History of Relational

Databases
Charles Severance
www.pg4e.com
OLD Sequential NEW
Master
Sorte Sorte
Update
d 1970s d

Merg
e

Transacti
ons
Sorted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_729
 Random
Access
• When you can randomly
access data...

• How can you lay out data

to be most efficient?

• Sorting might not be the

best idea

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive_platter
 Relational Databases
Relational databases model data by
storing rows and columns in tables.
The power of the relational
database lies in its ability to
efficiently retrieve data from those
tables - in particular, where the
query involves multiple tables and
the relationships between those
tables.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_database
 Structured Query Language
• Structured Query
Language (SQL) came
out of a government /
industry partnership

• National Institute of
Standards and
Technology (NIST)
https://youtu.be/rLUm3vst87g
 SQL
Structured Query Language is
the language we use to issue
commands to the database

- Create/Insert data

- Read/Select some data

- Update data

- Delete data http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI-SPARC_Architecture
 Terminology
• Database - contains one or more tables
• Relation (or table) - contains tuples and attributes
• Tuple (or row) - a set of fields which generally
represent an “object” like a person or a music track

• Attribute (also column or field) - one of possibly many

elements of data corresponding to the object
represented by the row
 A relation is defined as a set of tuples that have the same attributes. A tuple
usually represents an object and information about that object. Objects are
typically physical objects or concepts. A relation is usually described as a
table, which is organized into rows and columns. All the data referenced by an
attribute are in the same domain and conform to the same constraints.
(wikipedia)
Columns / Attributes

Rows /
Tuples

Tables / Relations
 Common Database Systems
• Major Database Management Systems in wide use
- PostgreSQL – 100% Open source, feature rich

- Oracle - Large, commercial, enterprise-scale, very

tweakable

- MySQL - Fast and scalable - commercial open source

- SqlServer - Very nice - from Microsoft (also Access)

• Smaller projects: SQLite, HSQL, …

SQL Architecture
 Using SQL
pgAdmin
(Browser / SQL

Desktop) Database
User
D.B.A. Server
psql PostgresSQL
(Command SQL

Line)
 Starting PostgreSQL
Command Line
$ psql –U postgres
Password for user postgres: <password here>
psql (9.3.5, server 11.2)
Type "help" for help.

postgres=#

Super User Prompt

https://xkcd.com/149/
 Your First PostgreSQL
Command
postgres-# \l
List of databases
Name | Owner | Encoding | Collate | Ctype | Access privileges
-----------+----------+----------+---------+-------+-----------------------
postgres | postgres | UTF8 | C | C |
template0 | postgres | UTF8 | C | C | =c/postgres +
| | | | | postgres=CTc/postgres
template1 | postgres | UTF8 | C | C | =c/postgres +
| | | | | postgres=CTc/postgres
(3 rows)

postgres-#
Creating a User and Database
postgres=# CREATE USER WITH PASSWORD 'secret';
CREATE ROLE
postgres=# CREATE DATABASE people WITH OWNER '';
CREATE DATABASE
postgres=# \q

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/11/sql-
createuser.html
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/11/sql-
 Connecting to a Database
$ psql people
Password for user : <password here>
psql (9.3.5, server 11.2)

people=> \dt
No relations found.
people=>

Not a Super User Prompt

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/11/app-
psql.html
people=> CREATE TABLE users(
people(> name VARCHAR(128),
Creating a
people(>
people(> );
email VARCHAR(128)

CREATE TABLE
Table
people=> \dt CREATE TABLE users(
List of relations
Schema | Name | Type | Owner name VARCHAR(128),
--------+-------+-------+------- email VARCHAR(128)
public | users | table |
(1 row) );
people=> \d+ users
Table "public.users"
Column | Type | Modifiers | Storage | Stats target | Description
--------+------------------------+-----------+----------+--------------+-------------
name | character varying(128) | | extended | |
email | character varying(128) | | extended | |
Has OIDs: no

people=>
Working with Tables and
PostgreSQL
 SQL: Insert
The INSERT statement inserts a row
into a table

INSERT INTO users (name, email) VALUES ('Chuck', '[email protected]') ;

INSERT INTO users (name, email) VALUES ('Somesh', '[email protected]') ;
INSERT INTO users (name, email) VALUES ('Caitlin', '[email protected]') ;
INSERT INTO users (name, email) VALUES ('Ted', '[email protected]') ;
INSERT INTO users (name, email) VALUES ('Sally', '[email protected]') ;
 SQL: Delete
Deletes a row in a table based on selection
criteria

DELETE FROM users WHERE email='[email protected]';

 SQL: Update
Allows the updating of a field with a WHERE
clause

UPDATE users SET name='Charles' WHERE email='[email protected]';

 Retrieving Records: Select
Retrieves a group of records - you can either retrieve
all the records or a subset of the records with a
WHERE clause

SELECT * FROM users;

SELECT * FROM users WHERE email='[email protected]';

Sorting with ORDER BY
You can add an ORDER BY clause to SELECT
statements to get the results sorted in ascending
or descending order

SELECT * FROM users ORDER BY email;

 The LIKE Clause
We can do wildcard matching in a
WHERE clause using the LIKE operator

SELECT * FROM users WHERE name LIKE '%e%';

 The LIMIT/OFFSET Clauses
• We can request the first "n" rows, or the first "n" rows after
skipping some rows.

• The WHERE and ORDER BY clauses happen *before* the LIMIT

/ OFFSET are applied.

• The OFFSET starts from row 0

SELECT * FROM users ORDER BY email DESC LIMIT 2;
SELECT * FROM users ORDER BY email OFFSET 1 LIMIT 2;
 Counting Rows with SELECT
You can request to receive the count of
the rows that would be retrieved instead
of the rows

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM users;

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM users WHERE email='[email protected]';
 SQL Summary
INSERT INTO users (name, email) VALUES ('Ted', '[email protected]');

DELETE FROM users WHERE email='[email protected]';

UPDATE users SET name='Charles' WHERE email='[email protected]';

SELECT * FROM users WHERE email='[email protected]';

SELECT * FROM users ORDER BY email;

SELECT * FROM users WHERE name LIKE '%e%';

SELECT * FROM users ORDER BY email OFFSET 1 LIMIT 2;

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM users WHERE email='[email protected]'

 This is not too exciting (so
far)
• Tables pretty much look like big, fast programmable
spreadsheets with rows, columns, and commands.

• The power comes when we have more than one table

and we can exploit the relationships between the tables.
Data Types in PostgreSQL
 Looking at Data Types
• Text fields (small and large)
• Binary fields (small and large)
• Numeric fields
• AUTO_INCREMENT fields
 String Fields
• Understand character sets and are indexable for
searching

• CHAR(n) allocates the entire space (faster for small

strings where length is known)

• VARCHAR(n) allocates a variable amount of space

depending on the data length (less space)
 Text Fields

• Have a character set - paragraphs or HTML pages

- TEXT varying length

• Generally not used with indexing or sorting - and only

then limited to a prefix
 Binary Types (rarely used)
• Character = 8 - 32 bits of information depending on
character set

• Byte = 8 bits of information

- BYTEA(n) up to 255 bytes

• Small Images - data

• Not indexed or sorted
 Integer Numbers
Integer numbers are very efficient, take little storage, and
are easy to process because CPUs can often compare them
with a single instruction.

- SMALLINT (-32768, +32768)

- INTEGER (2 Billion)

- BIGINT - (10**18 ish)

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/datatype-
 Floating Point Numbers
Floating point numbers can represent a wide range of values, but
accuracy is limited.

- REAL (32-bit) 10**38 with seven digits of accuracy

- DOUBLE PRECISION (64-bit) 10**308 with 14 digits of accuracy

- NUMERIC(accuracy, decimal) – Specified digits of accuracy and

digits after the decimal point

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/11/datatype-
numeric.html
 Dates
• TIMESTAMP - 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS'
(4713 BC, 294276 AD)

• DATE - 'YYYY-MM-DD'
• TIME - 'HH:MM:SS'
• Built-in PostgreSQL function NOW()
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/11/datatype-
https://xkcd.com/607/
Database Keys and Indexes
 AUTO_INCREMENT
Often as we make
multiple tables and need DROP TABLE users;
to JOIN them together we
need an integer primary CREATE TABLE users (
key for each row so we id SERIAL,
name VARCHAR(128),
can efficiently add a
email VARCHAR(128) UNIQUE,
reference to a row in PRIMARY KEY(id)
some other table as a );
foreign key.
 PostgreSQL Functions

Many operations in PostgreSQL need to use the built-in

functions (like NOW() for dates).

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/11/
functions.html
 Indexes
• As a table gets large (they always do), scanning all the
data to find a single row becomes very costly

• When [email protected] logs into Twitter, they must

find my password amongst 500 million users

• There are techniques to greatly shorten the scan as long

as you create data structures and maintain those
structures - like shortcuts

• Hashes or Trees are the most common

 B-Trees
A B-tree is a tree data structure that keeps data sorted
and allows searches, sequential access, insertions, and
deletions in logarithmic amortized time. The B-tree is
optimized for systems that read and write large blocks of
data. It is commonly used in databases and file systems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-tree
 Hashes
A hash function is any algorithm or
subroutine that maps large data sets to
smaller data sets, called keys. For
example, a single integer can serve as
an index to an array (cf. associative
array). The values returned by a hash
function are called hash values, hash
codes, hash sums, checksums, or
simply hashes.
Hash functions are mostly used to
accelerate table lookup or data
comparison tasks such as finding items
in a database... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_function
 Summary
• SQL allows us to describe the shape of data to be stored
and give many hints to the database engine as to how
we will be accessing or using the data.

• SQL is a language that provides us operations to Create,

Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) our data in a
database.
 Acknowledgements / Contributions
These slides are Copyright 2010- Charles R. Continue new Contributors and Translators here
Severance (www.dr-chuck.com) as part of
www.pg4e.com and made available under a Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Please maintain
this last slide in all copies of the document to comply
with the attribution requirements of the license. If
you make a change, feel free to add your name and
organization to the list of contributors on this page as
you republish the materials.

Initial Development: Charles Severance, University of

Michigan School of Information

Insert new Contributors and Translators here including

names and dates