Chapter 1: Introduction

Databases and Database Users

Database System Concepts, 6th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use
 DATA,DATABASE
 Data: Known facts that can be recorded and have
an implicit meaning; raw

 Database: a highly organized, interrelated, and

structured set of data about a particular enterprise
 Controlled by a database management system
(DBMS)

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 Database Management System
(DBMS)
 DBMS contains information about a particular enterprise
 Collection of interrelated data
 Set of programs to access the data
 An environment that is both convenient and efficient to use
 Database Applications:
 Banking: transactions
 Airlines: reservations, schedules
 Universities: registration, grades
 Sales: customers, products, purchases
 Online retailers: order tracking, customized
recommendations
 Manufacturing: production, inventory, orders, supply chain
 Human resources: employee records, salaries, tax
deductions
 Databases can be very large.
 Databases touch all aspects of our lives

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 1.3 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Drawbacks of using file systems to
store data

 Data redundancy and inconsistency

 Multiple file formats, duplication of information in
different files
 Difficulty in accessing data
 Need to write a new program to carry out each new
task
 Data isolation
 Multiple files and formats
 Integrity problems
 Integrity constraints (e.g., account balance > 0)
become “buried” in program code rather than being
stated explicitly
 Hard to add new constraints or change existing ones

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 Integrity Constraints
•Integrity constraints are a set of rules. It is used to maintain the
quality of information.

•Integrity constraints ensure that the data insertion, updating,

and other processes have to be performed in such a way that
data integrity is not affected.

•Thus, integrity constraint is used to guard against accidental

damage to the database.

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 Drawbacks of using file systems to store data
(Cont.)

 Atomicity of updates
 Failures may leave database in an inconsistent state with
partial updates carried out
 Example: Transfer of funds from one account to another
should either complete or not happen at all
 Concurrent access by multiple users
 Concurrent access needed for performance
 Uncontrolled concurrent accesses can lead to
inconsistencies
 Example: Two people reading a balance (say 100) and
updating it by withdrawing money (say 50 each) at the
same time
 Security problems
 Hard to provide user access to some, but not all, data

Database systems offer solutions to all the above problems

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 What are the Different Types of Database Users in
DBMS?

In simple terms, ` any person who uses a database and avails

benefits from the database is known as database user in
DBMS.

Database users in DBMS can access the database and

retrieve the data from the database using applications and
interfaces provided by the Database Management System
(DBMS).
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 Database users in DBMS can be categorized
based on their interaction with the
databases. According to the tasks
performed by the database users on the
databases, we can categorize them into
seven categories as follows:

•Database Administrators (DBA)

•Database Designers
•System Analysts
•Application Programmers / Back-End
Developers
•Naive Users / Parametric Users
•Sophisticated Users
•Casual Users / Temporary Users
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 Levels of Abstraction
 Physical level: describes how a record (e.g., instructor) is
stored.
 Logical level: describes data stored in database, and the
relationships among the data.
type instructor = record
ID : string;
name : string;
dept_name : string;
salary : integer;
end;
 View level: application programs hide details of data
types. Views can also hide information (such as an
employee’s salary) for security purposes.

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 View of Data

An architecture for a database system

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 Instances and Schemas
 Similar to types and variables in programming languages
 Logical Schema – the overall logical structure of the database
 Example: The database consists of information about a set of
customers and accounts in a bank and the relationship
between them
 Analogous to type information of a variable in a program
 Physical schema–
schema the overall physical structure of the database
 Instance – the actual content of the database at a particular point
in time
 Analogous to the value of a variable
 Physical Data Independence – the ability to modify the physical
schema without changing the logical schema
 Applications depend on the logical schema
 In general, the interfaces between the various levels and
components should be well defined so that changes in some
parts do not seriously influence others.

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 Data Models
 A collection of tools for describing
 Data
 Data relationships
 Data semantics
 Data constraints

 Relational model
 Entity-Relationship data model (mainly for database
design)
 Object-based data models (Object-oriented and Object-
relational)
 Semistructured data model (XML)
 Other older models:
 Network model
 Hierarchical model

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 Relational Model
 All the data is stored in various tables.
 Example of tabular data in the relational model
Columns

Rows

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 A Sample Relational Database

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 Data Definition Language (DDL)
 Specification notation for defining the database schema
Example: create table instructor (
ID char(5),
name varchar(20),
dept_name varchar(20),
salary numeric(8,2))
 DDL compiler generates a set of table templates stored in a
data dictionary
 Data dictionary contains metadata (i.e., data about data)
 Database schema
 Integrity constraints
 Primary key (ID uniquely identifies instructors)
 Authorization
 Who can access what

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 Data Manipulation Language (DML)
 Language for accessing and manipulating the data
organized by the appropriate data model
 DML also known as query language
 Two classes of languages
 Pure – used for proving properties about
computational power and for optimization
 Relational Algebra
 Tuple relational calculus
 Domain relational calculus
 Commercial – used in commercial systems
 SQL is the most widely used commercial
language

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 SQL
 The most widely used commercial language
 SQL is NOT a Turing machine equivalent language
 SQL is NOT a Turing machine equivalent language
 To be able to compute complex functions SQL is
usually embedded in some higher-level language
 Application programs generally access databases
through one of
 Language extensions to allow embedded SQL
 Application program interface (e.g., ODBC/JDBC)
which allow SQL queries to be sent to a database

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 Database Design
The process of designing the general structure of the
database:
 Logical Design – Deciding on the database
schema. Database design requires that we find a
“good” collection of relation schemas.
 Business decision – What attributes should we
record in the database?
 Computer Science decision – What relation
schemas should we have and how should the
attributes be distributed among the various
relation schemas?
 Physical Design – Deciding on the physical layout
of the database

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 Database Design (Cont.)
 Is there any problem with this relation?

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 Design Approaches
 Need to come up with a methodology to ensure that
each of the relations in the database is “good”
 Two ways of doing so:
 Entity Relationship Model (Chapter 7)
 Models an enterprise as a collection of
entities and relationships
 Represented diagrammatically by an entity-
relationship diagram:
 Normalization Theory (Chapter 8)
 Formalize what designs are bad, and test for
them

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 Object-Relational Data Models
 Relational model: flat, “atomic” values
 Object Relational Data Models
 Extend the relational data model by including object
orientation and constructs to deal with added data
types.
 Allow attributes of tuples to have complex types,
including non-atomic values such as nested
relations.
 Preserve relational foundations, in particular the
declarative access to data, while extending modeling
power.
 Provide upward compatibility with existing relational
languages.

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 Query Processing
1. Parsing and translation
2. Optimization
3. Evaluation

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 Query Processing (Cont.)
 Alternative ways of evaluating a given query
 Equivalent expressions
 Different algorithms for each operation
 Cost difference between a good and a bad way of
evaluating a query can be enormous
 Need to estimate the cost of operations
 Depends critically on statistical information about
relations which the database must maintain
 Need to estimate statistics for intermediate
results to compute cost of complex expressions

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 Transaction Management
 What if the system fails?
 What if more than one user is concurrently updating
the same data?
 A transaction is a collection of operations that
performs a single logical function in a database
application
 Transaction-management component ensures that
the database remains in a consistent (correct)
state despite system failures (e.g., power failures
and operating system crashes) and transaction
failures.
 Concurrency-control manager controls the
interaction among the concurrent transactions, to
ensure the consistency of the database.

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 Database Users and
Administrators

Databas
e

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 Database System Internals

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 Database Architecture

The architecture of a database systems is greatly

influenced by
the underlying computer system on which the database is
running:
 Centralized
 Client-server
 Parallel (multi-processor)
 Distributed

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 History of Database Systems
 1950s and early 1960s:
 Data processing using magnetic tapes for storage
 Tapes provided only sequential access
 Punched cards for input
 Late 1960s and 1970s:
 Hard disks allowed direct access to data
 Network and hierarchical data models in widespread
use
 Ted Codd defines the relational data model
 Would win the ACM Turing Award for this work
 IBM Research begins System R prototype
 UC Berkeley begins Ingres prototype
 High-performance (for the era) transaction
processing

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 History (cont.)
 1980s:
 Research relational prototypes evolve into commercial
systems
 SQL becomes industrial standard
 Parallel and distributed database systems
 Object-oriented database systems
 1990s:
 Large decision support and data-mining applications
 Large multi-terabyte data warehouses
 Emergence of Web commerce
 Early 2000s:
 XML and XQuery standards
 Automated database administration
 Later 2000s:
 Giant data storage systems
 Google BigTable, Yahoo PNuts, Amazon, ..

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 End of Chapter 1

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