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CH 9

The document discusses application programs and user interfaces for databases. It states that most database users do not interact directly with query languages like SQL, but instead use application programs as intermediaries between the user and the database. Application programs are split into three parts - the front-end user interface, a middle layer, and the backend database. Common front-end interfaces include forms and graphical user interfaces, with many now being web-based. The World Wide Web and web browsers have become standard interfaces for accessing databases from anywhere.

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Md Kowsar Islam
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33 views35 pages

CH 9

The document discusses application programs and user interfaces for databases. It states that most database users do not interact directly with query languages like SQL, but instead use application programs as intermediaries between the user and the database. Application programs are split into three parts - the front-end user interface, a middle layer, and the backend database. Common front-end interfaces include forms and graphical user interfaces, with many now being web-based. The World Wide Web and web browsers have become standard interfaces for accessing databases from anywhere.

Uploaded by

Md Kowsar Islam
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Application Programs and User

Interfaces

 Most database users do not use a query language like


SQL
 An application program acts as the intermediary between
users and the database
 Applications split into
 front-end
 middle layer
 backend
 Front-end: user interface
 Forms
 Graphical user interfaces
 Many interfaces are Web-based

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.2 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Application Architecture Evolution
 Three distinct era’s of application architecture
 Mainframe (1960’s and 70’s)
 Personal computer era (1980’s)
 Web era (mid 1990’s onwards)
 Web and Smartphone era (2010 onwards)

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.3 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Web Interface The World Wide Web
Web browsers have become
the de-facto standard user
interface to databases  The Web is a distributed
 Enable large numbers of information system based on
users to access databases hypertext.
from anywhere  Most Web documents are
 Avoid the need for hypertext documents formatted
downloading/installing via the HyperText Markup
specialized code, while Language (HTML)
providing a good graphical  HTML documents contain
user interface
• text along with font
 Javascript, Flash and
specifications, and other
other scripting formatting instructions
languages run in
browser, but are • hypertext links to other
downloaded documents, which can be
transparently associated with regions of
the text.
 Examples: banks, airline
and rental car reservations, • forms, enabling users to
university course enter data which can then
registration
Database System Concepts - 7 and
th
Editiongrading, an 9.4
be sent back to the Web
©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Sample HTML Source Text
<html>
<body>
<table border>
<tr> <th>ID</th> <th>Name</th>
<th>Department</th> </tr>
<tr> <td>00128</td> <td>Zhang</td> <td>Comp.
Sci.</td> </tr>
….
</table>
<form action="PersonQuery" method=get>
Search for:
<select name="persontype">
<option value="student" selected>Student
</option>
<option value="instructor"> Instructor </option>
</select> <br>
Name: <input type=text size=20 name="name">
<input type=submit value="submit">
</form>
</body> </html>

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.7 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Web Architecture

Two-Layer
Multiple levels of indirection have
Three-Layer
overheads
 Alternative: two-layer architecture

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.9 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
HTTP and Sessions

 The HTTP protocol is connectionless


 That is, once the server replies to a request, the server
closes the connection with the client, and forgets all
about the request
 In contrast, Unix logins, and JDBC/ODBC connections
stay connected until the client disconnects
 retaining user authentication and other information
 Motivation: reduces load on server
 operating systems have tight limits on number of
open connections on a machine
 Information services need session information
 E.g., user authentication should be done only once per
session
 Solution: use a cookie

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.10 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Sessions and Cookies

 A cookie is a small piece of text containing identifying


information
 Sent by server to browser
 Sent on first interaction, to identify session
 Sent by browser to the server that created the cookie
on further interactions
 part of the HTTP protocol
 Server saves information about cookies it issued, and
can use it when serving a request
 E.g., authentication information, and user
preferences
 Cookies can be stored permanently or for a limited time

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.11 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Servlets

 Java Servlet specification defines an API for


communication between the Web/application server and
application program running in the server
 E.g., methods to get parameter values from Web forms,
and to send HTML text back to client
 Application program (also called a servlet) is loaded into
the server
 Each request spawns a new thread in the server
 thread is closed once the request is serviced
 Programmer creates a class that inherits from
HttpServlet
 And overrides methods doGet, doPost, …
 Mapping from servlet name (accessible via HTTP), to
the servlet class is done in a file web.xml
 Done automatically by most IDEs when you create a
Servlet using the IDE

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.12 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Example Servlet Code

import java.io.*;
import javax.servlet.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;
public class PersonQueryServlet extends HttpServlet {
public void doGet (HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response)
throws ServletException, IOException
{
response.setContentType("text/html");
PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
out.println("<HEAD><TITLE> Query Result</TITLE></HEAD>");
out.println("<BODY>");
….. BODY OF SERVLET (next slide) …
out.println("</BODY>");
out.close();
}
}

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.13 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Example Servlet Code

String persontype = request.getParameter("persontype");


String number = request.getParameter("name");
if(persontype.equals("student")) {
... code to find students with the specified name ...
... using JDBC to communicate with the database ..
out.println("<table BORDER COLS=3>");
out.println(" <tr> <td>ID</td> <td>Name: </td>" + "
<td>Department</td> </tr>");
for(... each result ...){
... retrieve ID, name and dept name
... into variables ID, name and deptname
out.println("<tr> <td>" + ID + "</td>" + "<td>" + name + "</td>" +
"<td>" + deptname
+ "</td></tr>");
};
out.println("</table>");
}
else {
... as above, but for instructors ...
}

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.14 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Servlet Sessions
 Servlet API supports handling of sessions
 Sets a cookie on first interaction with browser, and uses
it to identify session on further interactions
 To check if session is already active:
 if (request.getSession(false) == true)
 .. then existing session
 else .. redirect to authentication page
 authentication page
 check login/password
 Create new session
– HttpSession session = request.getSession(true)
 Store/retrieve attribute value pairs for a particular
session
– session.setAttribute(“userid”, userid)
 If existing session:
HttpSession = request.getSession(false);
String userid = (String) session.getAttribute(“userid”)
Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.15 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Servlet Support

 Servlets run inside application servers such as


 Apache Tomcat, Glassfish, JBoss
 BEA Weblogic, IBM WebSphere and Oracle Application
Servers
 Application servers support
 Deployment and monitoring of servlets
 Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) platform supporting
objects, parallel processing across multiple application
servers, etc

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.16 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Server-Side Scripting

 Server-side scripting simplifies the task of connecting a


database to the Web
 Define an HTML document with embedded executable
code/SQL queries.
 Input values from HTML forms can be used directly in
the embedded code/SQL queries.
 When the document is requested, the Web server
executes the embedded code/SQL queries to generate
the actual HTML document.
 Numerous server-side scripting languages
 JSP, PHP
 General purpose scripting languages: VBScript, Perl,
Python

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.17 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Java Server Pages (JSP)
 A JSP page with embedded Java code
<html>
<head> <title> Hello </title> </head>
<body>
<% if (request.getParameter(“name”) == null)
{ out.println(“Hello World”); }
else { out.println(“Hello, ” + request.getParameter(“name”));
}
%>
</body>
</html>
 JSP is compiled into Java + Servlets
 JSP allows new tags to be defined, in tag libraries
 Such tags are like library functions, can are used for
example to build rich user interfaces such as paginated
display of large datasets

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.18 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
PHP
 PHP is widely used for Web server scripting
 Extensive libaries including for database access using
ODBC
<html>
<head> <title> Hello </title> </head>
<body>
<?php if (!isset($_REQUEST[‘name’]))
{ echo “Hello World”; }
else { echo “Hello, ” + $_REQUEST[‘name’]; }
?>
</body>
</html>

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.19 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Javascript
 Javascript very widely used
 Forms basis of new generation of Web applications
(called Web 2.0 applications) offering rich user
interfaces
 Javascript functions can
 Check input for validity
 Modify the displayed Web page, by altering the underling
document object model (DOM) tree representation of the
displayed HTML text
 Communicate with a Web server to fetch data and
modify the current page using fetched data, without
needing to reload/refresh the page
 Forms basis of AJAX technology used widely in Web
2.0 applications
 E.g. on selecting a country in a drop-down menu, the
list of states in that country is automatically
populated in a linked drop-down menu

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.22 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Javascript
 Example of Javascript used to validate form input
<html> <head>
<script type="text/javascript">
function validate() {
var credits=document.getElementById("credits").value;
if (isNaN(credits)|| credits<=0 || credits>=16) {
alert("Credits must be a number greater than 0 and
less than 16");
return false
}
}
</script>
</head> <body>
<form action="createCourse" onsubmit="return validate()">
Title: <input type="text" id="title" size="20"><br />
Credits: <input type="text" id="credits" size="2"><br />
<Input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>
</body> </html>

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.23 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Application Architectures
 Application layers
 Presentation or user interface
 model-view-controller (MVC) architecture
– model: business logic
– view: presentation of data, depends on display
device
– controller: receives events, executes actions, and
returns a view to the user
 business-logic layer
 provides high level view of data and actions on data
– often using an object data model
 hides details of data storage schema
 data access layer
 interfaces between business logic layer and the
underlying database
 provides mapping from object model of business layer
to relational model of database
Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.24 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Application Architecture

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.25 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Business Logic Layer
 Provides abstractions of entities
 E.g., students, instructors, courses, etc
 Enforces business rules for carrying out actions
 E.g., student can enroll in a class only if she has
completed prerequsites, and has paid her tuition fees
 Supports workflows which define how a task involving
multiple participants is to be carried out
 E.g., how to process application by a student applying
to a university
 Sequence of steps to carry out task
 Error handling
 E.g. what to do if recommendation letters not
received on time
 Workflows discussed in Section 26.2

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.26 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Object-Relational Mapping
 Allows application code to be written on top of object-
oriented data model, while storing data in a traditional
relational database
 Alternative: implement object-oriented or object-
relational database to store object model
 Has not been commercially successful
 Schema designer has to provide a mapping between object
data and relational schema
 E.g., Java class Student mapped to relation student,
with corresponding mapping of attributes
 An object can map to multiple tuples in multiple
relations
 Application opens a session, which connects to the
database
 Objects can be created and saved to the database using
session.save(object)
 Mapping used to create appropriate tuples in the
database
 Query can be run to retrieve objects satisfying specified
predicates
Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.27 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Object-Relational Mapping and Hibernate
(Cont.)

 The Hibernate object-relational mapping system is widely


used
 Public domain system, runs on a variety of database
systems
 Supports a query language that can express complex
queries involving joins
 Translates queries into SQL queries
 Allows relationships to be mapped to sets associated
with objects
 E.g., courses taken by a student can be a set in
Student object
 See book for Hibernate code example
 The Entity Data Model developed by Microsoft
 Provides an entity-relationship model directly to
application
 Maps data between entity data model and underlying
storage, which can be relational
 Entity SQL language operates directly on Entity Data
Model
Database System Concepts
th
- 7 Edition 9.28 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Web Services
 Allow data on Web to be accessed using remote procedure
call mechanism
 Two approaches are widely used
 Representation State Transfer (REST): allows use of
standard HTTP request to a URL to execute a request
and return data
 Returned data is encoded either in XML, or in
JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)
 Big Web Services:
 Uses XML representation for sending request data, as
well as for returning results
 Standard protocol layer built on top of HTTP
 See Section 23.7.3

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.29 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Disconnected Operations
 Tools for applications to use the Web when connected, but
operate locally when disconnected from the Web
 Make use of HTML5 local storage

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.30 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Rapid Application Development
 A lot of effort is required to develop Web application
interfaces
 More so, to support rich interaction functionality
associated with Web 2.0 applications
 Several approaches to speed up application development
 Function library to generate user-interface elements
 Drag-and-drop features in an IDE to create user-interface
elements
 Automatically generate code for user interface from a
declarative specification
 Above features have been in used as part of rapid
application development (RAD) tools even before advent of
Web
 Web application development frameworks
 Java Server Faces (JSF) includes JSP tag library
 Ruby on Rails
 Allows easy creation of simple CRUD (create, read,
update and delete) interfaces by code generation
from database schema or object model

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.31 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Improving Web Server Performance
 Performance is an issue for popular Web sites
 May be accessed by millions of users every day,
thousands of requests per second at peak time
 Caching techniques used to reduce cost of serving pages
by exploiting commonalities between requests
 At the server site:
 Caching of JDBC connections between servlet
requests
– a.k.a. connection pooling
 Caching results of database queries
– Cached results must be updated if underlying
database changes
 Caching of generated HTML
 At the client’s network
 Caching of pages by Web proxy

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.33 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Cross Site Scripting

 HTML code on one page executes action on another page


 E.g., <img src =
http://mybank.com/transfermoney?amount=1000&toacc
ount=14523
>
 Risk: if user viewing page with above code is currently
logged into mybank, the transfer may succeed
 Above example simplistic, since GET method is
normally not used for updates, but if the code were
instead a script, it could execute POST methods
 Above vulnerability called cross-site scripting (XSS) or
cross-site request forgery (XSRF or CSRF)
 Prevent your web site from being used to launch XSS or
XSRF attacks
 Disallow HTML tags in text input provided by users,
using functions to detect and strip such tags
 Protect your web site from XSS/XSRF attacks launched
from other sites
 ..next slide

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.35 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Cross Site Scripting

Protect your web site from XSS/XSRF attacks launched from


other sites
 Use referer value (URL of page from where a link was
clicked) provided by the HTTP protocol, to check that
the link was followed from a valid page served from
same site, not another site
 Ensure IP of request is same as IP from where the user
was authenticated
 Prevents hijacking of cookie by malicious user
 Never use a GET method to perform any updates
 This is actually recommended by HTTP standard

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.36 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Password Leakage

 Never store passwords, such as database passwords, in


clear text in scripts that may be accessible to users
 E.g., in files in a directory accessible to a web server
 Normally, web server will execute, but not provide
source of script files such as file.jsp or file.php, but
source of editor backup files such as file.jsp~,
or .file.jsp.swp may be served
 Restrict access to database server from IPs of machines
running application servers
 Most databases allow restriction of access by source
IP address

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.37 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Application Authentication
 Single factor authentication such as passwords too risky
for critical applications
 Guessing of passwords, sniffing of packets if passwords
are not encrypted
 Passwords reused by user across sites
 Spyware which captures password
 Two-factor authentication
 E.g., password plus one-time password sent by SMS
 E.g., password plus one-time password devices
 Device generates a new pseudo-random number
every minute, and displays to user
 User enters the current number as password
 Application server generates same sequence of
pseudo-random numbers to check that the number is
correct.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.38 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Application Authentication
 Man-in-the-middle attack
 E.g., web site that pretends to be mybank.com, and
passes on requests from user to mybank.com, and
passes results back to user
 Even two-factor authentication cannot prevent such
attacks
 Solution: authenticate Web site to user, using digital
certificates, along with secure http protocol
 Central authentication within an organization
 Application redirects to central authentication service
for authentication
 Avoids multiplicity of sites having access to user’s
password
 LDAP or Active Directory used for authentication

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.39 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Single Sign-On

 Single sign-on allows user to be authenticated once, and


applications can communicate with authentication service
to verify user’s identity without repeatedly entering
passwords
 Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) standard for
exchanging authentication and authorization information
across security domains
 E.g., user from Yale signs on to external application such
as acm.org using userid [email protected]
 Application communicates with Web-based
authentication service at Yale to authenticate user, and
find what the user is authorized to do by Yale (e.g.,
access certain journals)
 OpenID standard allows sharing of authentication across
organizations
 E.g., application allows user to choose Yahoo! as OpenID
authentication provider, and redirects user to Yahoo! for
authentication

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.40 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Application-Level Authorization
 Current SQL standard does not allow fine-grained
authorization such as “students can see their own grades,
but not other’s grades”
 Problem 1: Database has no idea who are application
users
 Problem 2: SQL authorization is at the level of tables, or
columns of tables, but not to specific rows of a table
 One workaround: use views such as
create view studentTakes as
select *
from takes
where takes.ID = syscontext.user_id()
 where syscontext.user_id() provides end user identity
 End user identity must be provided to the database
by the application
 Having multiple such views is cumbersome

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.41 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Application-Level Authorization (Cont.)
 Currently, authorization is done entirely in application
 Entire application code has access to entire database
 Large surface area, making protection harder
 Alternative: fine-grained (row-level) authorization schemes
 Extensions to SQL authorization proposed but not
currently implemented
 Oracle Virtual Private Database (VPD) allows predicates
to be added transparently to all SQL queries, to enforce
fine-grained authorization
 E.g., add ID= sys_context.user_id() to all queries on
student relation if user is a student

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.42 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
Audit Trails
 Applications must log actions to an audit trail, to detect
who carried out an update, or accessed some sensitive
data
 Audit trails used after-the-fact to
 Detect security breaches
 Repair damage caused by security breach
 Trace who carried out the breach
 Audit trails needed at
 Database level, and at
 Application level

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 9.43 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

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