Advanced Data Types and New

Applications

Database System Concepts, 6th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use
 Advanced Data Types and New Applications

 Temporal Data
 Spatial and Geographic Databases
 Multimedia Databases
 Mobility and Personal Databases

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.2 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Time In Databases
 While most databases tend to model reality at a point in
time (at the “current” time), temporal databases model the
states of the real world across time.
 Facts in temporal relations have associated times when
they are valid, which can be represented as a union of
intervals.
 The transaction time for a fact is the time interval during
which the fact is current within the database system.
 In a temporal relation, each tuple has an associated time
when it is true; the time may be either valid time or
transaction time.
 A bi-temporal relation stores both valid and transaction
time.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.3 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Time In Databases (Cont.)
 Example of a temporal relation:

 Temporal query languages have been proposed to

simplify modeling of time as well as time related
queries.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.4 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Time Specification in SQL-92
 date: four digits for the year (1--9999), two digits for the
month (1--12), and two digits for the date (1--31).
 time: two digits for the hour, two digits for the minute,
and two digits for the second, plus optional fractional
digits.
 timestamp: the fields of date and time, with six fractional
digits for the seconds field.
 Times are specified in the Universal Coordinated Time,
abbreviated UTC (from the French); supports time with
time zone.
 interval: refers to a period of time (e.g., 2 days and 5
hours), without specifying a particular time when this
period starts; could more accurately be termed a span.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.5 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Temporal Query Languages
 Predicates precedes, overlaps, and contains on time
intervals.
 Intersect can be applied on two intervals, to give a single
(possibly empty) interval; the union of two intervals may
or may not be a single interval.
 A snapshot of a temporal relation at time t consists of the
tuples that are valid at time t, with the time-interval
attributes projected out.
 Temporal selection: involves time attributes
 Temporal projection: the tuples in the projection inherit
their time-intervals from the tuples in the original relation.
 Temporal join: the time-interval of a tuple in the result is
the intersection of the time-intervals of the tuples from
which it is derived. It intersection is empty, tuple is
discarded from join.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.6 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Temporal Query Languages (Cont.)
 Functional dependencies must be used with care:
adding a time field may invalidate functional
dependency 
 A temporal functional dependency x  Y holds on a
relation schema R if, for all legal instances r of R, all
snapshots of r satisfy the functional dependency X Y.
 SQL:1999 Part 7 (SQL/Temporal) is a proposed extension
to SQL:1999 to improve support of temporal data.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.7 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Spatial and Geographic
Databases

Database System Concepts, 6th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use
 Spatial and Geographic Databases
 Spatial databases store information related to spatial
locations, and support efficient storage, indexing and
querying of spatial data.
 Special purpose index structures are important for
accessing spatial data, and for processing spatial join
queries.
 Computer Aided Design (CAD) databases store design
information about how objects are constructed E.g.:
designs of buildings, aircraft, layouts of integrated-circuits
 Geographic databases store geographic information (e.g.,
maps): often called geographic information systems or GIS.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.9 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Represented of Geometric Information
 Various geometric constructs can be represented in a database
in a normalized fashion.
 Represent a line segment by the coordinates of its endpoints.
 Approximate a curve by partitioning it into a sequence of
segments
 Create a list of vertices in order, or
 Represent each segment as a separate tuple that also carries
with it the identifier of the curve (2D features such as roads).
 Closed polygons
 List of vertices in order, starting vertex is the same as the
ending vertex, or
 Represent boundary edges as separate tuples, with each
containing identifier of the polygon, or
 Use triangulation — divide polygon into triangles
 Note the polygon identifier with each of its triangles.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.10 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Representation of Geometric
Constructs

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.11 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Representation of Geometric Information
(Cont.)

 Representation of points and line segment in 3-D similar to

2-D, except that points have an extra z component
 Represent arbitrary polyhedra by dividing them into
tetrahedrons, like triangulating polygons.
 Alternative: List their faces, each of which is a polygon,
along with an indication of which side of the face is inside
the polyhedron.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.12 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Design Databases
 Represent design components as objects (generally
geometric objects); the connections between the
objects indicate how the design is structured.
 Simple two-dimensional objects: points, lines, triangles,
rectangles, polygons.
 Complex two-dimensional objects: formed from simple
objects via union, intersection, and difference
operations.
 Complex three-dimensional objects: formed from simpler
objects such as spheres, cylinders, and cuboids, by
union, intersection, and difference operations.
 Wireframe models represent three-dimensional surfaces
as a set of simpler objects.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.13 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Representation of Geometric
Constructs

 Design databases also store non-spatial information about

objects (e.g., construction material, color, etc.)
 Spatial integrity constraints are important.
 E.g., pipes should not intersect, wires should not be too
close to each other, etc.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.14 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Geographic Data

 Raster data consist of bit maps or pixel maps, in two

or more dimensions.
 Example 2-D raster image: satellite image of cloud
cover, where each pixel stores the cloud visibility
in a particular area.
 Additional dimensions might include the
temperature at different altitudes at different
regions, or measurements taken at different points
in time.
 Design databases generally do not store raster data.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.15 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Geographic Data (Cont.)
 Vector data are constructed from basic geometric
objects: points, line segments, triangles, and other
polygons in two dimensions, and cylinders, spheres,
cuboids, and other polyhedrons in three dimensions.
 Vector format often used to represent map data.
 Roads can be considered as two-dimensional and
represented by lines and curves.
 Some features, such as rivers, may be represented
either as complex curves or as complex polygons,
depending on whether their width is relevant.
 Features such as regions and lakes can be depicted
as polygons.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.16 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Applications of Geographic Data
 Examples of geographic data
 map data for vehicle navigation
 distribution network information for power,
telephones, water supply, and sewage
 Vehicle navigation systems store information about roads
and services for the use of drivers:
 Spatial data: e.g., road/restaurant/gas-station
coordinates
 Non-spatial data: e.g., one-way streets, speed limits,
traffic congestion
 Global Positioning System (GPS) unit - utilizes information
broadcast from GPS satellites to find the current location
of user with an accuracy of tens of meters.
 increasingly used in vehicle navigation systems as
well as utility maintenance applications.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.17 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Spatial Queries
 Nearness queries request objects that lie near a
specified location.
 Nearest neighbor queries, given a point or an object,
find the nearest object that satisfies given conditions.
 Region queries deal with spatial regions. e.g., ask for
objects that lie partially or fully inside a specified
region.
 Queries that compute intersections or unions of
regions.
 Spatial join of two spatial relations with the location
playing the role of join attribute.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.18 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Spatial Queries (Cont.)
 Spatial data is typically queried using a graphical
query language; results are also displayed in a
graphical manner.
 Graphical interface constitutes the front-end
 Extensions of SQL with abstract data types, such as
lines, polygons and bit maps, have been proposed to
interface with back-end.
 allows relational databases to store and retrieve
spatial information
 Queries can use spatial conditions (e.g., contains
or overlaps).
 queries can mix spatial and nonspatial conditions

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.19 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Indexing of Spatial Data
 k-d tree - early structure used for indexing in multiple
dimensions.
 Each level of a k-d tree partitions the space into two.
 choose one dimension for partitioning at the root level of
the tree.
 choose another dimensions for partitioning in nodes at
the next level and so on, cycling through the dimensions.
 In each node, approximately half of the points stored in the
sub-tree fall on one side and half on the other.
 Partitioning stops when a node has less than a given
maximum number of points.
 The k-d-B tree extends the k-d tree to allow multiple child
nodes for each internal node; well-suited for secondary
storage.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.20 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Division of Space by a k-d Tree

 Each line in the figure (other than the outside box) corresponds to
a node in the k-d tree.
 The maximum number of points in a leaf node has been set to
1.
 The numbering of the lines in the figure indicates the level of the
tree at which the corresponding node appears.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.21 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Division of Space by Quadtrees
Quadtrees
 Each node of a quadtree is associated with a rectangular region of
space; the top node is associated with the entire target space.
 Each non-leaf nodes divides its region into four equal sized quadrants
 Correspondingly each such node has four child nodes
corresponding to the four quadrants and so on
 Leaf nodes have between zero and some fixed maximum number of
points (set to 1 in example).

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.22 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Quadtrees (Cont.)
 PR quadtree: stores points; space is divided based on
regions, rather than on the actual set of points stored.
 Region quadtrees store array (raster) information.
 A node is a leaf node is all the array values in the
region that it covers are the same. Otherwise, it is
subdivided further into four children of equal area,
and is therefore an internal node.
 Each node corresponds to a sub-array of values.
 The sub-arrays corresponding to leaves either contain
just a single array element, or have multiple array
elements, all of which have the same value.
 Extensions of k-d trees and PR quadtrees have been
proposed to index line segments and polygons
 Require splitting segments/polygons into pieces at
partitioning boundaries
 Same segment/polygon may be represented at
several leaf nodes

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.23 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 R-Trees

 R-trees are a N-dimensional extension of B+-trees,

useful for indexing sets of rectangles and other
polygons.
 Supported in many modern database systems, along
with variants like R+ -trees and R*-trees.
 Basic idea: generalize the notion of a one-dimensional
interval associated with each B+ -tree node to an
N-dimensional interval, that is, an N-dimensional
rectangle.
 Will consider only the two-dimensional case (N = 2)
 generalization for N > 2 is straightforward,
although R-trees work well only for relatively
small N

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.24 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 R Trees (Cont.)
 A rectangular bounding box is associated with each tree
node.
 Bounding box of a leaf node is a minimum sized
rectangle that contains all the rectangles/polygons
associated with the leaf node.
 The bounding box associated with a non-leaf node
contains the bounding box associated with all its
children.
 Bounding box of a node serves as its key in its parent
node (if any)
 Bounding boxes of children of a node are allowed to
overlap
 A polygon is stored only in one node, and the bounding box
of the node must contain the polygon.
 The storage efficiency or R-trees is better than that of k-d
trees or quadtrees since a polygon is stored only once.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.25 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example R-Tree
 A set of rectangles (solid line) and the bounding boxes (dashed line) of the nodes of an
R-tree for the rectangles. The R-tree is shown on the right.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.26 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Search in R-Trees
 To find data items (rectangles/polygons) intersecting
(overlaps) a given query point/region, do the following,
starting from the root node:
 If the node is a leaf node, output the data items
whose keys intersect the given query point/region.
 Else, for each child of the current node whose
bounding box overlaps the query point/region,
recursively search the child
 Can be very inefficient in worst case since multiple
paths may need to be searched
 but works acceptably in practice.
 Simple extensions of search procedure to handle
predicates contained-in and contains

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.27 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Insertion in R-Trees
 To insert a data item:
 Find a leaf to store it, and add it to the leaf
 To find leaf, follow a child (if any) whose bounding box
contains bounding box of data item, else child whose
overlap with data item bounding box is maximum
 Handle overflows by splits (as in B+-trees)
 Split procedure is different though (see below)
 Adjust bounding boxes starting from the leaf upwards
 Split procedure:
 Goal: divide entries of an overfull node into two sets such
that the bounding boxes have minimum total area
 This is a heuristic. Alternatives like minimum overlap
are possible
 Finding the “best” split is expensive, use heuristics
instead
 See next slide

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.28 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Splitting an R-Tree Node
 Quadratic split divides the entries in a node into two new
nodes as follows
1. Find pair of entries with “maximum separation”
 that is, the pair such that the bounding box of the two
would has the maximum wasted space (area of
bounding box – sum of areas of two entries)
2. Place these entries in two new nodes
3. Repeatedly find the entry with “maximum preference” for
one of the two new nodes, and assign the entry to that
node
 Preference of an entry to a node is the increase in area
of bounding box if the entry is added to the other node
4. Stop when half the entries have been added to one node
 Then assign remaining entries to the other node
 Cheaper linear split heuristic works in time linear in number
of entries,
 Cheaper but generates slightly worse splits.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.29 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Deleting in R-Trees
 Deletion of an entry in an R-tree done much like a B+-
tree deletion.
 In case of underfull node, borrow entries from a
sibling if possible, else merging sibling nodes
 Alternative approach removes all entries from the
underfull node, deletes the node, then reinserts all
entries

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.30 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Multimedia Databases

Database System Concepts, 6th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use
 Multimedia Databases

 To provide such database functions as indexing and

consistency, it is desirable to store multimedia data in
a database
 rather than storing them outside the database, in a
file system
 The database must handle large object representation.
 Similarity-based retrieval must be provided by special
index structures.
 Must provide guaranteed steady retrieval rates for
continuous-media data.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.32 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Multimedia Data Formats
 Store and transmit multimedia data in compressed form
 JPEG and GIF the most widely used formats for image
data.
 MPEG standard for video data use commonalties
among a sequence of frames to achieve a greater
degree of compression.
 MPEG-1 quality comparable to VHS video tape.
 stores a minute of 30-frame-per-second video and
audio in approximately 12.5 MB
 MPEG-2 designed for digital broadcast systems and
digital video disks; negligible loss of video quality.
 Compresses 1 minute of audio-video to approximately
17 MB.
 Several alternatives of audio encoding
 MPEG-1 Layer 3 (MP3), RealAudio, WindowsMedia
format, etc.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.33 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Continuous-Media Data
 Most important types are video and audio data.
 Characterized by high data volumes and real-time
information-delivery requirements.
 Data must be delivered sufficiently fast that there are
no gaps in the audio or video.
 Data must be delivered at a rate that does not cause
overflow of system buffers.
 Synchronization among distinct data streams must be
maintained
 Video of a person speaking must show lips moving
synchronously with the audio

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.34 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Video Servers
 Video-on-demand systems deliver video from central
video servers, across a network, to terminals
 Must guarantee end-to-end delivery rates
 Current video-on-demand servers are based on file
systems; existing database systems do not meet real-
time response requirements.
 Multimedia data are stored on several disks (RAID
configuration), or on tertiary storage for less frequently
accessed data.
 Head-end terminals - used to view multimedia data
 PCs or TVs attached to a small, inexpensive computer
called a set-top box.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.35 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Similarity-Based Retrieval
Examples of similarity based retrieval
 Pictorial data: Two pictures or images that are slightly
different as represented in the database may be
considered the same by a user.
 E.g., identify similar designs for registering a new
trademark.
 Audio data: Speech-based user interfaces allow the user
to give a command or identify a data item by speaking.
 E.g., test user input against stored commands.
 Handwritten data: Identify a handwritten data item or
command stored in the database

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.36 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Mobility

Database System Concepts, 6th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use
 Mobile Computing Environments
 A mobile computing environment consists of mobile
computers, referred to as mobile hosts, and a wired
network of computers.
 Mobile host may be able to communicate with wired
network through a wireless digital communication
network
 Wireless local-area networks (within a building)
 E.g., Avaya’s Orinico Wireless LAN
 Wide areas networks
 Cellular digital packet networks
– 3 G and 2.5 G cellular networks

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.38 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Mobile Computing Environments
(Cont.)
 A model for mobile communication
 Mobile hosts communicate to the wired network via
computers referred to as mobile support (or base)
stations.
 Each mobile support station manages those mobile
hosts within its cell.
 When mobile hosts move between cells, there is a
handoff of control from one mobile support station to
another.
 Direct communication, without going through a mobile
support station is also possible between nearby mobile
hosts
 Supported, for e.g., by the Bluetooth standard (up to
10 meters, atup to 721 kbps)

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.39 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Database Issues in Mobile Computing
 New issues for query optimization.
 Connection time charges and number of bytes transmitted
 Energy (battery power) is a scarce resource and its usage
must be minimized
 Mobile user’s locations may be a parameter of the query
 GIS queries
 Techniques to track locations of large numbers of mobile
hosts
 Broadcast data can enable any number of clients to receive
the same data at no extra cost
 leads to interesting querying and data caching issues.
 Users may need to be able to perform database updates even
while the mobile computer is disconnected.
 E.g., mobile salesman records sale of products on (local
copy of) database.
 Can result in conflicts detected on reconnection, which
may need to be resolved manually.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.40 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Routing and Query Processing
 Must consider these competing costs:
 User time.
 Communication cost
 Connection time - used to assign monetary
charges in some cellular systems.
 Number of bytes, or packets, transferred - used
to compute charges in digital cellular systems
 Time-of-day based charges - vary based on peak
or off-peak periods
 Energy - optimize use of battery power by
minimizing reception and transmission of data.
 Receiving radio signals requires much less
energy than transmitting radio signals.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.41 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Broadcast Data
 Mobile support stations can broadcast frequently-requested
data
 Allows mobile hosts to wait for needed data, rather than
having to consume energy transmitting a request
 Supports mobile hosts without transmission capability
 A mobile host may optimize energy costs by determining if a
query can be answered using only cached data
 If not then must either;
 Wait for the data to be broadcast
 Transmit a request for data and must know when the
relevant data will be broadcast.
 Broadcast data may be transmitted according to a fixed
schedule or a changeable schedule.
 For changeable schedule: the broadcast schedule must
itself be broadcast at a well-known radio frequency and
at well-known time intervals
 Data reception may be interrupted by noise
 Use techniques similar to RAID to transmit redundant
data (parity)

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.42 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Disconnectivity and Consistency
 A mobile host may remain in operation during periods of
disconnection.
 Problems created if the user of the mobile host issues
queries and updates on data that resides or is cached
locally:
 Recoverability: Updates entered on a disconnected
machine may be lost if the mobile host fails. Since
the mobile host represents a single point of failure,
stable storage cannot be simulated well.
 Consistency: Cached data may become out of date,
but the mobile host cannot discover this until it is
reconnected.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.43 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Mobile Updates
 Partitioning via disconnection is the normal mode of operation
in mobile computing.
 For data updated by only one mobile host, simple to propagate
update when mobile host reconnects
 In other cases data may become invalid and updates may
conflict.
 When data are updated by other computers, invalidation reports
inform a reconnected mobile host of out-of-date cache entries
 However, mobile host may miss a report.
 Version-numbering-based schemes guarantee only that if two
hosts independently update the same version of a document,
the clash will be detected eventually, when the hosts exchange
information either directly or through a common host.
 More on this shortly
 Automatic reconciliation of inconsistent copies of data is
difficult
 Manual intervention may be needed

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.44 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Detecting Inconsistent Updates
 Version vector scheme used to detect inconsistent
updates to documents at different hosts (sites).
 Copies of document d at hosts i and j are inconsistent if
1. the copy of document d at i contains updates
performed by host k that have not been propagated to
host j (k may be the same as i), and
2. the copy of d at j contains updates performed by host
l that have not been propagated to host i (l may be
the same as j)
 Basic idea: each host i stores, with its copy of each
document d, a version vector - a set of version numbers,
with an element Vd,i [k] for every other host k
 When a host i updates a document d, it increments the
version number Vd,i [i] by 1

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.45 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Detecting Inconsistent Updates
(Cont.)
 When two hosts i and j connect to each other they check if the
copies of all documents d that they share are consistent:
1. If the version vectors are the same on both hosts (that is, for
each k, Vd,i [k] = Vd,j [k]) then the copies of d are identical.

2. If, for each k, Vd,i [k]  Vd,j [k], and the version vectors are
not identical, then the copy of document d at host i is older
than the one at host j
 That is, the copy of document d at host j was obtained
by one or more modifications of the copy of d at host i.
 Host i replaces its copy of d, as well as its copy of the
version vector for d, with the copies from host j.
3. If there is a pair of hosts k and m such that Vd,i [k]< Vd,j [k],
and
Vd,i [m] > Vd,j [m], then the copies are inconsistent
 That is, two or more updates have been performed
on d independently.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.46 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Handling Inconsistent Updates
 Dealing with inconsistent updates is hard in general.
Manual intervention often required to merge the updates.
 Version vector schemes
 were developed to deal with failures in a distributed
file system, where inconsistencies are rare.
 are used to maintain a unified file system between a
fixed host and a mobile computer, where updates at
the two hosts have to be merged periodically.
 Also used for similar purposes in groupware
systems.
 are used in database systems where mobile users
may need to perform transactions.
 In this case, a “document” may be a single record.
 Inconsistencies must either be very rare, or fall in special
cases that are easy to deal with in most cases

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.47 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 End of Chapter

Database System Concepts, 6th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use
 Figure 25.02

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.49 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Figure 25.03

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.50 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Figure 25.04

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.51 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Figure 25.05

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.52 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Figure 25.06

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 25.53 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan