generate modification to appropriate internal systems
tables e.g. data dictionary.
iv. Granting authorization to data access - This is so as to regulate which parts of the
database users can access.
v. The database manager keeps integrity Constrains in a special system structure
whenever an update takes place in the system.

3. Database designers - These are the database architects who design the database structure.

4. Systems Analysts & Programmers (application programmers) - They design and

implement the application programs they design & create the data entry scheme, reports &
procedures through which users access and manipulate the databases data.
5. End users - These are the people who use the application programs to run the organizations
daily operations. They fall in the following classes:

i. Sophisticated users - These interact with the system without writing programs. They
form their requests in a database query language.
ii. Specialized database applications that do not fit in the traditional data processing
framework e.g. CAD Systems, knowledge based & expect systems.
iii. Application programmers: These interact with the system through the DML &
applications.
iv. Naive – Unsophisticated user who interact with the systems by invoking one of the
permanent application programs that have been written previously.

Procedures
 These are instructions and rules that govern the design and use of the database system.
 They enforce standards by which business is conducted within the organisation an with
customers.
 They also ensure that there is an organized way to monitor and audit both the data that enter
the database and the information that is generated through the use of such data.

DATA
This covers the collection for facts stored in the database and since data is the raw material from
which information is generated the determination of what data is to be stored into the database and
how the data is to be organized is a vital part of the database designer jobs.

Review Questions
i) Define the following terms:
a) A database
b) A database systems

ii) Differentiate flat file systems from database systems

iii) Give advantages and disadvantages of database systems
 CHAPTER TWO: DATABASE ARCHITECTURE AND ENVIRONMENT

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter the learner should be able to:

 Understand the various levels that make up database architecture
 Identify and explain the components of DBMS

2.1 Abstraction and Data Integration

Abstraction is the simplification mechanism to hide superfluous(extra/surplus/unnecessary) details

of a set of objects.
It allows one to concentrate on the properties that are of interest to the application e.g. a car is an
abstraction of personal transportation vehicle but does not reveal details about model, year, colour
etc.
Vehicle itself is an abstraction that includes the types; car, truck, bus and lorry.

Consider a non- database environment of a number of application programs as shown below:

Application 1 will contain values for the attributes employee Name and Employee. Address and this
record can be described in pseudo-code as

Type Employee = record

Employee.name:string
Employee.address:string
End

Application 2 will have:

Type Employee = record

Employee.name: String
Employee.soc_sec_No: Integer
Employee.Adress: String
Employee. Annual_salary:integer
End

In a non-database environment each application is responsible for maintaining the currency of data
and a change in data item.

In a database environment, data can be stored in this application and their requirement be
integrated by whoever is responsible for centralized control (DBA).
The integrated version would appear as recorded containing attributes required by both
applications.
The record will appear as:
Type Employee = record
Employee.Name:string
Employee.soc-sec.no: Integer
Employee.Address:string
Employee.Annual_Salary: double
End

The views supported are derived from the conceptual record by using appropriate mapping.
The application programs no longer require information about the storage structure; storage device
types or access methods. These are absorbed by the DBMS.

There are 3 level abstractions corresponding to 3 views:

i. The highest level which is seen by the application programs or user called “external or
user view"
ii. A sum total of users view called global view a conceptual view.
iii. Lower level which is the description of the actual method of storing the data. It is also
referred to as the internal view.

Local View Employee.Name Employee.Name

Employee.Address Employee.Soc_Sec_No
Employee.Address
Employee.Annual_Sal

User
1 User
2
Conceptual View
Employee.Name:String
Employee.Soc_Sec_No:Integer DBA
Employee.Address:String
Employee.Annual_Sal:Double

Connection to the DBA

Internal View
Name:String Length 25 Offset 0
Soc_Sec_No:Integer 9 Offset 25
Address: String Length 5 Offset 34
Salary: 9,2 dec Offset 39
The 3 level scheme architecture is called the ANSI/SPARC model (American National Standard
Institute/Standards Planning and Requirements Committee.)
It is divided into 3 levels:
 External
 Conceptual
 Internal
The view of each level is described as a scheme, which is an outline or a plan that describes the
records and relations existing in the view. It also describes the way in which entities at one level of
abstraction can be mapped onto the next level.
External Level (External or User view)
This is at the highest level of database abstraction where only those portions of the database of
concern to the user or application programs are included.

Any number of user views may be possible, some of which may be identical.
Each external view is described by means of a scheme called external scheme, which consists of a
definition of the logical records and the relationships in the external view.
It also contains the method of devising the objects in the external view from the objects in the
conceptual view (entities, attributes and relationships).

Conceptual Or Global View

Contains all database entities and the relationships among them are included and one conceptual
view represents the entire database.
It is defined by the conceptual scheme. Also contains the methods of deriving the objects in the
conceptual view from the object s in the internal view.
It is independent of the physical presentation.

Internal View
This is the lowest level of abstraction closest to the physical storage method used.
It indicated how data would be stored and describe the data structures and access methods to be
used by the database. The internal schema implements it.

External Level View A View B View C

User/application view

Mapping supplied by the DBMS

Conceptual Level
Conceptual View

Internal Level Internal View

The 3 levels of architecture of a DBMS
Mapping between views
Two mappings are required, one between external and conceptual views and another between the
conceptual records to internal ones.

Data Independence
This is the immunity of users/application programs from changes in storage structure and access
mechanism.
The 3 levels of abstractions along with the mappings from internal to conceptual and from
conceptual to external provide 2 distinct levels of data independence i.e.:
 Logical Data Independence
 Physical Data Independence

(i) Logical Data Independence

This indicates that the conceptual schema can be changed without affecting the existing external
schema.
The mapping between the external and conceptual levels would absorb the change.

It also insulates application programs from operations such as combining two records into one or
splitting an existing record into 2 or more records. The LDI is achieved by providing the external
level or user view database.

The application programs or users see the database as described by the respective external view.
DBMS provided a mapping from this view to the conceptual view.
NB: The view at conceptual level of the database is the sum total of the current and anticipated
views of the database.

(ii) Physical Data Independence

This indicates that the physical storage structures or devices used for storing the data can be
changed without necessitating a change in the conceptual view or any of the external view. Any
change is absorbed by the mapping between the conceptual and internal views.
 2.3 Components Of The DBMS

A DBMS is software used to build, maintain and control database systems. It allows a systematic
approach to the storage and retrieval of data in a computer.
Most DBMS(s) have several major components, which include the following:

1. Data Definition Language (DDL) - These are commands used for creating and altering the
structure of the database.
The structures comprise of Field Names, Field sizes, Type of data for each field, File
organizational technique. The DDL commands are used to create new objects, alter the
structure of existing ones or completely remove objects from the system.

2. Data Manipulation language (DML) - This is the user language interface and is used for
executing and modifying the contents of the database. These commands allow access and
manipulation of data for output. They include commands for adding, inserting, deleting,
sorting, displaying, painting etc. These are the most frequently used commands once the
database has been created.

3. Data Control Language (DCL) - These are commands used to control access to the database
in response to DML commands. It acts as an interface between the DML and the OS. It
provides security and control to the data.

4. Query Languages - A query language is a formalized method of constructing queries in

database system. It provides the ways in which the user interrogates the database for data
without using conventional programs. For relation database, structures query languages
(SQL) has emerged as the standard language. Almost all the DBMS(s) use SQL running on
machines ranging from microcomputers to large main frames.

5. Form Generator - A form is a screen display version of a paper form, which can be used for
both input and output.

6. Menu Generator - This is used to generate different types of menus to suit user requirements.

7. Report Generator - This is a tool that gives non- specialized users the capability of providing
reports from one or more files through easily constructed statements. The reports may be
produced either constructed statements. The reports may be produced either on screen or
paper. A report generator has the following features:
 Page headings and footings
 Page Numbering
 Sorting
 Combining data from several files
 Column headings
 Totaling and subtotaling
 Grouping of data
 Reports titling
8. Business Graphics - Some DBMS may provide means of generating graphical output e.g. bar
charts, pie charts scatter graphics line plots etc. others will allow users to export data into
graphics software.

9. Application Generators - This is a type of 4th generation language used to create complete
application programs. The user describes what need to be done, the data and files that are to
be used and the application generator then translates the description into a program. They are
also refereed to as rapid application tools.

10. Data Dictionary (DD) - This provides the following facilities:

 Documentation of data items
 Provision of Standard definition an names for data items.
 Data item description.
 Removal of redundancy in documentation of data item.
 Documentation of relationships between data items;

11. Fort Generation Languages (4GLS'S) - A 4GL'S is a non-procedural language in which the
programs flows and not designed by the programmer but by the 4G software itself.. The user
requests for the result rather than a detailed procedure to obtain these results.

2.4 Typical DBMS Functions

A DBMS performs several functions that guarantee the integrity and consistency of the data in the
database. Most of these functions are transparent to end-users and can be achieved only through
the use of a DBMS. They include:

i. Data Dictionary Management - The DBMS enquires that definitions of the data
element and their relationships (metadata) be stored in a data dictionary. The DBMS
uses the DD to look up the required data component, structures and relationships thus
relieving us from having to code such complex relationships in each program. Any
changes made in the database structure are automatically recorded in the DD thereby
freeing us from having to modify all the programs that access the changed structure.
So, the DBMS provides data obstruction and removes structural or data dependency
of the system.

ii. Data Storage Management - Creation of complex structure required for data storage
is done by DBMS thus relieving us from the difficult task of defining and programming
the physical data characteristics. A modern DBMS system provides storage for data
and related data entry forms or screen definitions, report definition, data validation
rules, procedural code structures to handle video and picture formats etc.

iii. Data Transformation and Presentation - Transformation of entered data to conform

the data structures that are required to store the data is done by the DBMS relieving
us the core issue of making a distinction between the data logical formats and data
physical format. By maintaining data independence the DBMS translates logical
 requests it no commands that physically locate and retrieve the requested data. That
is the DBMS transform the physically retrieved data to conform to the users logical
expectations. This is by providing application programs with software independence
and data abstraction.

iv. Security Management - The DBMS creates the systems security that enforces users
security and data privacy within the database. Security rules determine which users
can access database which data item each user can access and which data
operations (read, add, delete, modify) the user may perform. This is important in multi
user database system where many users can access the database simultaneously.

v. Multi User Access Control - The database creates complex structures that allow
multi-user access to the structure. In order to provide data integrity and consistency
the DBMS users sophisticated algorithms to ensure that multiple users can access the
database con-currently and still guarantee integrity of the database.

vi. Back-up and recovery management - To ensure data safety and integrity current
DBMS systems provide special utilities that allow the DBA to perform routing and
special backup and restore procedures. Recovery management deals with recovery of
the database after a failure such as a bad sector in the disk, a power failure etc. Such
capability is critical to the preservation of the database integrity.

vii. Data integrity Management - The DBMS promotes and enforces integrity rules to
eliminate data integrity problems thus minimizing data redundancy and maximizing
data consistency. The relationships stored in the Data Dictionary are used to enforce
data integrity. Data integrity is especially important in transaction oriented database
systems.

viii. Data base Access Language and Application Programming Interfaces - The
DBMS provides data access via a query language. It contains 2 components, DDL
and DML. The DDL defines the structures in which the data are housed and the DML
allows end users to extract the data from the database. It also allows data access to
programmers via procedural languages such as Cobol, C, Pascal, and Visual Basic
etc. It also provides utilities used by the DBA and the Database Designer to create,
implement, monitor and maintain the database.

ix. Database Communication interfaces - Current generation of DBMS's provide

special communication routines designed to allow the database to accept end-use r
requests within a computer network environment. The DBMS may provide
communication functions to access the database through the internet using internet
browsers e.g. Netscape or Explorer as the front-ends
 2.5 Overall System Structure

A database system is partitioned into modules that deal with each of the responsibilities of the
overall systems. The design of the database system must include consideration of the interface
between the database system and the O.S. The functional components of a database system
include:
 File Manager
 Data base manager
 Query processor
 DML pre-compiler
 DDL compiler

File Manager
This manages the allocation of space in the disk storage and the data structures used to represent
information stored on the disk. It deals more on the physical aspects.

Database Manager
Provides the interface between the low level data stored in the database and the application and
programs the queries submitted to the system.

Query Processor
This translates statements in a query language into low-level instruction that the DB manager
understands. In addition the query processor attempts to transform a user request into more
efficient statement, thus finding a good strategy for executing the query.

DML Pre-compiler
This converts the DML statements embedded in an application program to normal procedure calls
in the language. The pre-compiler must interact with the query processor order generate the
appropriate code.

DDL Compiler - This converts DDL statements to a set of table containing metadata.
 Major Components Of Dbms
Programmers Users DBA

Application
Queries Database scheme
programs

Query DDL
DML compiler
Pre-processor processor

Program Database Dictionary

object code manager manager

Access File manager

methods

System
buffers
Database &
System catalog

Database Life Cycle (DBLC)

1. The Database Initial Study

 Examine the current system operation.

 Try to establish how and why the current system fails.
 Define the problems and constraints
 Define the objectives
 Define scope and boundaries
2. Database Design

 This involves the conceptual design, selection of database, management system

software.
 Creation of the logical design
 Creation of the physical design

3. Implementation

 This involves installation of the DBMS

 Creation of the database
 Loading or conversion of data

4. Testing and evaluation

The activities involve:
 Testing the database
 Tune the database
 Evaluate the database application programs
 Provide the required information flow

5. Operation
Once the database has passed the evaluation stage it is considered to be operational, the
database, its management, its users and its application programs constitute a complete I.S. The
beginning of the operational phase starts the process of system evaluation.

6. Maintenance and Evaluation

It involves the following:
 Preventive Maintenance
 Corrective maintenance
 Adaptive maintenance
 Assignment and maintenance of access permission to new and old user
 Generation of database access statistics to improve the efficiency and usefulness of
audits and to monitor system persons.
 Periodic security based on the system generated statistics
 Periodic (monthly, quarterly or yearly) system using summaries for internal billing or
budgeting purposes.

Review Questions
 Explain the components of database management systems
 Identify and explain the functions of the DBMS
 State the steps which are involved in Database life cycle
 CHAPTER THREE: CONCEPTUAL DATA MODEL

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter the learner should be able to:

 Understand types of data models
 Normalize the un-normalize data from first normal form to third normal form

A database model is a collection of logical constructs used to represent the data structure and
relationships found within the database.

3.1 Types Of Data Models

1. Object Based Logical Models

They are used in describing data at the conceptual and view levels. They provide fairly flexible
structuring capabilities and allow data constraints to be specified explicitly. They include:
 E - R Model
 Object Oriented Model
 Binary Model
 Semantic Data Models
 Info-logical Data Model
 Function

2. Record Based Logical Models

These are models used in describing data at the conceptual and view levels. They are used to
specify the overall logical structure of the database and to provide a higher-level description
implementation. It is hard to understand.

3. Physical Data Models

These are models that are used to describe data at the lowest level. They are very few in number
and the two widely known ones are:
i. Unifying model
ii. Frame memory model

NB: Like the E-R model, the object-oriented model is based on a collection of object where an
object contains values stored in instance variables with the object.
 3.2 The E- R Model (Entity Relationship)

It is based on a perception over a real world, which consists of a collection of basic objects called
entities and relationships among this objects. An entity is an object that is distinguished from other
objects via a specific set of attributes.
 3.2.1 E-R Model Basic Concepts
The model employs the following components:
 Entity sets
 Relationship sets
 Attributes

1. Entity sets
An entity is a thing or object in the real world that is distinguishable from all other objects. It may
be concrete e.g. a person or a book or it may be abstract e.g. a loan, holiday a concept etc. An
entity set is a set of entities of the same type that share the same properties or attitudes e.g. a set
of all persons who are customers of a bank.

2. Relationship sets
An association between two or more entities is called a relationship.

3. Attributes
They are descriptive properties or characteristics possessed by each member of an entity set.

3.2.2 Characteristics Of Attributes

1. Simple and Composite attributes - e.g. a customer name or first name, middle name, last
name. Composite attributes are necessary if a user wishes to refer to entire attribute on some
occasions and to only a component of the attributes on other occasions.

2. Single valued and Multi valued Attribute - The social security number or ID number can only
have a single value at any instance and therefore its said to be single valued. An attribute like
dependant name can take several values ranging from o-n thus it is said to be multi valued.

3. Null Attributes - A null value is used when an entity does not have a value for an attribute e.g.
dependent name.

4. Calculated attribute - The value for this type of attribute can be derived from the values of other
related attributes or entities e.g.

i. Employment length value can be derived from the value for the start date and the
current date.
ii. Loans held can be a count of the number of loans a customer has.
 3.2.3 Relationship Sets
A relationship is an association amongst several entities while a relationship set is a set of
relationships of the same tuple. It is a mathematical relation on n>2 possible non-distinct entity sets
e.g. consider 2 entity sets, loan and branch. A relationship set loan, branch can be defined to
denote association between a bank loan and the branch in which that loan is obtained.

Example
Consider 2 entity sets Customer and loan.
A relationship set - A borrower can be defined to denote the association between customers and
the bank loans that the customers have.

Types Of Relationships

i. One to one relationship (1:1) - An entity in A is associated with utmost one entity in B is
associated with at utmost one entity in A.

a b
1 1
a b
2 2
a b

ii. One to Many relationship (1:M) - An entity in A is associated with any number of entities in B
while an entity in B can be associated with at most one entity in A .

a1 b1
a2 b2
a3 b3
a4 b4
a5 b5
iii. Many to one relationship (M:1) - An entity in A is associated with at most one entity in B and
an entity in B can be associated with a number of entities in A.

a1 b1
a2 b2
a3 b3
a4 b4
a5 b5

iv. Many to many (M:N) - An entity in A is associated with at least one entity in B and an entity in
B can be associated with a number of entities in A.

a b
1 1
a b
2 2
a b

Existence Dependencies

If the existence of an entity X depends on the existence of entity Y, then X is said to be existence
dependent on Y. If Y is deleted, so is X. Y is said to be the dominant entity and X is said to be
subordinate entity.

Exercise.
Differentiate between super key, primary candidates and candidate keys.

3.3 Entity-Relationship Diagram

Components of E-R diagram

(i) Rectangles: - They represent entity sets.
(ii) Ellipses: - represent attributes
(iii) Diamond: - represents relationship sets
(iv) Lines - Link attributes to entities and entity sets to relationship sets
(v) Double ellipses: - represent multi-value attributes
(vi) Dashed ellipses: - denote derived attributes
(vii) Double lines: - indicate total participation of an entity in relationship sets.
 Exercise.
Draw an E-R diagram that shows the hospital environment, theatres, patients (in and out-patients)
doctors, nurses, wards and ward beds.

Weak Entity Set

This is an entity set that does not have sufficient attributes to form a primary e.g. an entity set
payments comprising of the attributes payment number, payment date and payment amount.
Although each payment entity is distinct, payment for different loan e.g. may share the same
payment number thus this entity set does not have a primary key.

Strong Entity Set

This is an entity set that has a primary key. For weak entity set to be meaningful it must be part of a
one to many relationships.

Specialisation
An entity set may include sub-groupings of entities that are distinct in some way from other entities
in the set. This is called specialization of the entity set e.g. the entity bank account could have
different types e.g.
Credit account
Checking account
Savings account - interest rate
Checking account - overdraft amount

Under checking account you could have type:

i. Standard check account
ii. Gold checking account
iii. Senior checking account

For the standard if may be divided by number count of checks gold minimum balance and an
interest payment.
Senior checking account - age limit
A specialised entity set may be specialised by one or more distinguishing features.

Aggregation
This is abstraction through which relationship are heated as higher-level entities e.g. the
relationship set borrower and the entity sets customer and loan can be treated as a higher set
called borrower as a whole.
 3.4 Entity modeling (Diagrammatic representation)
relationships

i. One to one relationship

Patient Ward bed

ii. One to many relationship

Student Payment

iii. Many to many relationship

Lecturer Student

NB: Whenever the degree of a relationship is many to many we must decompose the relationship
to one-to -one or one-to-many. The decomposition process will create a new entity.

Exercise
A company consists of a number of departments each having a number of employees each
department has a manager who must be on a monthly payroll, other employees are either on a
monthly or weekly payroll and are members of the sports club if they so wish. Construct an entity -
relationship diagram depicting the scenario.

Mandatory and Optional

Optional relationships are shown by either, use of a small circle drawn along the line or a dotted
line while mandatory relationships are shown by use of either a bar drawn across the line or a
continuous line.

Optional
Family Child

Mandatory

Course Student
Representing Attributes

Although E-R diagrams describe many of the features of the logical model, they do not show the
attributes associated with each entity, this additional information is represented conveniently in
form of a table.

Exercise
Consider the entity relationship Student_Course that defines a course undertaken by many
students.
Generate a sample tabular representation of the above assuming key attributes are course-code
and stud-no respectively.

A HOSPITAL DATABASE SYSTEM.

A hospital wishes to maintain a database to assist the administration of its wards and
operating theatres, and to maintain information relating to its patients, surgeons and
nurses.

Information in relation to patients is captured on admission and patients are assigned to a

ward. A nurse is assigned to a ward. Nurses are identified by their staff numbers and their
names, address, phone numbers and grades are also recorded. Each ward has a unique
number and is dedicated to a type of patient (e.g. pediatric, maternity, etc)

A patient may have a number of operations. The information to be recorded about an

operation include the type of operation, the patient, the surgeons involved , date, time and
location.

Only one surgeon may perform an operation, any other surgeons present being
considered as assisting at the operation. Surgeons come under the direction of senior
surgeons, called consultants, who may also perform or assist at operations. Information
recorded about a surgeon includes name, address and phone number.

An operation can be performed in only one theatre but a given theatre may be the location
of many operations.

A nurse may or may not be assigned to a theatre and he/she cannot be assigned to more
than one theatre. A theatre may have many nurses assigned to it.

Required.

 Design and develop a database system for the above application. This should include:

 Logical data model.

 Forms for data entry.

 Integrity and security features.

 Reports including the following:

i.) List of all operations scheduled for the following week.

ii.) List of all in-patients and their ailments.
iii.) Details of bed occupancy/availability.
iv.) Summary list of all patients for specified doctors.
v.) Theatre occupancy/availability
 3.5 DATA NORMALIZATION

Normalisation is the process of applying a number of rules to the tables, which have been identified
in order to simplify. The aim is to highlight dependencies between the various data items so that we
can reduce these dependencies.

The rules applied are referred to as: -

 First Normal Form (1NF)
 Second Normal Form (2NF)
 Third Normal Form (3NF)

1NF
A table or relation is said to be in first normal form, if and only if it contains no repeating groups i.e.
it has no repeated values for particular attributes in a simple record. If there are repeating groups
and attributes they should be isolated to form a new entity.
2NF
A table is said to be in 2NF if and only if it is in 1NF and every non-key attribute is fully dependent
on the key attribute. Attributes not fully dependent should be isolated to form a new entity.
3NF
A table is said to be in 3NF if and only if it is 2nd NF and every non-key attribute is not dependent
on any other non-key attribute. All non-key attributes that are dependent on other non-key
attributes, should be isolated to form a new entity
Example: An invoice

Invoice No. ______________________ Date _______________________

Customer __________________________ Delivery to __________________

Address ___________________________
___________________________

Product
Code
De
scription
Quantity
Price
Amount

Thank you. Amount____________

Un-normalised data.
Invoice (Invoice no., Date, Customer, Cust_address, Deliv_To,Product code, Quantity, Unit Price,
amount, Invoice amount)

INF (Identify and separate repeating groups to form a new entity)

INVOICE (Invoice number, date, customer address, Deliv_ address, Invoice_Amount )

PRODUCT (Product code, invoice number, product description, Quantity,Unit price, amount)

2NF (identity and separate non-key attributes not fully dependent on key attribute)

INVOICE (Invoice-no, date, customer address, del.address, invoice total)

PRODUCT (prod-code, prod-description, unit price)
INVOICE PRODUCT(Prod_Code,Invoice_No,Quantity,Amount)

3NF (Identify non-key attributes dependent on other non-key attributes)

INVOICE (Invoice-no, Customer_Number, Date, invoice total)

PRODUCT (Prod-code, prod-description, unit price)
INVOICE PRODUCT(Prod_Code,Invoice_No,Quantity,Amount)
CUSTOMER (Customer_Number,Customer_Name, customer_Address, del.address)
NB: Whenever there is no composite key the table is in 3NF
Corresponding ERD

Invoice Invoice Product

Product
Customer

3.5.1 Advantages of Normalisation Approach

1. It is a formal technique with each stage of normalisation process elimination a particular type of
undesirable dependency as well as each stage of normalisation eliminating a certain type of
redundancy.
2. It highlights constraints and dependencies in the data and helps in understanding the nature of
the data.
3. The 3NF produces well-designed databases, which provide a high degree of independence.

3.5.2 Disadvantages

1. It depends a thorough understanding of the entities and their relationships.

2. It’s a complex process particularly if the entities are many.

Exercise
 A customer account details in a bank are stored in a table that has the following structure,
normalise this data to 3NF. Customer (branch -no, account no, address, postcode, tel)
 A hospital drug dispensing record requires that, for each patient, the pharmacy must record the
following information.

Pharmacy drug dispensing card

Patient No ……………………. Surname …………………Sex …………………….

Date of Birth …………………. Address ………………………………
Ward No …………………….. Ward name ………………Date …………………….
Name of company paying…………………… Company address ………………………..

Date Drug Drug name Quantity Unit price Amount

code

Total …………………….
Paid ……………………..
Balance …………………

Review Questions
(a) Explain what you understand by data normalization stating each of the three
normal forms.
(b) Perform data normalization for the table above to 3NF. Showing clearly the results
of each stage.
 CHAPTER FOUR: RELATIONAL DATABASE SYSTEM

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter the learner should be able to:

 Understand the structure of the relation
 Use the structured Query Language for data manipulation

Motivation
1. To shield programmers and users from the structural complexities of the database.
2. For conceptual simplicity

4.1 Relational Data Structure

Relation: A relation corresponds to a table

Tuple: Corresponds to a row of a table
Domain: Is a pool of values from which one or 2 values draw their actual values e.g. the Town
Domain is a set of all legal town names. A relation on domains D1, D2, D3........,Dn (not necessarily
all distinct) consists of a heading and a body, the heading consists of a fixed head of attributes a 1,
a2, a3, ........... an such that each attribute ai corresponds to exactly one of the underlying domain
Di. The body consists of a time varying set of tuples where each tuple in turn consists of a set of
attribute value pairs (ai, ri)

Properties of Relations
1. There is no duplicate tuples – The body of a relation is a mathematical set, which by definition
does not include duplicate elements.
2. Tuples are unordered - Sets are unordered
3. Attributes are unordered - The heading of a relation is a set that is unordered.
4. All simple attributes values are atomic meaning that relations do not contain repeating groups
(normalized)

Primary Keys
These are special type of more general construct candidate keys. A candidate key is a unique
identifier and each relation has at least one candidate key. For a given relation, one of the
candidate keys is chosen to be the primary key and the rest are called alternate keys.

Let r be a relation with attributes a1, a2, an. The set of attributes K= (Ai, Ai .........AK) of R is said to
be a candidate key of R. If it satisfies the following 2 time independent properties:
i. Uniqueness - At any given time, no 2 distinct types of R have the same values for A i,
Aj ----------AK.
ii. Minimality - None of Ai, Aj -------- Ak can be discarded from K without destroying the
uniqueness property.
 4.2 Relational Database Language

Structured Query Language

Components of SQL

i. Data Definition Language (DDL) - DDL provides commands for defining relation schemes,
deletion relation, creating indices and modifying relation schemers
ii. Interactive Data Manipulation Language (DML) - DML includes a query language based on
both relational calculus. It includes commands to insert tuples into, delete tuples from and
modify tuples in the database.
iii. Embedded DML - This is designed for use within general purpose programming languages
such as PL/1. Cobol, Pascal, Fortran and C.
iv. View Definition - The SQL DDL includes commands for specifying access rights to relations
and view.
v. Integrity - The SQL DDL includes commands for specifying integrity constraints that the data
stored in the database must satisfy. Updates that violate integrity constraints as disallowed.
vi. Transaction Control - SQL includes commands for specifying the beginning and ending of
transactions. Several implementations also allow explicit locking of data for concurrency
control.

4.2.1 Basic Structure Of SQL Statement

Basic structure of an SQL expression consists of 3 clauses;

i. SELECT
ii. FROM
iii. WHERE

SELECT
This corresponds o a projection operation of the relational algebra. Its used to list the attributed
desired in the result of a query.
FROM
This corresponds to a Cartesian product operation of the relational algebra. It lists the relations to
be scanned in the evaluation of the expression
WHERE
Corresponds to the predicate of the relational algebra. It consist of a predicate involving attributes
of the relations that appear in the FROM clause.
A typical SQL query will be of the form:
SELECT
A1,A2, A3, ................An
FROM
R1, R2, R3, .....................Rn
WHERE
P
Ai represents an attribute; each r a relation and P is a predicate.

Select clause
Examples (i) SELECT Branch name
FROM Loan

(ii) SELECT DISTINCT Branch-name

FROM Loan

The symbol * can be used to denote all attributes of a given relation

(iii) SELECT *
FROM Loan

STUDENT COURSE
Code Stud.id Name Code Title
IMIS 001 Charles IMIS Info. Systems
BIT 002 Mary BIT Bachelor of IT
BIT 003 Maina CIT Cert in IT
CIT 004 Judy DIT Dip in IT

Select Stud-Id, Name, Code, Title

From Student, Course
Where Student.Code = Course.Code

The select clause can also contain arithmetical expressions involving operations +, -, *, and
operating on constants or attributes of tables e.g.
SELECT Branch_name, Loan_number, Amount*100
FROM loan

Where Clause
Specifies a condition that has to be met. SQL uses the logical connectives AND, OR and NOT in
the where clause. It also uses operands of logical connectives <, < =, >, >=, = and < >. It also
includes a BETWEEN operations e.g.
(i) Select loan_number
From loan
(ii) Select loan_number
From loan
Where branch_name = "River Road" and Amount Between 10,000 And 15,000.
 From Clause
This specifies the source (relations), which is a Cartesian product. The SQL uses the notion
relation-name. Attribute-name to avoid ambiguity in case where an attribute appears in the
schemer of more that one relation e.g.

Example
Select Customer_name, borrower. loan number
From borrower, loan
Where borrower.loan_number = loan.loan_number
AND branch_name= "Moi Avenue"

This will return the name of the customer the loan-number is the customer loan no. appears in Moi
Avenue.

SQL provides a mechanism for renaming both relations and attributes by use of the As clause it is
of the form
Old_name AS New_name. e.g.

Select distinct Customer_name, Borrower. Loan_number AS loan_Id

From Borrower, loan
Where Borrower. Loan_number = loan.loan_number
AND Branch_name = "Koinange Street"

Ordering Display of Tuples

The "order by” clause case the tuples in the result for a query to appear in sorted order e.g.

Select distinct Customer - name

From borrower, loan
Where borrower.loan_number = loan.loan_number
And Branch name = "University way”
Order by customer_name

By default the order by clause lists items in ascending order. To specify the sort order use 'desc'
for descending order or ‘asc’ for ascending e.g.

Select *
From loan
Order by amount desc, loan-number desc
 4.2.2 Aggregate Functions

These are functions that take a collection (set or multi-set) of values as input and return a single
value. These are
Average: Avg
Minimum: Min
Maximum: Max
Total: Sum
Count: Count

The input to sum and average must be a collection of numbers but the other operators can operate
on collection of non-numeric data-types e.g. strings

Example
(i) SELECT Branch name, Avg(balance)
FROM Account
GROUP BY Branch -name

(ii) SELECT Branch_name, count (distinct customer_name)

FROM Depositor, account
WHERE Depositor, account-number = account - number
GROUP BY Branch name

(ii) SELECT Branch_name, Avg(balance)

FROM Account
GROUP BY Branch_name
HAVING Average (balance) > 1200

Null Values
Null values indicate absence of information about the value of an attribute. e.g.
SELECT loan-number
FROM loan
WHERE Amount is Null

Assignment: look into Inner Join and Outer Join

4.2.3 Tuple Variables

 A tuple variable in SQL must be associated with a particular relation
They are defined in the FROM clause via the use of the AS clause. e.g.

SELECT DISTINCT Customer_name, T.loan_number

FROM Borrower AS T, loan AS S
WHERE T.loan_number = S.Loan_number
Query to find the names of all branches that have assets greater than at least one branch located
in Brooklyn would be.

SELECT Distinct T.Branch_name

FROM Branch AS T, Branch AS S
WHERE T.assets > S.assets AND S.Branch_city = “BROOKLYN”

When expressions of the form relation_name.Attribute_name are written, the relation name is an
implicitly defined tuple variable.

4.2.4 String Operations

 Most commonly used operation on strings is pattern matching using “LIKE”.
 Two characters are used
 Percent (%) - matches any sub-string
 Underscore (-) - matches any character
 Patterns are case sensitive i.e. uppercase do not match lower case characters.

Examples
(i) “Mary %” matches any string beginning with “Mary”
(ii) “%ry” Matches any string containing “ry” as a sub-string e.g. very, mary, ary etc.
(iii) “- - -“ Matches any string of exactly three characters.
(iv) “- - -%” Matches any string of at least 3 characters.

The query to find customer names for all customers whose addresses include the sub-string “main”
would be:-

SELECT Customer-name
FROM Customer
WHERE Customer -street LIKE “%main %”

For patterns to include special pattern characters (i.e. % and _) SQL allows the specification of an
escape character. The escape character is placed immediately before a special pattern character
to indicate the special pattern. Character is to be treated like a normal character. The key work
ESCAPE is used.

Examples.
 LIKE “ab\%cd%”ESCAPE “\” - matches all strings beginning with “ab%cd”
 LIKE “ab\\cd%” ESCAPE”\” - matches all strings beginning with “ab\cd”

Mismatches.
SQL allows the search for mismatches using the NOT LIKE comparison operator Set Operations.
 4.2.5 SQL and Set
SQL operations Union, Intersect and Except operate on relations and correspond to the relational
operations ,  and -,

(i) Union

To find all customers having a loan, an account or both at the bank

(SELECT Customer_name FROM depositor)

UNION
(SELECT Customer_name
FROM Borrower)

To indicate duplicates

(SELECT Customer_name FROM Depositor)

UNION ALL
(SELECT Customer_name
FROM Borrower)

(ii) The Intersection

To find customers who have both a loan and an account at the bank

(SELECT Distinct Customer_name

FROM Depositor)
INTERSECT
(SELECT Distinct Customer_name
FROM Borrower)

To include duplicates we use “intersect all”

(iii) The Exception

To find customers who have an account but no loan at the bank we write

(SELECT Distinct Customer_name FROM Depositor)

EXCEPT
(SELECT Customer_name
FROM Borrower)

To include duplicate we use “Except all”

Null Values
 The keyword is used in the predicate test.
Example

SELECT Loan_number
FROM Loan
WHERE Amount is NULL

 To test for the absence of a null value we use the predicate “IS NOT NULL”

4.4.6 VIEWS

Use CREATE VIEW command

Syntax

CREATE VIEW V AS <query expression>

Where query expression is a legal query expression.

Example
CREATE VIEW Customer AS
(SELECT Branch_name, Customer_name
FROM Depositor.account)
WHERE Depositor.Account_number, Account.account_number

The names of the attribute of a view can be specified as

CREATE VIEW Branch_total_loan(branch-name, total(loan)

AS
SELECT Branch_name, SUM (amount)
FROM loan
GROUP BY Branch_name

NB: A create view clause creates a view definition in the database which stays there until a
command DROP View (view name) is executed.

4.4.7 Modification Of The Database

Involves Add, REMOVE or CHANGE of information in the database.

(i) Deletion

DELETE FROM r
WHERE P
 P represents the predicate, r represent the relation.
 The statement first finds all tuples t in r which P(t) is true & then deletes them from r
 Where clause can be omitted in which case all tuples in P are deleted.
Example
DELETE FROM Loan
- Deletes all tuples from the loan relation.

To delete all loans with loan amounts between 1300 &1500

DELETE FROM loan

WHERE amount BETWEEN 1300 AND 1500

To delete all accounts at city square branch

DELETE FROM account

WHERE Branch-name = ”City Square”

(ii) Insertion
To insert data into a relation:-
 Specify a tuple to be inserted or
 Write a query whose result is a set of tuples to be inserted
Tuples to be inserted must be in the correct arity.

Example

INSERT INTO Account

VALUES (“City Square”, “ Account”, 6000)
or
INSERT INTO Account (branch-name, account-number, balance)
VALUES (“City Square”, ”Account”, 6000)

(iii) Updates

To change a value in a tuple without changing all values the UPDATE statement can be used.
Examples
(i) UPDATE Account
SET Balance = Balance * 1.05
(ii) UPDATE Account
SET Balance = Balance *1.06
WHERE balance >10,000
Update Of A View
 A modification is permitted through a view only if the view in question is defined in terms of one
relation of the actual relational database i.e. of a logical level db

Example
CREATE VIEW Branch_loan AS
SELECT Branch_name, loan_number
FROM loan
INSERT INTO Branch_loan
VALUES (“Moi Avenue”, “Accoo8”)

4.2.7 Schema Definition in SQL

Syntax
CREATE TABLE r(A1D1, A2D2, -----, AnDn,
[Integrity Constraints],
…………
………..
[Integrity - constraints]
Examples
(i) CREATE TABLE Customer
(Customer_name CHAR(20) NOT NULL,
Customer_street CHAR(30),
Customer_city CHAR(30),
PRIMARY KEY (customer_name))
(ii) CREATE TABLE Branch
(Branch_name CHAR (15) NOT NULL,
Branch_city CHAR (30),
Assets Integer,
PRIMARY KEY (Branch_name)
Check (assets> = 0))
(iii) CREATE TABLE Depositor
(customer_name, CHAR(20) NOT NULL,
Account_name CHAR(20) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (Customer_name, Account_number))
The create table commands includes other integrity constraints.
 Primary key - includes a list of the attributes that constitute the primary key
 Unique - includes a list of the attributes that constitute a candidate key
 Foreign key - includes both a list of the attributes that constitute the foreign key & the name of
the relation referenced by the foreign key.

Review Questions
(a) Explain the various structures of the SQL.
(b) Differentiate primary key, foreign key, composite key
 CHAPTER FIVE: TRANSACTIONS MANAGEMENT AND CONCURRENCY CONTROL

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter the learner should be able to:

 Understand the properties of transaction
 Understand the applicability of concurrency control on a database

A transaction is a series of actions carried out by a single user or application program, which must
be treated as a single logical unit of work. It results from the execution of a user program delimited
by statements (or function calls) of the form begin transactions and end transactions.

5.1 Properties of Transactions

(i) Atomicity
It is the all or nothing property.
Either all the operations of the transactions are reflected in the database properly or none are.
This means that a transaction is an indivisible unit.
(ii) Consistency
Execution of a transaction in isolation preserves the consistency of the database. So a transaction
will normally transform a database from one consistent state to another consistent state.
(iii) Isolation (Independent)
Transaction execute independently of one another i.e. even though multiple transactions may
execute concurrently the system quantities that for ever pair of transactions Ti and Tj it appears to
Ti that either Tj finished execution after Ti started or Tj started execution after Ti finished each
transactions is unaware of other transactions executing concurrently in the system.
(iv) Durability /Persistence
The effects of a successfully completed (committed) transaction are permanently recorded in the
database and cannot be undone.
These properties are usually referred to as ACID properties.

5.2 Interference between Concurrent transactions

Concurrency transactions can present the following problems among others.
(i) Lost update problem
(ii) Uncommitted dependency problem
(iii) Inconsistency analysis problem
(i) Lost Update Problem

Another user can override an apparently successfully completed update operation by one user.

Consider this situation.

Transaction A Time Transaction B
Fetch R t1 __

t2 Fetch R

Update R t3

t4 Update R

Transaction A retrieves some record R at time t1.

Transaction B retrieves the same record R at the time t2.
Transaction A updates the record at time t3 on the basis of valves read at time t1.
Transaction B updates the same record at time t4 on the basis of values read at time t2.
Update at t3 is lost

(ii) Uncommitted Dependency Problem

Violations of integrity constraints governing the database can arise when 2 transactions are
allowed to execute concurrently without being synchronized.
Consider.
Transaction A Time Transaction B
__ t1 Fetch R

__ t2 Update R

Fetch R t3 __

t4 Roll back

Transaction B reads R at t1 and updates it at t2 .

Transaction A reads an uncommitted update at time t3, and then the update is undone at time t 4.
Transaction A is therefore operating on false assumption. Transaction A becomes dependent on
an uncommitted update at time t2.

(iii) Inconsistency Analysis Problem

Transactions that only read the database can obtain the wrong result if they're allowed to read
partial result or incomplete transactions, which has simultaneously updated the database. Consider
2 transactions A & B operating on an account records. Transaction A is summing account balances
while transaction B is transferring amount 10 from account 3 to account 1.
Transaction A Time Transaction B

Fetch account1 (40) t1 ______

(Sum = 40)
Fetch account2 (50) t2 ______
(Sum = 90)
t3 Fetch account 3 (30)

___ t4 Update account 3 by

subtracting the mount
of 10 (30-10) = 20

___ t5 Fetch account 1 (40)

___ t6 Updates account 1(40

+ 10 = 50)
___ t7 Commit

Fetch account 3(20) t8 ______

(Sum 110 instead of 120)

5.3 Schedules And Serialisation

A transaction consists of a sequence of reads and writes of database. The entire sequence of
reads and writes by all concurrent transactions in a database taken together is known as schedule.
The order of interleaving of operations from different transactions is crucial to maintaining
consistency of the database.
A serial schedule is the way in which all the reads and writes of each transaction are run
sequentially one after another.
A schedule is said to be serialised if all reads and writes of each transaction can be re ordered in
such a way that when they are grouped together as in a serial schedule, they net affect of
executing this re-organised schedule is the same as that of the original schedule.

5.4 Concurrency Control Techniques

There are 3 basic concurrency control techniques:

(i) Locking Method
(ii) Time Stamp Method
(iii) Optimistic Method
(i) Locking method

A lock guarantees exclusive use of data item to a current transaction. Transaction T1 does not
have access to a data item that is currently used by transaction T2. A transaction acquires a lock
prior to data access. The lock is released (Unlock) when the transaction is completed so that
another transaction can lock the data item for its exclusive use.

Shared Locks
These are used during read operations since read operations cannot conflict. More than one
transaction is permitted to hold read locks simultaneously of the same data item.

Exclusive Locks (White Locks)

These give a transaction exclusive access to a data item. As long as a transaction holds an
exclusive lock no other transaction can read or update that data item.

2-Phase locking
To ensure serialisability the 2- phase locking protocol defines how transaction acquire and
relinquish locks. 2-phase locking guarantees serialisability but it does not prevent deadlocks. The
2-phases are:

(a) Growing phase in which a transaction acquires all the required locks without unlocking
any data. Once all the locks have been acquired the transaction is in its locked point.
(b) Stinking phase in which a transaction releases all locks and cannot obtain any new
lock.

Rules governing the 2-Phase protocol are:

(i) 2 transactions cannot have conflicting locks
(ii) No unlock operation can precede an unlock operation in the same transaction.
(iii) No data is affected until all locks are obtained i.e. until the transaction is in the
locked point.

Deadlocks

It is used when 2 transactions T1 and T2 exist in the following modes:

T1 = access data items X and Y
T2 = access data item Y and X
If T1 has not unlocked Y then T2 cannot begin.
If T2 has not unlocked data item X, T1 cannot continue.
Consequently T1 and T2 wait indefinitely each waiting for the other to unlock the required data item.
Such a deadlock is known as deadly embrace.
 Techniques To Control Deadlocks

1. Deadlock Prevention

A transaction requesting a new lock is aborted if there is a possibility that a dead lock can occur. If
the transaction is aborted, all the changes made by this transaction are rolled back and all locks
obtained by the transaction are released. The transaction is then rescheduled for execution.
Deadlock prevention works because it avoids the conditions that lead to deadlock.

2. Deadlock Detection

The DBMS periodically tests the database for deadlocks. If the deadlock is found one of the
transactions (the "victim”) is aborted (rolled back and restarted) and the other transaction
continues.

3. Deadlock Avoidance

The transaction must obtain all the locks it needs before it can be executed. This technique avoids
rolled up of conflicting transactions by requiring that locks be obtained in successions, but the
serial lock assignment increase action response times.
Conclusion:
The best deadlock control method depends on the database environment, if the probability is low,
deadlock detection is recommended, if probability is high, deadlock prevention is recommended
and if response time is not high on the system priority list deadlock avoidance might be employed.

(ii) Time Stamping Method

The time stamping approach, to schedule concurrent transactions assign a global unique time
stamp to each transaction. The time stamp value uses an explicit order in which transactions are
submitted to the DBMS. The stamps must have 2 properties;
i. Uniqueness - which assures that no equal time stamp values can exist.
ii. Monotonicity - which assures that time stamp values always increase.

All database operations read and write within the same transaction must have the same time
stamp. The DBMS executes conflicting operations in the time stamp order thereby ensuring
serialisability of the transactions.

If 2 transactions conflict, one is often stopped, re-scheduled and assigned a new time stamp value.
The main draw back of time stamping approach is that each value stored in the database requires
2 additional time- stamp fields, one for the last time the field was read and one for the last update.
Time stamping thus increases the memory needs and the databases.

(iii) Optimistic Methods

The optimistic approach is based on the assumption that the majority of database operations do
not conflict. The optimistic approach does not require locking or time stamping techniques; instead
a transaction is executed without restrictions until it is committed. In this approach, each
transaction moves through 2 or 3 phases; read, validation and write phase.
Read Phase
The transaction reads the database, executes the needed computations and makes the updates to
private copy of the database values. All update operations of the transaction are recorded in a
temporary update file, which is not accessed by the remaining transactions.

Validation Phase
The transaction is validated to ensure that the changes made will not affect the integrity and
consistency of the database. If a validation phase is negative, the transaction is restarted and the
changes are discarded.

Write Phase
The changes are permanently applied (written) to the database.
Conclusion
The optimistic approach is acceptable for mostly read or query database system that require very
few update transactions.

Review Questions
(a) Explain the various techniques to control deadlocks.
(b) State the transaction control techniques
 CHAPTER SIX: DISTRIBUTED DATABASES

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter the learner should be able to:

 Understand the distributed data approaches
 Understand DATE’S twelve rules of distributed database

6.1 File Servers

The first attempt to alleviate centralization problems were made in traditional file processing
environments. While some central (host) computer still stored all data files applications were
allowed to run on separate computers, usually cheaper Pcs.
The host could be an existing mainframe or mini (the host link approach), a PC (the LAN file server
approach).

Without the benefits of DBMSs, file serving has severe limitations in networked environments.
Each application, on its own, must ensure integrity and security, control concurrency and recover
from failures, except that now there are additional complications from the network multiple nodes.

The fact is that there is no real distribution to speak of here; that is, neither the data nor application
processing form a "whole" as the concept of distribution implies.

Applications do data processing on multiple nodes but files servers are, in effect,” dumb" site
storage drives for application: files are downloaded from the host to application nodes to be
processed, and if updates are involved, they are uploaded back to the host computer.

Transmitting files back and forth congests the network, causing performance problems. This is
exacerbated by one-record-at-a- time data request that burdens the network traffic with heavy
messaging.

6.2 Distributed Database Approaches

Only database approaches offer truly distributed solutions. Here different distribution strategies are
based on different assumptions about access to information and, therefore are suitable for the
specific circumstances that fit the underlying assumptions.

Client/Server
In database environment, some processing (database functions) is performed at the back end by
the DBMS and some (application functions) at the front end by applications that suggests one
obvious way to distribute by separating the two processing components on different computers.
This is the approach underlying the increasingly popular (though not necessarily well understood)
client/server database architecture.

Note: Client/server implies separation between database and application functions, but not
necessarily across nodes. Thus DBMS and application software on the same node that achieves a
clean separation comply with the definition. In practice, however, the separation is usually, across
nodes, to balance the processing load using inexpensive Pcs.

In a client/server configuration every database resides on one network node, a database server,
and is managed by DBMS running on that node.
If there are multiple databases on a node, each is a separate entity. There can be multiple
database servers on the network work but a database does not span multiple nodes, and DBMSs
running on different servers operate independently of one another.

From a database perspective, practically nothing has changed relative to a centralized

environment. Database functions such as integrity and security enforcement, concurrency control
and recovery are performed by the DBMS and present the results to users. Now, however, as with
file servers, applications can run on network nodes separate from servers, the client (or requestor)
nodes.

There are server and client software components that interface with the network. Data requests by
remote applications are passed as messages to the client component, which sends then through
the network to the appropriate server component, which in turn passes them to the resident DBMS
for execution.
The DBMS passes the results as messages back to its server DC component, which returns them
through the network to the proper client component, which passes them to the requesting
application.

This approach retains the advantages of centralized database management, but by off-loading
application functions to clients, the processing burden on servers is reduced. So is traffic on the
network, because the amount of data traversing it is not whole files (or sections thereof), but if only
the results the applications need.
While with file server’s files are shipped to applications for all processing and returned for storage
afterwards, with database servers application data requests are shipped to DBMS processing, and
results are shipped in return to applications.

Here, the processing by the DBMS and client applications forms a "whole" so it is appropriate to
label the client/server database approach distributed processing. Distribution also implies,
however, treating collection of parts as a whole, and with client/server the system facilities for such
treatment of the processing components is quite limited.

NOTE: There are at least two major ways to distribute processing, and as will be seen shortly,
they are significantly different. Applying the same label to both, while correct, causes confusion.
To distinguish between the two approaches, the term” distributed processing" is reserved for
client/server, and another term is used for the other approach (see the next section). Users are
advised to exercise care, however, because both terms are used rather indiscriminately.

The distribution details (what databases are available on what servers, which application nodes
can request data from them, and so on) are not handled by the DBMS itself and are therefore
unknown to it. In other words, in a client/server environment managing the distribution is not a
database function, but the responsibility of users and applications.

For example, if a database is created on one server, the relevant client components must be
explicability updated to reflect this fact (usually by the network administrator), for client applications
to be able to issue data requests to it. And if the database needs to be subsequently split into two
(independent!) databases to be stored on different servers, the administrator must manually
perform the split and then update server and client components accordingly. But even if this is
done limitations remain.

Consider operations spanning multiple databases, possibly on multiple servers. Applications may
be able to access multiple databases simultaneously, but because each database is managed
independently by the DBMS on the server on which it resides, an application must:

 Issue separate data requests for each pertinent database

 Get the results from the pertinent DBMSs to a common node (usually the requesting
client node)
 Execute data operations on the results it.

This means that users, including application developers, must know what data exists in which
databases on what nodes, and refer to them explicitly. They are also responsible for performance
optimization, which must now take network communication as well as platform differences into
account.

If the operation involves multi-database updates, the application must also ensure overall integrity
and recovery (because the DBMSs do not cooperate).
Of course, when the distribution changes, applications that reference the old details must be
modified and re-optimized.
In other words, client/server environments do not support distribution independence in general and
location independence in particular.

Implicit in the client/server approach is the assumption that database boundaries are both distinct
and relatively stable.

For example, consider a bank where there are clearly delineated branch databases, each of which
is frequently accessed (and maintained!) by branch personnel and only rarely accessed from other
branches and headquarters.

Data from multiple branches, however, is very rarely accessed simultaneously, usually only by
headquarters, and for queries only. A client/server solution yields branch databases residing on
server nodes local to the branches, managed by local DBMSs.
On the rare occasions where multi-branch information is required by headquarters, data is
extracted from the branch databases and processed in some user-defined way on the
headquarters node.

Note: The processing can, for example, be performed in the traditional (non-database) way or by
applications accessing a (redundant!) database on the headquarters node, into which data is
extracted from branch databases, and which is managed by the headquarters' DBMS.

6.2.1 Distributed DBMS

Where the assumption behind client/server fits, database servers are an improvement over no
distributed database systems and file servers. But in many cases, the assumption is not realistic.
Database boundaries are mostly based on quite arbitrary cutoff points, whose optimally might
fluctuate over time, depending on the dynamics of business reality and data access patterns.

What if, for example interaction between branches increase and they need to access each other's
data more frequently? or if, in order to improve decision making, headquarters needs to access
bank wide information more frequently and process it in more ways? Or if branches are frequently
merged or split?

In such circumstances the database boundaries are neither distinct nor stable. There is one
database, which happens to be distributed (and redistributed) on multiple nodes. In the bank's
case, each branch component is still a database in its own (local) right, but it is also part of the
bank wide database.
Facilities must, therefore, exist to manage the latter, and the DBMS on the network must obviously
co-operate to perform multi-branch database functions and ensure distributing independence,
which the client/server approach does not do.
In other words, both the database and the database functions (that is, the DBMS) are distributed,
an approach referred to as distributed DBMS (DDBMS).

NOTE: Now it should be clear why, even though a distributed DBMS does involve a type of
distributed processing (database processing itself is distributed on different nodes). It is more
appropriate to use a different term to distinguish it from the type of distribution in client/server,
where database and application processing are separated on different nodes. Distributed DBMS
are sometimes referred to as co-operative processing, but this is also too broad a term, that also
applies to client/server (the DBMS and applications cooperate) as well as to certain types of
hardware architectures (the central processors cooperate)

Date defines a distributed database as:

A virtual database whose component parts are physically stored in a number of distinct “real”
databases at a number of distinct nodes. The distributed database definition is the union of the
various components database definitions.

Full DBMS support for managing a distributed database implies that:

Any single application should be able to operate transparently on data that is spread across a
variety of databases, managed by (multiple) DBMSs, running on a variety of different computers,
supported by a variety of operating systems, and connected together by a variety of
communication networks.

6.2.1.1 Date’s 12 rules of distribution.

Transparency - is the “Rule 0”b of DDBMS, as formulated by date:

0 : Distribution Independence

To the user, a distributed database should look exactly kike a non-distributed database, at least in
so far as data manipulation is concerned. In other words, a DDBMS insulates applications from the
physical distribution details (and changes thereof).

To comply with this rule (and thus offer full transparent), a DDBMS must achieve at least twelve
objectives, also spelled out by Date. This is done usually by implementing a component that is
added to all DBMSs on the network, which allows them to cooperate with one another in providing
database functions spanning more than one local database.
In other words, database functions such as catalog management; query processing, concurrency
control, recovery, and performance optimization become distributed themselves.

NOTE: A DDBMS usually subsumes client/server features. Many commercial products start as
client/server and are gradually extended with DDBMS features. It is, however, important to point
out that unless client /servers are explicitly implemented to allow such extensions, and server
databases are explicitly design as components of one database, there is no guarantee that all
twelve objectives will be achieved in compliance with Rule 0.

Date's Rule 0 for distributed databases can be considered the equivalent of Codd's Distribution
Independence Rule, with the 12 objectives spelling out in detail what compliance with either rule
(date's or Codd's) means.

Similar to Codd's 12 rules for relational databases, the objectives can be used to evaluate DDBMS
product claims: Any objective that is not achieved defeats some transparency aspect, imposing
costs on users.
Products vary on which objectives they achieve and to what degree, and users must understand
the practical consequences of the objectives and make decisions based on how consequential
each is for their specific environment.
It is, however, important to note that, like Codd's rules the objectives are not independent, and
giving up any will have ramifications for the others.

1 : Local Autonomy
As much as possible, no node should depend on any other node for its successful functioning.

This objective is rather straightforward. The fact that local databases are accessed remotely
should not prevent local DBMSs from operating effectively, regardless of whether other nodes are
on-lime or not.
Note: There are certain circumstances where dependence on other nodes is unavoidable.
2: NO Reliance On A Central Site

There must not be any reliance on a central "master" node for some central service, such that the
entire system is dependent on that central site.

Obviously, if this objective is not achieved, the system is not fully distributed, but at least partially
centralized.

Note: If there is reliance on a central site; there is no local autonomy. On the other hand, the
absence of such reliance does not automatically imply local autonomy.

3: Continuous Operation

There should, ideally, never be any need for a planned system shutdown.

If shutdowns are required to perform certain functions (such a adding new node or upgrading the
DBMS on an existing node,) transparency is affected, because then the DDBMS does not operate
exactly as a non-distributed one, which requires no such shutdowns.

4: Location Independence

Users should not have to know where data is physically stored and should be able to behave - from
a logical standpoint - as if the data were all stored on their own local node.

This objective is not achieved by client/server implementations. Other than simplifying data access
(and application development), the major benefit from it , is that the database can be first
distributed or redistributed without impairing applications.

5: Fragmentation Independence

A major purpose of distribution is to store data as physically close to its most frequent users as
possible (to maximize performance) without preventing other users from accessing it logically as if
it were local to them.

Suppose another location is added to existing organization database, and some departments,
employees, projects, tasks, and assignments, will migrate to it. Some subset of the database
representing those entities will also migrate, distributing the database into two locations.
One option is to redesign the database, by substitution two base tables for every database table,
and store each of two in relevant location. Note, however, that unless full transparency cans be
achieved with views applications accessing the initial tables will have to be modified.

But with a DDBMS supporting fragmentation of logical database objects into fragments physically
stored on different nodes, such complications can be avoided. For example, the EMPLOYEES
table will be horizontally split into two physical fragments, each of which will reside on a different
node (tables can also be vertical fragmented).
Fragmentation does not impair existing applications, because in so far as users are concerned, the
database is logically the same. When databases are first fragmented or re-fragmented, or when
fragments are redistributed, the DDBMS keeps track of fragmentation details in its distributed
global catalog, and transparently reconstructs (logical) tables from their (physical) fragments
when applications require it, optimizing performance in the process. Thus, an application accessing
the EMPLOYEES table will continue to work properly after the table is fragmented on two modes.

6: Replication Independence
Users should be able to behave-from a logical standpoint-as if the data were not, fact, replicated at
all.

Given the highly dynamic nature of database access patterns, even fragmentation must not be
sufficient in certain circumstances, particularly from a performance perspective. For, example,
what if the two nodes of the software project are on an international WAN, and there is heavy
interaction between them that necessitated frequent access to each other's data? Chances are
that performance will not always be acceptable.

For such cases, a DDBMS must support replication of data objects (or fragments thereof) on
multiple nodes. For example, the EMPLOYEES table could be physically replicated on each of the
two nodes. As with fragmentation the DBMS must insulate applications from replication details, if it
is to achieve objective 6.
The DBMS catalogs and keeps track of the replicas and their distribution; transparently makes the
proper ones available to users; and propagates updates through replicas to keep them in sync.

7: Distributed Query Processing.

The system should support distributed queries.
This too is a rather obvious objective, as one of the main purposes of distributed DBMS is to
overcome the lack of support for multi-database operations in client/server environments.

Networked database environments are much more sensitive to performance than non-distributed
ones. Optimization requires taking network transmission costs into account. Full support of
distributed (or global) optimization by the DDBMS, a clear case where multiple local DBMSs must
cooperate.

8: Distributed Transaction Processing.

The system should support distributed transactions.
Other than individual operations, and retrievals, a DDBMS must also support-distributed
transactions, that is, sets of multiple operations spanning multiple nodes. As in the non-distributed
case, concurrency control and recovery are critical functions. The two-phase commit (2PC)
recovery feature comes in handy.

9: Hardware Independence.
Users should be able to run the same DBMS on different hardware systems, and have those
systems all participate as equal partners in a distributed system.
10: Software Independence.
Users should be able to run the same DBMS under different operating systems, even on the same
hardware.

11. Network Independence.

Users should be able to run the same DBMS on different communication networks.

12: DBMS Independence

Users should be able to run different DBMSs, and have them participate as equal partners in the
distributed system.

Review Questions
 Explain the DATE’s 12 rules of distributed database
 CHAPTER SEVEN: DATABASE RECOVERY MANAGEMENT

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter the learner should be able to:

 Understand the database recovery approaches

Recovery restores a database from a given state usually inconsistent to a previously consistent
state recovery techniques are based on the atomic transaction property.

All portions of the transaction must be treated as a single logical unit of work in which all operations
must be applied and completed to produce a consistent database.
If for any reason any transaction operation cannot be completed the transaction must be aborted
and any changes to the database must be rolled back.

Recovery techniques also apply to the database or the system after some type of critical error has
occurred.
Backup and recovery functions constitute a very important component of today’s DBMS's

Levels of Backups
1. A full back up of the database of dump of the database.
2. Reference backup of the database in which only the last modifications done on the database
are copied.
3. A back-up of the transaction log only this level backup all the transaction log operations that
are not reflected in the previous back-up copy of the database. The database backup is stored
in a secure place usually in a different building and protected against dangers such as fire,
theft flood and other potential calamities back-up existence guarantees recovery system
(hardware/software) failures. Failures that claim databases and systems are generally induced
by software, hardware, program exemption, transactions and external factors.

7.1 Causes Of Database Failures

1. Software - Software induced failures may be traceable to the O.S, DBMS, S/W application
programs or viruses.
2. Hardware - Hardware induced failures may include memory chip errors, disk crashes, bad disk
sectors, disk full error etc
3. Programming exemptions - Application programs end-users may roll back transactions when
certain conditions are defined e.g. a recovery procedure may be initiated if withdrawal funds is
made when customer funds are at O or when en-user has initiated an unintended keyboard
error such as pressing Ctrl c, the system detects deadlocks and aborts one of the transactions.
4. External factors - Backups are especially important when a system suffers complete distraction
due to fire, earthquakes, floods etc. The database recovery process generally follows a
predictable scenario where first you determine the type and the extent of the required recovery.

7.2 Transaction And Recovery

It is the role of recovery manager to guarantee at least durability and atomicity in the presence of
unpredictable failures.
Log file.
All operations on the database carried out by all transactions are recorded in the log file. In a
distributed database, each site may have its own separate log.

An entry is made in the local log file each time the following commands are issued by a
transaction:-
 Begin transaction
 Write (insert, delete, update)
 Commit transaction
 Abort transaction

Each log record contains:

1. Transaction identifier
2. The type of log record i.e. as listed above
3. Identifier of data object - affected
4. Before - image of the data object
5. Log management information

Check Pointing
The recovery manager periodically check points (dumps) and on recovery it only has to go back as
far as the last check point)

7.2.1 Causes Of Failures

1. Ways:
 Transaction induced abort e.g. insufficient memory space-time slice.
 Unforeseen transaction failure arising from bugs.
 System induced aborts e.g. when transaction manager explicitly aborts a
transaction causes it to conflicts with another transaction or to break a deadlock.

2. Site failures - This occur due to failure of the local C.P.U or power supply and results in a
system crash, its of 2 types:
 Total failure - all sites in a distributed database system are down
 Partial failure - Only some sites are down

3. Medium failure - Commonly caused by disk head crash.

4. Network failure - Although most networks are reliable, a failure may occur in the
communication lines.
 7.3 Recovery Protocols

1. Restart Procedures - It assumes that no transactions are accepted until the database has been
repaired and included.

(i) Emergency restart this follows when a system fails without warning e.g. due to power
failure.
(ii) Cold restart - The system is restarted from archive when the log and restart file has been
corrupted.
(iii) Warm restart - It allows controlled shut down of the system

2. Archiving - Creation of periodic back-ups.

3. Mirroring - 2 complete copies of the database are maintained online in different stable storage
devices. It is used in environments with non-stop fault tolerant operations
4. Undo/Redo - It is undoing and re-doing a transaction after failure. The transaction manager
keeps an active list and abort list and a commit list. These comprise of transactions that have
begun, abort and committed transactions respectively.
5. 2-Phase Commit - It is used in a DBS and has 2 phases:
(i) Voting phase - where participants are asked whether or not they are prepared to commit
the transaction.
(ii) Decision phase where the transaction is committed.

6. 3-Phase Commit - This one has:

(i) Voting Phase
(ii) Pre-commit phase and
(iii) Decision phase

Salvation Program
When all other recovery techniques fail, a salvation program may be used. This is a specially
designed program that scans the database after failure to assess the damages and to restore a
valid state by rescuing whatever data are recognizable.

NB: Different recovery techniques (protocols) maintain different kinds of recovery data and are
effective if and only if their recovery data have not also been contaminated or destroyed by the
failure.

Review Questions
 Explain types of security breaches
 CHAPTER EIGHT: SECURITY, INTEGRITY AND CONTROL

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter the learner should be able to:

 Understand the aspects of database security, integrity and control

This is the protection of data from accidental or deliberate threats, which might cause unauthorized
modification disclosure or destruction of data and the protection of the Information System from the
degradation of non-availability of services.

Data integrity in this context of security is when data are the same as in source documents and
have not been accidentally or intentionally altered, destroyed or disclosed.

Misuse of the database can be categorized as being either intentional (malicious) or accidental.

8.1 Objectives of IS security

To control loss of assets
To insure the integrity and reliability of data
To improve the efficiency/effectiveness of Information systems

Risks:
These are various dangers to information systems, the people, hardware, software, data and other
assets with which they are associated.
The dangers include:
Natural disasters, thieves, industrial spies, disgruntled employees.
There Risk means the potential loss to the firm.

Threats:
Refer to people, actions, events or other situations that could trigger losses, they are potential
causes of loss.

Vulnerabilities: Flaws, problems or other conditions that make a system open/prone to threats.

Common Controls
Controls are counter measures to threats. They are tools that are used to counter risks from the
variety of people, actions, events or situations that can threaten an IS.
Are used to identify risk, prevent risk, reduce risks and recover from actual losses.

Physical Controls
These are controls that use conventional physical protection measures.
Might include door locks, keyboard locks, fire doors, surp pumps.
Control over access and use of computer facilities and equipment and controls for prevention of
theft.
Inclusive controls to reduce contain or eliminate the damage from natural disasters, power
outages, humidity, dust, high temperature and other conventional threats.

Electronic Controls
Are controls that use electronic measures to prevent or identify the threats.
Might include intruder detection and biological access compels e.g. log-on ID, passwords, badges
and hand, voice or retina print access controls.

Software Controls
Are program code and controls used in IS applications to prevent, identify or recover from errors,
un-authorized access and other threats.
e.g. programming code placed in payroll application to prevent a data entry clerk from entering
hourly rate of pay that is too high.

Management Controls
Result from setting, implementing and enforcing policies and procedures e.g. employees required
to back up or archive their data at regular interval and take backup copies of data files to secure,
off-site locations for storage.

Common Threats
Natural disasters, unauthorized access (e.g. theft, vandalism, invasion of privacy), computer crime
and computer viruses.

Natural disasters
E.g. five, floods, water damage, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, mud slides, wind and storm
damage
Security planning should consider
 Disaster prevention
 Disaster containment
 Disaster recovery

e.g. Prevention: Use of backup power supplies or special building materials, locations,
drainage system or structural modifications to avoid damage during floods, storms fires
and earthquakes.
Containment: Consider sprinkler systems, halon gas fire
Suppression: System or watertight ceilings to contain water damage from fire hoses.
Recovery: developing contingency plans for use of computer facilities of vendors or non-
competitors with similar computer systems

Employee errors
Ordinary carelessness or poor employee training e.g. formatting the hard disk rather than drive A,
keying incorrect data.
Computer crime, fraud and abuse
Computer crime: stealing data, damaging or vandalizing hard ware, software or data or using
computer software illegally or committing fraud.

Industrial espionage
It’s the theft of original data by competitors. Also called economic espionage
Hacking
Also known as cracking. It’s the unauthorized entry by a person into a computer
system or network.
Hackers are people who illegally gain access to the computer systems of others.
They can insert viruses onto networks, steal data and software, damage data or vandalize a
system.
Toll Fraud
Swindling companies and organisations e.g. through telephone bills through false pretences – e.g.
use of slugs instead of real coins
Toll hackers use maintenance ports, modem pools, voice mail systems, automated attendants or
other facilities of PBX, the private branch exchanges that are the computerized telephone switches
at customer sites.

Signs of frauds:
1. Numerous short calls
2. Simultaneous use of one telephone access mode
3. Numerous calls after business hours
4. Large increases in direct inward system access dialing or DISA

Data diddling
Use of a computer system by employees to forge documents or change data in records for gain.

Trojan horses and salami slicing

This is a change in code that is made to a program without authorization.
It appears to be performing a proper task but may actually perform a variety of mischievous or
criminal activities e.g. printing paychecks to employees or vendors who don’t exist.

Trap doors
Are procedures or code that allows a person to avoid the usual security procedures for use of or
access to a system or data.

Computer viruses
A computer virus is a hidden program that inserts itself into your computer system and forces the
system to clone the virus (i.e. it replicates itself.)
They may cause serious damage by modifying data, erasing files or formatting disks.
e.g. cruise or stealth virus might lie dormant until it can capture financial information and transmit
the data to thieves
Antivirus programs or vaccination products can be used.
Antivirus programs help in:
 Preventing the virus program inserting itself in your system
 Detecting a virus program so you can take emergency action
  Controlling the damage virus can do once they have been detected.

Hardware theft and vandalism

Software privacy – any reproduction or a copyright program is theft.

Privacy violations
Privacy is the capacity of individuals or organizations to control information about themselves.
Privacy rights imply:
 Type and amounts of data that may be collected about individuals or organizations
are limited.
 That individuals and organizations have the ability to access, examine and correct the
data stored about them.
 Disclosure, use or dissemination of those data is restricted.

Program bugs
Bugs are defects in programming code. They are prevalent to new software, are normally
discovered by users, and software vendors provide “patches” to their code.

8.2 Accidental Loss

Accidental loss of data consistency may result from:-
 Crashes during transaction processing
 Anomalies caused by concurrent access to the database
 Anomalies caused by the distribution of data over several computers
 Logical errors that violate the assumption that transactions preserve the database consistency
constraints.

8.3 Malicious Damage

Among the forms of malicious access are the following: -
 Unauthorized reading of data (theft of data)
 Unauthorized modification of data
 Unauthorized destruction of data

Absolute protection of the database from malicious abuse is not possible, but the cost to the
perpetrator can be made significantly high to deter most if not all attempts to access the database
without proper authority.

8.4 Protection.
To protect the database, measures must be taken at several levels:-

Physical. The site or sites containing the computer systems must be physically secured against
armed or surreptitious entry by intruders.
Human. Users must be authorized carefully to reduce the chance of any such user giving access
to an intruder in exchange of a bribe or other favors.

Operating system. No matter how secure the database is, weakness in operating system security
may serve as a means of unauthorized access to the database.

Network. Since almost all database systems allow remote access through terminals or networks,
software level security may serve as a means of unauthorized access to the database.

Database. Some database system users may be authorized to access only a limited portion of the
database. Others 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
violated.

8.5 Authorization
A user may have several forms of authorization on parts of the database. Among them are the
following: -
Read authorization. Allows reading, but no modification, of data.
Insert authorization. Allows insertion of new data, but no modification of existing data.
Update authorization. Allows modification, but not deletion of data.
Delete authorization. Allows deletion of data.

A user may be assigned all, none or a combination of these types of authorization. In addition to
these forms of authorization for access to data, a user may be granted authorization to modify the
database schema: -
Index authorization. Allows the creation and deletion of indices.
Resource authorization. Allows the creation of new relations.
Alteration authorization. Allows the addition or deletion of attributes in a relation.
Drop authorization. Allows the deletion of relations.

System Integrity
This refers to the system operation conforming to the design specifications despite attempts to
make it behave incorrectly.

Review Questions
 Explain the causes of database failure and recovery strategies
 Make a list of security concerns for a bank. For each item on your list, state whether this
concern relates to physical security, human security, operating system security or
database security.
 CHAPTER NINE : QUERY OPTIMIZATION.

Optimization represents both a challege and opportunity for relational systems. A challege because
optimization is required in such a system is to achieve acceptable performance and an opportunity
because it’s one of the strenghs of the relational approach. The advantage of system-managed
optimization is not just that users donot have to worry about how nest to state their queries but the
real possibility that the optimizer might actually do better than a human programmer.

Reasons for this state of affairs.

 A good optimizer will have a wealth of information available to it that a human
programmers typically do not have. It will have certain statistical information e.g. cardinality
of each domain, cardinality of each base relation, the number of times each distinct value
occurs in each such attribute.
 Reoptimization is possible if the database statistics change significantly e.g. if the
database is phasically reorganized.
 The optimizer is a program and is therefore by definition much more patient than a typical
human programmer.
 The optimizer is regarded in a as embodyingthe skills and services of ‘the best’ human
programmers.

9.1 The optimization process.

Stages
 Cast the query into some internal form.
 Convert into canonical form.
 Choose candidate low level procedures.
 Generate query plans and choose the cheapest.

Stage 1 : Cast the query into some internal form.

One formalism empoyed in the internal representation is the relational algebra or the relational
calculus. The internal form that is ussually chosen is some kind of abstruct syntax tree or query
tree.
Example. ( ( SP JOIN S ) WHERE P# = ‘P2’ ) [SNAME] stands for ‘get the names of suppliers who
supply part P2.
Final result

PROJECT over SNAME

RESTRICT where P# = ‘P2’

JOIN over S#

SP S
 Query tree for ‘Names of suppliers who supply part P2’
Stage 2 : Convert to canonical form.
The optimizer performs a number of optimizations that are ‘guaranteed to be good’ regardless of
the data values and access paths that exist in the stored database i.e. relational database allow all
but the simplest of the queries to be expressed in a variety of ways that are atleast superficially
distinct.

The internal representation is converted into some equivalent cananocal form with the objective of
eliminating superficial distinctions and finding a representation that is more efficient than the
original in some respect.

In order to transform the output in stage one into some equivalent but more efficient form, the
optimizer makes use of well defined transformation rules or laws.

Example
The expression
( A JOIN B ) WHERE restriction-on-A
can be transformed into the equivalent but more efficient expression
( A WHERE restriction-on-A) JOIN B

Stage 3 : Choose candidate low level procedures.

The optimizer decides how to execute the transformed query represented by the converted form.
At this stage consideration such as the existence of indexes or other access paths, distribution of
stored data values, physical clustering of stored data e.t.c. come into play.
The strategy is to consinder the query expression as specifying a series of ‘low level’ operations
(join, restriction e.t.c.)

For each low level operation, the optimizer will have available to it a set of predifined
implementation procedures. Each procedure will have a (parameterized) cost formula
associated with it, indicating the cost (in terms of disk I/O’s, processor utilization). The cost
formulas are used in stage 4.
Using the information from the catalogue regarding the current state in the database the optimizer
will choose one or more candidate procedures for implementing each of the low level operations in
the query expressions. The process is sometimes referred to as access path selection.

Stage 4 : Generate query plans and choose the cheapest.

This final stage involves the construction of a set of candidate query plans, followed by the choice
of the best (i.e. cheapest) of the plans. The cost of a given plan is the. sum of the costs of the
individual procedures that go to make up that plan.

9.2 Relational Algebra.

Consists of a collection of operators (e.g. join), that take relations as their operands and return
relations as their result. It consits of eight operators, two groups of four each :
 The traditional set of operations union, intersection, difference and cartesian product.
 The special relational operations restrict, project, join,and divide.
Restrict : Returns a relation consisting of all tuples from a specified relation that satisfy a
specific condition.
Project : Returns a relation consisting of all tuples that remain as (sub)tuples in s specified
relation after specified attributes have been eliminated.
Product : Returns a relation consisting of all possible tuples that are a combination of two
tuples , one from each of two specified relations.
Union : Returns a relation consisting of all tuples appering in either or both of two specified
relations.
Intersect : Returns a relation consisting of all possible tuples appearing in both of two
specified relations.
Difference : Returns a relation consisting of all possible tuples appearing in the first and not in
the second of the two specified relations.
Join : Returns a relation consisting of all possible tuples that are a combination of two
tuples , one from each of two specified relations, such that the two tuples
contributing to any given combination have a common value for the common
attribute(s) of the two relations (and that common value appears just once, not
twice, in the result tuple. This is a natural join.
Divide : Takes two relations, one binary and one unary, and returns a relation consisting of
all values of one atrribute of the binary relation that match (in the other attribute) all
values in the unary relation.

CHAPTER TEN : LATEST DEVELOPMENTS IN DATABASE TECHNOLOGY.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter the learner should be able to:

 Understand the latest development in database technology

10.1 Developments
 Integrating other types of information.
Images Records
Graphics Text
Video Documents
Rules
 Web technology
 Geographical information systems (GIS)
Capturing, storing, checking, integrating, analysing and displaying spartilly referenced data about
the earth. It includes topographic maps, remote sensing images, photograhic images, geodetic
e.t.c.
 Knowledge-based databases.
Databases that support logical rules of inference.
 Computer aided manufacturing.
 Data warehousing.

A subject oriented integrated, time variant and non volatile collection of data in support of
management’s decision making process.
Subject oriented : a data warehouse is organised around the major subjects of an organization e.g.
customers, products, sales rather than the major application areas e.g. stock control, invoicing.
Integrated : Comming from different sources.
Time variant : Data in the data warehouse is only accurate and valid at some point in time or over a
time interval.
Non-volatile : the data is not updated in real time but is refreshed from operational systems from
time to time.
 Data mart :
A subset of data warehouse that supports the requirements of a particular department or business
function.
 Data mining :
The process of extracting valid, previusly unknown, comprehensible and actionable information
from large databases and using it to make crucial business decisions.
 Active databases :
Databases that are based on events, conditions and actions. They are triggered upon the
occurrence of certain events in the system. Related to process control systems.
 Online analytical processing (OLAP) :
The dynamic sysnthesis, analysis and consolidation of large volumes of multi-dimensional data.
 Digital publishing.
 Computer aided software engineering.
 Data Warehouses.

Major components of a data warehouse.

 Operating data.
 Load manager : Performs all the operations associated with the extraction and
loading of the data in the warehouse.
 Warehouse manager : Performs all operations associated with the management of the
data in the warehouse e.g. analysis of data to ensure consistency, transforming and
merging of data sources.
 Query manager : Performs all operations associated with the management of user
queries e.g. directing queries to appropriate tables and scheduling execution of queries.
 End-user access tools : Data reporting and query tools, application development
tools, executive information system tools, OLAP tools, data mining tools.
 10.2 Applications

Decision-support Systems
As online availability of data has grown, businesses have began to exploit the available data to
make better decisions about their activities, such as what items to stock and how best to target
customers to increase sales.

Data analysis
Although complex statistical analysis is best left to statistics packages, databases should support
simple, commonly used, forms of data analysis. Since the data in the databases are usually large
in volume, they need to be summarized in some fashion if we are to derive information that
humans can use. The SQL aggregation functionality is limited; so several extensions have been
implemented by different databases. For instance, although SQL defines only a few aggregate
functions, many database systems provide a richer set of functions including variance, median, and
so on.

Data mining
The term data mining refers loosely to finding relevant information, or “discovering knowledge” from
a large volume of data. Like knowledge discovery in artificial intelligence, data mining attempts to
discover statistical rules and patterns automatically form data.

Data warehousing
Large companies have presences at numerous sites, each of which may generate a large volume
of data. A data warehouse is a repository (or archive) of information gathered from multiple
sources, stored under a unified schema at a single site. Once gathered, the data are stored for a
long time, permitting access to historical data. Thus data warehouses provide the user a single
consolidated interface to data, making decision support queries easier to write.

Spatial and geographical Databases

Spatial databases store information related to spatial locations, and provide support for efficient
querying and indexing based on spatial locations. Two types of spatial databases are: -
 Design databases or CAD databases –are spatial databases used to stored design information
about how objects such as buildings, car, or aircraft are constructed. Other important CAD
databases are integrated circuit and electronic-device layouts.
 Geographical databases are spatial databases used to store graphic information, such as
maps. Geographic databases are often called geographic information systems.

Multimedia databases
Recently there interest in databases that store multimedia data, such as images, audio and video.
Database functionality becomes important when the number of multimedia objects stored is large.
Issues such as transaction updates, querying facilities, and indexing then become important.
Multimedia objects often have descriptive attributes, such as those indicating when they were
created, who created them and to what category they belong.

One approach to building a database for such multimedia objects is to use databases the
descriptive attributes and for keeping track of files in which the multimedia objects are stored.
Storing multimedia outside the database makes it harder to provide database functionality, such as
indexing on the bases of actual multimedia data content. It can also lead to inconsistencies, such
as a file that is noted in the database but whose contents are missing and vise versa.

Several issues have to been addressed if multimedia data are to be stored in a database.
(i) The database must support large objects, since multimedia object such as video
can occupy up to a few gigabytes of storage. Many relational objects do not
support such large objects.
(ii) Similarity-based retrieval is needed in many multimedia database applications. For
example in a database that stores fingerprint images, a query fingerprint image is
provided and finger prints in the database that are similar to the query finger print
must be retrieved.
(iii) The retrieval of some types of data, such as audio and video, has the requirement
that data delivery must proceed at a guaranteed steady rate. Such data are
sometimes called isochronous data or continuous-media data.

Mobility and personal databases

Large scale, commercial databases have traditionally been stored in central computing facilities.
Incase of distributed database applications, there has been a strong central and network
administration.

Two technology trends have combined to create applications in which this assumption of central
control and administration is not entirely correct:
(i) The increasingly widespread use of personal computers, and, more important of
laptop or “notebook” computers.
(ii) The development of a relatively low-cost wireless digital communication
infrastructure, based on wireless local-area networks, cellular digital packet
networks, and other technologies.
Mobile computing has proved useful in many applications. Many business travelers use lap top
computers to enable them to work and access data en route. Delivery services use mobile
computers to assist in packet tracking. Emergency response services use mobile computers at the
scene of disasters, medical emergencies, and the like to access information and to enter data
pertaining to the situation.

Distributed information systems

It is easy for a person located in one area to connect to computers based in distant geographical
area and retrieve information stored on the distant computer. The most widespread distributed
information system today is the World Wide Web.
 The World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a distributed information system based on hypertext. The user of a web
system sees formatted text along with images, rather than the raw text with formatting instructions.

Review Questions
 Explain the latest development in database technology
 Appendix

Sample Questions.

Question 1
Define what you understand by the following terms:
i) Rendudant data
ii) Duplicate data
iii) Conceptual model
iv) Physical model
v) Non-attribute key
vi) Domain
vii) Foreign Key
viii) Candidate key
ix) Alternate Key
X) Primary Key
Question 2.
(a) Briefly describe normalization.
(b) List and briefly describe advantages and disadvantages of database approach to database
systems.
(d) A Local Authority with several branch libraries wishes to maintain a database of stocked books. It is
assumed that each book has a unique title and author but many copies of the more popular books
will be stocked at any branch. Assuming the un-normalized entity BRANCH is given as:
BRANCH(Branch-no, Branch-address(Title,Author, Publisher, No-of-copies))
i) Identify and normalize all the entities and their attributes to third normal
form (3NF).
ii) Draw the conceptual data model diagram for ,your solution in(i)showing the
entities and relationships involved.

Question 3.
Some computer installations, particularly the larger, more sophisticated ones are using databases
in which to store the original data.
(a) Differentiate between a database and database management system.
(b) Explain briefly three of the major problems associated with the implementation
and operation of a comprehensive database.
(c) List and explain briefly five of the advantages claimed for a well-designed database.

Question 4.
(a) Describe the different forms of security which might be used in a PC system database to
provide back-up facilities or prevent unauthorized access to the computer files.
(b) A proposed database for a book order processing system will have four relations.
Customers
Customer orders
Order details
 Books
(i) Suggest what fields these tables might contain
(ii) Draw an entity relationship model for the books order processing system
(c) Define the terms
(i) Entity instance
(ii) Schema
(iii) Alias
(iv) External schema

Question 5.
(a) Taking two transactions T1 and T2, illustrate the following three common concurrent
transaction problems.
(i) Lost update problem
(ii) Uncommitted dependency problem
(iii) Inconsistency analysis problem
(b) Differentiate the following.
(i) Shared locks and Exclusive locks
(ii) Growing phase and shrinking phase.
(c) Briefly explain the following techniques used to control deadlocks.
(i) Deadlock prevention
(ii) Deadlock detection

Question 6.
(a) Discuss the various types of relationship cardinality
(b) Define the following
(i) Data integrity
(ii) Systems integrity
(c) Give reasons why there is a need for database security?
(d) Outline main controls that an organization can use to counter threats to its database.

Question 7.
(a) The following is an outfit table.

Outfit_ Outfit_colour Price Origin

name
Levis Blue 1,400 Paris
trouse
r
Blazer Purple 900 UK
shirt
Savco Brown 1,200 Nairobi
trouse
r
Jeans Black 800 New York
shirt

Using the above table answer the following questions.

(i) Write an SQL statement that would output outfit name, price and origin for all
shirts
and trousers that cost more than kshs. 550 alphabetically by name.
 (ii) Due to economic problems, the price of trousers has tripled. Write an SQL
statement to effect the increase.
(iii) Write an SQL statement that returns a relation where the colour of the outfit is
blue or the price is more than or equal to kshs. 1,200.
(iv) Write an SQL statement to delete the record for the outfit Savco trouser from the
table.
(b) (i) What does the phrase ’’Query optimisation’’ mean ?
(ii) Write a canonical form for :
SELECT O-num,O_name
FROM Order
WHERE O_quantity BETWWEN 45 AND 95 ;

Question 8.
(a) Define the following terms as they relate to relational database
(i) Relationship
(ii) Primary key
(iii) Domain
(iv) Tuple
(b) What is a transaction? Explain the ACID properties of a transaction.
(c) Outline four advantages of object technology.

Question 9.
(a) Define distributed database systems. What is distributed in this case
(b) Discuss eight of the dates’ 12 rules of distributed databases.

Question 10.
(a) Define the terms:
(i) Entity instance
(ii) Schema
(iii) Alias
(iv) Identifying owner

(b) Give a brief discussion of integrity constraints.

(c) Following is a relation of customers:

Customer_ID Customer_Name Customer_Base Customer_Start Date
101 John California Nov/2/1994
214 Paul Georgia Oct/8/1993
862 Harris California Jan/3/1995
918 Derek Florida Nov/2/1995
924 Cecil California Feb/1/1994
991 Sue Florida Jan/4/1994

Suggest and illustrate how you would perform horizontal partitioning based on the above table.

(d) Consider the following transactions,’’T1 and T2:

T1 T2
Lock item a Lock item b
 Request for item b Request for item a
Wait for T2 Wait for T1

(i) What is the problem with the above two transactions?

(ii) How can the problem be handled?
(iii) What is a distributed database?
Question 11.
(a) Discuss the basic search conditions in SQL.
A database is an organized collection of logically related data or information. What do you
understand by organized and related?
(b) Give a brief discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of a standardized language
(c) Which SQL clause in the SELECT statement must one include if one intends to use the
HAVING clause?
(d) Consider a database containing data on Customers, Rented Properties and Owners of the
properties. It is required that, the data be systematically arranged into the third normal form.
A database engineer has embarked on this and has already come up with the following:

UNF UNF Level

CNum 1
Cname 1
Pnum 2
Paddress 2
RStartDate 2
RfinishDate 2
Ramount 2
ONum 2
Oname 2

Note: CCustomer, PProperty, RRent and OOwner

Finish the task.

Question 12.
(a) Discuss strategies for distributing databases. Give a brief discussion of the potential problems
caused by concurrency.
(b) The following data relates to trainees:

Trainee_ID Trainee_Surnam Specialization Course_ Course_Name Trainer_FName Trainer_ Grade

e Code Base
T1341 Short Accounting ACC 1 Principles of Accounting Peter ADM1 C
T1345 Kendrick Marketing MKT 3 Introduction to Marketing Cecil ADM4 B
International Marketing
MKT 6 Mary ADM2 D
T1350 Smith Management MKT 3 Introduction to Marketing Cecil ADM4 C

Systematically, arrange the above data into third normal form.