D A T A B A S E S :O U T L IN E

Databases and Database Applications

Database Definitions
Functions of a DBMS
A university Database Main Characteristics of the Database Approach
Types of Database Users
Database Approach Advantages
Database Technology History
Extending Database Capabilities
When Not to Use Databases
Databases and Database
Applications
• Traditional Database Applications:
• Numeric and Textual Databases
• More Recent Applications:
• Multimedia Databases
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
• Biological and Genome Databases
• Data Warehouses
• Mobile databases
• Real-time and Active Databases
BIG DATA
• Social Networks started capturing a lot of information about people
and about communications among people-posts, tweets, photos,
videos in systems such as:
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Linked-In
• All of the above constitutes data
• Search Engines- Google, Bing, Yahoo : collect their own repository of
web pages for searching purposes
CURRENT DATABASES
• New Technologies are emerging from the so-called non-database
software vendors to manage vast amounts of data generated on the
web:

• Big Data storage systems involving large clusters of distributed

computers NOSQL (Not Only SQL) systems
• A large amount of data now resides on the “cloud” which means it is
in huge data centers using thousands of machines.
• Database:
• A collection of related data.
• Data:
• Known facts that can be recorded and have an implicit meaning.
• Mini-world:
• Some part of the real world about which data is stored in a database. For example, student
grades and transcripts at a university.
• Database Management System (DBMS):
• A software package/ system to facilitate the creation and maintenance of a computerized
database.
• Database System:
• The DBMS software together with the data itself. Sometimes, the applications are also
included.
SOCIETY AND DATABASES
• Businesses: Banking, Insurance, Retail, Transportation, Healthcare,
Manufacturing
• Service Industries: Financial, Real-estate, Legal, Electronic Commerce,
Small businesses
• Education : Resources for content and Delivery
• More recently: Social Networks, Environmental and Scientific
Applications, Medicine and Genetics
• Personalized Applications: based on smart mobile devices
DATABASE ARCHITECTURE
FUNCTIONS OF A DBMS
• Define a particular database in terms of its data types, structures, and constraints
• Construct or Load the initial database contents on a secondary storage medium
• Manipulating the database:
• Retrieval: Querying, generating reports
• Modification: Insertions, deletions and updates to its content
• Accessing the database through Web applications
• Processing and Sharing by a set of concurrent users and application programs –
yet, keeping all data valid and consistent
FUNCTION OF DBMs
• DBMS may additionally provide:
• Protection or Security measures to prevent unauthorized access
• “Active” processing to take internal actions on data
• Presentation and Visualization of data
• Maintenance of the database and associated programs over the lifetime of
the database application
• Called database, software, and system maintenance
SOFTWARES AND DATABASES
• Applications interact with a database by generating
- Queries: that access different parts of data and formulate the result of
a request
- Transactions: that may read some data and “update” certain values or
generate new data and store that in the database
• Applications must not allow unauthorized users to access data
• Applications must keep up with changing user requirements against
the database
Conceptual Data Modelling for a
University Database.
• Mini-world for the example:
• Part of a UNIVERSITY environment.
• Some mini-world entities:
• STUDENTs
• COURSEs
• SECTIONs (of COURSEs)
• (academic) DEPARTMENTs
• INSTRUCTORs
Entities and their relationships
• Some mini-world relationships:
• SECTIONs are of specific COURSEs
• STUDENTs take SECTIONs
• COURSEs have prerequisite COURSEs
• INSTRUCTORs teach SECTIONs
• COURSEs are offered by DEPARTMENTs
• STUDENTs major in DEPARTMENTs

• Note: The above entities and relationships are typically expressed in a conceptual
data model, such as the ENTITY-RELATIONSHIP data model
University Database design
Database Catalogue
Database Approach characteristics
• Data Abstraction:
• A data model is used to hide storage details and present the users with a conceptual view of
the database.
• Programs refer to the data model constructs rather than data storage details
• Support of multiple views of the data:
• Each user may see a different view of the database, which describes only the data of interest to
that user.
• Sharing of data and multi-user transaction processing:
• Allowing a set of concurrent users to retrieve from and to update the database.
• Concurrency control within the DBMS guarantees that each transaction is correctly executed or aborted
• Recovery subsystem ensures each completed transaction has its effect permanently recorded in the
database
• OLTP (Online Transaction Processing) is a major part of database applications. This allows hundreds of
concurrent transactions to execute per second.
Users of a Database
• Users may be divided into
• Those who actually use and control the database content, and those who
design, develop and maintain database applications
• Those who design and develop the DBMS software and related tools, and the
computer systems operators
• Database administrators:
• Responsible for authorizing access to the database, for coordinating and monitoring its
use, acquiring software and hardware resources, controlling its use and monitoring
efficiency of operations.
• Database Designers:
• Responsible to define the content, the structure, the constraints, and functions or
transactions against the database. They must communicate with the end-users and
understand their needs.
USERS CONTINUED
• End-users: They use the data for queries, reports and some of them update
the database content. End-users can be categorized into:
• Casual: access database occasionally when needed
• Naïve or Parametric: they make up a large section of the end-user population.
• They use previously well-defined functions to query the database.
• Users of Mobile Apps mostly fall in this category
• Bank-tellers or reservation clerks are parametric users who do this activity for an entire shift
of operations.
• Social Media Users posts and read information from websites
Users……
• System Analysts and Application Developers
This category currently accounts for a very large proportion of the IT work force.
• System Analysts: They understand the user requirements of naïve and sophisticated
users and design applications including predefined transactions to meet those requirements.
• Application Programmers: Implement the specifications developed by analysts and
test and debug them before deployment.
• Business Analysts: There is an increasing need for such people who can analyze vast
amounts of business data and real-time data (“Big Data”) for better decision making related to
planning, advertising, marketing etc.
USERS
• System Designers and Implementors: Design and implement DBMS packages in the
form of modules and interfaces and test and debug them. The DBMS must interface with
applications, language compilers, operating system components, etc.
• Tool Developers: Design and implement software systems called tools for modeling and
designing databases, performance monitoring, prototyping, test data generation, user
interface creation, simulation etc. that facilitate building of applications and allow using
database effectively.
• Operators and Maintenance Personnel: They manage the actual running and
maintenance of the database system hardware and software environment.
DATABASE APPROACH ADVANTAGES
• Controlling redundancy in data storage and in development and
maintenance efforts.
• Sharing of data among multiple users.
• Restricting unauthorized access to data. Only the DBA staff uses
privileged commands and facilities.
• Providing persistent storage for program Objects
• E.g., Object-oriented DBMSs make program objects persistent– see Chapter
12.
• Providing Storage Structures (e.g. indexes) for efficient Query
Processing
DATABASE APPROACH ADVANTAGES
• Providing optimization of queries for efficient processing.
• Providing backup and recovery services.
• Providing multiple interfaces to different classes of users.
• Representing complex relationships among data.
• Enforcing integrity constraints on the database.
• Drawing inferences and actions from the stored data using deductive
and active rules and triggers.
DATABASE APPROACH ADVANTAGES
• Potential for enforcing standards:
• This is very crucial for the success of database applications in large
organizations. Standards refer to data item names, display formats, screens,
report structures, meta-data (description of data), Web page layouts, etc.
• Reduced application development time:
• Incremental time to add each new application is reduced.
ADVANTAGES CONTINUED
• Flexibility to change data structures:
• Database structure may evolve as new requirements are defined.
• Availability of current information:
• Extremely important for on-line transaction systems such as shopping, airline,
hotel, car reservations.
• Economies of scale:
• Wasteful overlap of resources and personnel can be avoided by consolidating
data and applications across departments
HISTORY OF DATABASE APPROACH
• Early Database Applications:
• The Hierarchical and Network Models were introduced in mid 1960s and dominated
during the seventies.
• A bulk of the worldwide database processing still occurs using these models,
particularly, the hierarchical model using IBM’s IMS system.
• Relational Model based Systems:
• Relational model was originally introduced in 1970, was heavily researched and
experimented within IBM Research and several universities.
• Relational DBMS Products emerged in the early 1980s.
History……
• Object-oriented and emerging applications:
• Object-Oriented Database Management Systems (OODBMSs) were introduced in late
1980s and early 1990s to cater to the need of complex data processing in CAD and
other applications.
• Their use has not taken off much.
• Many relational DBMSs have incorporated object database concepts, leading to a
new category called object-relational DBMSs (ORDBMSs)
• Extended relational systems add further capabilities (e.g. for multimedia data, text,
XML, and other data types)
History…..
• Data on the Web and E-commerce Applications:
• Web contains data in HTML (Hypertext markup language) with links among
pages.
• This has given rise to a new set of applications and E-commerce is using new
standards like XML (eXtended Markup Language).
• Script programming languages such as PHP and JavaScript allow generation of
dynamic Web pages that are partially generated from a database

• Also allow database updates through Web pages

Emerging Areas
• New functionality is being added to DBMSs in the following areas:
• Scientific Applications – Physics, Chemistry, Biology - Genetics
• Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and Astronomy
• XML (eXtensible Markup Language)
• Image Storage and Management
• Audio and Video Data Management
• Data Warehousing and Data Mining – a very major area for future development using new
technologies Spatial Data Management and Location Based Services
• Time Series and Historical Data Management
• The above gives rise to new research and development in incorporating new data types, complex
data structures, new operations and storage and indexing schemes in database systems.
Emerging…..
• Background since the advent of the 21st Century:

• First decade of the 21st century has seen tremendous growth in user
generated data and automatically collected data from applications and search
engines.

• Social Media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are generating millions
of transactions a day and businesses are interested to tap into this data to
“understand” the users

• Cloud Storage and Backup is making unlimited amount of storage available to

users and applications
Emerging
• Emergence of Big Data Technologies and NOSQL databases
• New data storage, management and analysis technology was necessary to deal with the
onslaught of data in petabytes a day (10**15 bytes or 1000 terabytes) in some applications –
this started being commonly called as “Big Data”.
• Hadoop (which originated from Yahoo) and Mapreduce Programming approach to
distributed data processing (which originated from Google) as well as the Google file system
have given rise to Big Data technologies Further enhancements are taking place in the form
of Spark based technology.
• NOSQL (Not Only SQL- where SQL is the de facto standard language for relational DBMSs)
systems have been designed for rapid search and retrieval from documents, processing of
huge graphs occurring on social networks, and other forms of unstructured data with flexible
models of transaction processing
When not to use a database
• Main inhibitors (costs) of using a DBMS:
• High initial investment and possible need for additional hardware.
• Overhead for providing generality, security, concurrency control, recovery, and
integrity functions.
• When a DBMS may be unnecessary:
• If the database and applications are simple, well defined, and not expected to
change.
• If access to data by multiple users is not required.
• When a DBMS may be infeasible:
• In embedded systems where a general purpose DBMS may not fit in available storage
When not…..
• When no DBMS may suffice:
• If there are stringent real-time requirements that may not be met
because of DBMS overhead (e.g., telephone switching systems)
• If the database system is not able to handle the complexity of data because of
modeling limitations (e.g., in complex genome and protein databases)
• If the database users need special operations not supported by the DBMS
(e.g., GIS and location based services).