Chapter 4: Intermediate SQL

Chapter 4: Intermediate SQL

 Join Expressions
 Views
 Transactions
 Integrity Constraints
 SQL Data Types and Schemas
 Authorization
 Joined Relations

 Join operations take two relations and return as a result

another relation.

 A join operation is a Cartesian product which requires that

tuples in the two relations match (under some condition).
It also specifies the attributes that are present in the result
of the join .

 The join operations are typically used as subquery

expressions in the from clause
 Join operations – Example
 Relation course

 Relation prereq

 Observe that
prereq information is missing for CS-315 and
course information is missing for CS-437
 Outer Join

 An extension of the join operation that avoids loss of

information.

 Computes the join and then adds tuples form one relation
that does not match tuples in the other relation to the result
of the join.

 Uses null values.

 Left Outer Join

 course natural left outer join prereq

 Right Outer Join

 course natural right outer join prereq

 Joined Relations
 Join operations take two relations and return as a result
another relation.

 Join condition – defines which tuples in the two relations

match, and what attributes are present in the result of the join.

 Join type – defines how tuples in each relation that do not

match any tuple in the other relation (based on the join
condition) are treated.
 Full Outer Join

 course natural full outer join prereq

 Joined Relations – Examples

 course inner join prereq on

course.course_id = prereq.course_id

 What is the difference between the above, and a natural join?

 course left outer join prereq on
course.course_id = prereq.course_id
 Joined Relations – Examples
 course natural right outer join prereq

 course full outer join prereq using (course_id)

 Views
 In some cases, it is not desirable for all users to see the entire
logical model (that is, all the actual relations stored in the
database.)

 Consider a person who needs to know an instructors name

and department, but not the salary. This person should see a
relation described, in SQL, by

select ID, name, dept_name

from instructor

 A view provides a mechanism to hide certain data from the

view of certain users.

 Any relation that is not of the conceptual model but is made

visible to a user as a “virtual relation” is called a view.
 View Definition
 A view is defined using the create view statement which has
the form
create view v as < query expression >

where <query expression> is any legal SQL expression.

The view name is represented by v.

 Once a view is defined, the view name can be used to refer to

the virtual relation that the view generates.

 View definition is not the same as creating a new relation by

evaluating the query expression
 Rather, a view definition causes the saving of an expression;
the expression is substituted into queries using the view.
 Example Views
 A view of instructors without their salary
create view faculty as
select ID, name, dept_name
from instructor

 Find all instructors in the Biology department

select name
from faculty
where dept_name = ‘Biology’

 Create a view of department salary totals

create view departments_total_salary(dept_name, total_salary) as
select dept_name, sum (salary)
from instructor
group by dept_name;
 Views Defined Using Other Views
 create view physics_fall_2009 as
select course.course_id, sec_id, building, room_number
from course, section
where course.course_id = section.course_id
and course.dept_name = ’Physics’
and section.semester = ’Fall’
and section.year = ’2009’;

 create view physics_fall_2009_watson as

select course_id, room_number
from physics_fall_2009
where building= ’Watson’;
 View Expansion
 Expand use of a view in a query/another view

create view physics_fall_2009_watson as

(select course_id, room_number
from (select course.course_id, building, room_number
from course, section
where course.course_id = section.course_id
and course.dept_name = ’Physics’
and section.semester = ’Fall’
and section.year = ’2009’)
where building= ’Watson’;
 Views Defined Using Other Views
 One view may be used in the expression defining another view

 A view relation v1 is said to depend directly on a view relation

v2 if v2 is used in the expression defining v1

 A view relation v1 is said to depend on view relation v2 if either

v1 depends directly to v2 or there is a path of dependencies
from v1 to v2

 A view relation v is said to be recursive if it depends on itself.

 Update of a View
 Add a new tuple to faculty view which we defined earlier
insert into faculty values (’30765’, ’Green’, ’Music’);

 This insertion must be represented by the insertion of the tuple

(’30765’, ’Green’, ’Music’, null)
into the instructor relation
Some Updates cannot be Translated Uniquely
 create view instructor_info as
select ID, name, building
from instructor, department
where instructor.dept_name= department.dept_name;
 insert into instructor_info values (’69987’, ’White’, ’Taylor’);
 which department, if multiple departments in Taylor?
 what if no department is in Taylor?
 Most SQL implementations allow updates only on simple views
 The from clause has only one database relation.
 The select clause contains only attribute names of the
relation, and does not have any expressions, aggregates, or
distinct specification.
 Any attribute not listed in the select clause can be set to null
 The query does not have a group by or having clause.
 And Some Not at All
 create view history_instructors as
select *
from instructor
where dept_name= ’History’;

 What happens if we insert (’25566’, ’Brown’, ’Biology’, 100000)

into history_instructors?
 Materialized Views
 Materializing a view: create a physical table containing all the tuples
in the result of the query defining the view

 If relations used in the query are updated, the materialized view result
becomes out of date
 Need to maintain the view, by updating the view whenever the
underlying relations are updated.
 Transactions
 Unit of work
 Atomic transaction
 either fully executed or rolled back as if it never occurred
 Isolation from concurrent transactions

 Transactions begin implicitly

 Ended by commit work or rollback work

 But default on most databases: each SQL statement commits

automatically
 Can turn off auto commit for a session (e.g. using API)
 In SQL:1999, can use: begin atomic …. end
 Not supported on most databases
 Integrity Constraints

 Integrity constraints guard against accidental damage to the

database, by ensuring that authorized changes to the database do
not result in a loss of data consistency.
 A checking account must have a balance greater than $10,000.00
 A salary of a bank employee must be at least $4.00 an hour
 A customer must have a (non-null) phone number
 Integrity Constraints on a Single Relation

 not null
 primary key
 unique
 check (P), where P is a predicate
 Not Null and Unique Constraints

 not null
 Declare name and budget to be not null
name varchar(20) not null
budget numeric(12,2) not null

 unique ( A1, A2, …, Am)

 The unique specification states that the attributes A1, A2, …
Am form a candidate key.
 Candidate keys are permitted to be null (in contrast to primary
keys).
 The check clause

 check (P)
where P is a predicate

Example: Ensure that semester is one of fall, winter, spring or

summer:

create table section (

course_id varchar (8),
sec_id varchar (8),
semester varchar (6),
year numeric (4,0),
building varchar (15),
room_number varchar (7),
time slot id varchar (4),
primary key (course_id, sec_id, semester, year),
check (semester in (’Fall’, ’Winter’, ’Spring’, ’Summer’))
);
 Referential Integrity

 Ensures that a value that appears in one relation for a given

set of attributes also appears for a certain set of attributes in
another relation.
 Example: If “Biology” is a department name appearing in
one of the tuples in the instructor relation, then there exists
a tuple in the department relation for “Biology”.

 Let A be a set of attributes. Let R and S be two relations that

contain attributes A and where A is the primary key of S. A is
said to be a foreign key of R if for any values of A appearing
in R these values also appear in S.
 Cascading Actions in Referential Integrity

 create table course (

course_id char(5) primary key,
title varchar(20),
dept_name varchar(20) references department
)

 create table course (

…
dept_name varchar(20),
foreign key (dept_name) references department
on delete cascade
on update cascade,
...
)
 alternative actions to cascade: set null, set default
 Integrity Constraint Violation During
Transactions
 E.g.
create table person (
ID char(10),
name char(40),
mother char(10),
father char(10),
primary key ID,
foreign key father references person,
foreign key mother references person)
 How to insert a tuple without causing constraint violation ?
 insert father and mother of a person before inserting person
 OR, set father and mother to null initially, update after
inserting all persons (not possible if father and mother
attributes declared to be not null)
 OR defer constraint checking (next slide)
 Complex Check Clauses
 check (time_slot_id in (select time_slot_id from time_slot))
 why not use a foreign key here?

 Every section has at least one instructor teaching the section.

 how to write this?

 Unfortunately: subquery in check clause not supported by

pretty much any database
 Alternative: triggers (later)

 create assertion <assertion-name> check <predicate>;

 Also not supported by anyone
 Built-in Data Types in SQL
 date: Dates, containing a (4 digit) year, month and date
 Example: date ‘2005-7-27’

 time: Time of day, in hours, minutes and seconds.

 Example: time ‘09:00:30’ time ‘09:00:30.75’

 timestamp: date plus time of day

 Example: timestamp ‘2005-7-27 09:00:30.75’

 interval: period of time

 Example: interval ‘1’ day
 Subtracting a date/time/timestamp value from another gives
an interval value
 Interval values can be added to date/time/timestamp values
 Index Creation
 create table student
(ID varchar (5),
name varchar (20) not null,
dept_name varchar (20),
tot_cred numeric (3,0) default 0,
primary key (ID))
 create index studentID_index on student(ID)

 Indices are data structures used to speed up access to records

with specified values for index attributes
 e.g. select *
from student
where ID = ‘12345’
can be executed by using the index to find the required
record, without looking at all records of student
More on indices in Chapter 11
 User-Defined Types

 create type construct in SQL creates user-defined type

create type Dollars as numeric (12,2) final

 create table department

(dept_name varchar (20),
building varchar (15),
budget Dollars);
 Domains
 create domain construct in SQL-92 creates user-defined
domain types

create domain person_name char(20) not null

 Types and domains are similar. Domains can have

constraints, such as not null, specified on them.

 create domain degree_level varchar(10)

constraint degree_level_test
check (value in (’Bachelors’, ’Masters’, ’Doctorate’));
 Large-Object Types
 Large objects (photos, videos, CAD files, etc.) are stored as a
large object:

 blob: binary large object -- object is a large collection of

uninterpreted binary data (whose interpretation is left to an
application outside of the database system)

 clob: character large object -- object is a large collection of

character data

 When a query returns a large object, a pointer is returned

rather than the large object itself.
 Authorization

Forms of authorization on parts of the database:

 Read - allows reading, but not modification of data.

 Insert - allows insertion of new data, but not modification of existing

data.
 Update - allows modification, but not deletion of data.
 Delete - allows deletion of data.

Forms of authorization to modify the database schema

 Index - allows creation and deletion of indices.
 Resources - allows creation of new relations.
 Alteration - allows addition or deletion of attributes in a relation.
 Drop - allows deletion of relations.
 Authorization Specification in SQL
 The grant statement is used to confer authorization
grant <privilege list>
on <relation name or view name> to <user list>

 <user list> is:

 a user-id
 public, which allows all valid users the privilege granted
 A role (more on this later)

 Granting a privilege on a view does not imply granting any

privileges on the underlying relations.

 The grantor of the privilege must already hold the privilege on

the specified item (or be the database administrator).
 Privileges in SQL

 select: allows read access to relation, or the ability to query

using the view
 Example: grant users U1, U2, and U3 select authorization on
the instructor relation:
grant select on instructor to U1, U2, U3

 insert: the ability to insert tuples

 update: the ability to update using the SQL update
statement
 delete: the ability to delete tuples.
 all privileges: used as a short form for all the allowable
privileges
Authorization in SQL
 Revoking Authorization in SQL
 The revoke statement is used to revoke authorization.
revoke <privilege list>
on <relation name or view name>
from <user list>
 Example:
revoke select on branch from U1, U2, U3
 <privilege-list> may be all to revoke all privileges the revokee
may hold.
 If <revokee-list> includes public, all users lose the privilege
except those granted it explicitly.
 If the same privilege was granted twice to the same user by
different grantees, the user may retain the privilege after the
revocation.
 All privileges that depend on the privilege being revoked are
also revoked.
 Roles
 create role instructor;
 grant instructor to Amit;

 Privileges can be granted to roles:

 grant select on takes to instructor ;

 Roles can be granted to users, as well as to other roles

 create role teaching_assistant
 grant teaching_assistant to instructor;
 Instructor inherits all privileges of teaching_assistant

 Chain of roles
 create role dean;
 grant instructor to dean;
 grant dean to Satoshi;
 Authorization on Views
 create view geo_instructor as
(select *
from instructor
where dept_name = ’Geology’);

 grant select on geo_instructor to geo_staff

 Suppose that a geo_staff member issues

 select *
from geo_instructor;
 What if
 geo_staff does not have permissions on instructor?
 creator of view did not have some permissions on
instructor?
 Other Authorization Features
 references privilege to create foreign key
 grant reference (dept_name) on department to Mariano;

 transfer of privileges
 grant select on department to Amit with grant option;

 revoke select on department from Amit, Satoshi cascade;

 revoke select on department from Amit, Satoshi restrict;

End of Chapter 4