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Unit-4: Database Management System

Contents: Introduction to DBMS, DBMS Models, SQL, Database Design and Data Security, Data
Warehouse, Data Mining, Database Administrator

What is Database?
Database is a collection of related data and data is a collection of facts and figures that can be processed
to produce information.

Mostly data represents recordable facts. Data aids in producing information, which is based on facts. For
example, if we have data about marks obtained by all students, we can then conclude about toppers and
average marks.

A database management system stores data in such a way that it becomes easier to retrieve, manipulate,
and produce information.

Characteristics of DBMS
Real-world entity: A modern DBMS is more realistic and uses real-world entities to design its architecture.
It uses the behavior and attributes too. For example, a school database may use students as an entity and
their age as an attribute.

Relation-based tables: DBMS allows entities and relations among them to form tables. A user can
understand the architecture of a database just by looking at the table names.

Isolation of data and application: A database system is entirely different than its data. A database is an
active entity, whereas data is said to be passive, on which the database works and organizes. DBMS also
stores metadata, which is data about data, to ease its own process.

Less redundancy: DBMS follows the rules of normalization, which splits a relation when any of its
attributes is having redundancy in values. Normalization is a mathematically rich and scientific process
that reduces data redundancy.

Consistency: Consistency is a state where every relation in a database remains consistent. There exist
methods and techniques, which can detect attempt of leaving database in inconsistent state. A DBMS can
provide greater consistency as compared to earlier forms of data storing applications like file-processing
systems.

Query Language: DBMS is equipped with query language, which makes it more efficient to retrieve and
manipulate data. A user can apply as many and as different filtering options as required to retrieve a set
of data. Traditionally it was not possible where file-processing system was used

ACID Properties: DBMS follows the concepts of Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability (normally
shortened as ACID). These concepts are applied on transactions, which manipulate data in a database.
ACID properties help the database stay healthy in multi-transactional environments and in case of failure.

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Multiuser and Concurrent Access: DBMS supports multi-user environment and allows them to access and
manipulate data in parallel. Though there are restrictions on transactions when users attempt to handle
the same data item, but users are always unaware of them.

Multiple views: DBMS offers multiple views for different users. A user who is in the Sales department will
have a different view of database than a person working in the Production department. This feature
enables the users to have a concentrate view of the database according to their requirements.

Security: Features like multiple views offer security to some extent where users are unable to access data
of other users and departments. DBMS offers methods to impose constraints while entering data into the
database and retrieving the same at a later stage. DBMS offers many different levels of security features,
which enables multiple users to have different views with different features.

Database Models
Data models define how the logical structure of a database is modeled. Data Models are fundamental
entities to introduce abstraction in a DBMS. Data models define how data is connected to each other and
how they are processed and stored inside the system.

Two types

Entity-Relationship Model

Entity-Relationship (ER) Model is based on the notion of real-world entities and relationships among them.
While formulating real-world scenario into the database model, the ER Model creates entity set,
relationship set, general attributes, and constraints.

ER Model is best used for the conceptual design of a database.

ER Model is based on:

• Entities and their attributes.

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• An entity in an ER Model is a real-world entity having properties called attributes. Every attribute
is defined by its set of values called domain.

For example, in a school database, a student is considered as an entity. Student has various attributes like
name, age, class, etc.

Relationships among entities

The logical association among entities is called relationship. Relationships are mapped with entities in
various ways. Mapping cardinalities define the number of associations between two entities.

Relational Model

The most popular data model in DBMS is the Relational Model. It is more scientific model than others.
This model is based on first-order predicate logic and defines a table as an n-ary relation.

The main highlights of this model are:

1. Data is stored in tables called relations.

2. Relations can be normalized.
3. In normalized relations, values saved are atomic values.
4. Each row in a relation contains a unique value
5. Each column in a relation contains values from a same domain.

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6.

SQL (Structured Query Language)

What is SQL?

SQL is Structured Query Language, which is a computer language for storing, manipulating and retrieving
data stored in relational database. SQL is the standard language for Relation Database System. All
relational database management systems like MySQL, MS Access, Oracle, Sybase, Informix, postgres and
SQL Server use SQL as standard database language.

Why SQL?

Allows users to access data in relational database management systems.

Allows users to describe the data.

Allows users to define the data in database and manipulate that data.

Allows to embed within other languages using SQL modules, libraries & pre-compilers.

Allows users to create and drop databases and tables

SQL Process

SQL Query

Query Language Parser + Optimiser

processor

File Manager
DBMS Engine +
Transaction
Manager

Physical
Database

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When you are executing an SQL command for any RDBMS, the system determines the best way to carry
out your request and SQL engine figures out how to interpret the task.

There are various components included in the process. These components are Query Dispatcher,
Optimization Engines, Classic Query Engine and SQL Query Engine, etc. Classic query engine handles all
non-SQL queries, but SQL query engine won't handle logical files

SQL Commands

The standard SQL commands to interact with relational databases are CREATE, SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE,
DELETE and DROP. These commands can be classified into groups based on their nature.

DDL Data Definition Language:

CREATE Creates a new table, a view of a table, or other object in database
ALTER Modifies an existing database object, such as a table.
DROP Deletes an entire table, a view of a table or other object in the database.
DML Data Manipulation Language:
INSERT Creates a record
UPDATE Modifies records
DELETE Deletes records
DCL Data Control Language:
GRANT Gives a privilege to user
REVOKE Takes back privileges granted from user
DQL Data Query Language:
SELECT Retrieves certain records from one or more tables

Database concepts

A database is a collection of logically related records.

A relational database stores its data in 2-dimensional tables.

A table is a two-dimensional structure made up of rows (tuples, records) and columns (attributes, fields).

Example: a table of students engaged in sports activities, where a student is allowed to participate in at
most one activity

Student ID Activity Fee

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100 Skiing 200

150 Swimming 50

175 Squash 50

200 Swimming 50

Table Characteristics

1. Field

Every table is broken up into smaller entities called fields. The fields in the CUSTOMERS table
consist of Student ID, Activity, Fee.

A field is a column in a table that is designed to maintain specific information about every record
in the table.

2. Record (Row)

A record, also called a row of data, is each individual entry that exists in a table. For example,
there are 4 records in the above table. Following is a single row of data or record in the
CUSTOMERS table.

3. Column

each column has a unique attribute name

each column (attribute) description (metadata) is stored in the database

order is unimportant

all entries in a column have the same data type

4. Primary Keys

a primary key is an attribute or a collection of attributes whose value(s) uniquely identify each
row in a relation

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Student ID Activity Fee

100 Skiing 200

150 Swimming 50

175 Squash 50

200 Swimming 50

a primary key should be minimal: it should not contain unnecessary attributes

we assume that a student is allowed to participate in at most one activity then the only possible
primary key in the above table is StudentID

Sometimes there is more than one possible choice. Each possible choice is called a candidate key

If we allow the students to participate in more than one activity then the only possible primary
key is the combined value of StudentID and Activity

such a multi-attribute primary key is called a composite key or concatenated key

5. Composite Keys

A table can only have one primary key but sometimes the primary key can be made up of several
fields

Concatenation means putting two things next to one another.

License Plate is not a possible primary key, because two different cars can have the same license
plate number if they’re from different states but if we concatenate LicensePlate and State, the
resulting value of (LicensePlate, State) must be unique.

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example: “LVR120NJ” and “LVR120CT”

6. Foreign Key

A foreign key is an attribute or a collection of attributes whose value are intended to match the
primary key of some related record (usually in a different table)

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primary key in STATE table: StateAbbrev

primary key in CITY table: (StateAbbrev, CityName)

foreign key in CITY relation: StateAbbrev

Database Design
Database design provides a means to represent real world entities in a form that can be processed by the
computer. Database models present a process of abstracting real world entities into computer
representations.

To develop a good design, one has to understand the meaning of information and the intended use of
stored representation within the computer system. Once we develop the understanding and identify the
use of information in the application, we can determine how much and what kind of information we
require.

After determination of application’s information requirement, it will be clear that which data entities
represent information redundancies, entities that are critical, useful and are not related to the
applications.

It is important to collect and analyze the static and dynamic information available about real world
application before starting the database design.

For evolving a good database design, it is important that one uses a model, a database design model. The
database design models have following benefits.

They provide a means to represent real-world objects in computer usable form

They capture and represent associations and relationships among the real-world objects, allowing the
application designers to capture the dynamic nature of the real-world enterprise’s activities.

They define how the objects in the application interact in logical terms

They allow the database designer to capture static and dynamic organization and flow of information
within the modeled enterprise.

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They allow designers and users of the system to better understand the static and dynamic behavior of the
system being modeled.

They help in improving the maintainability, scalability and reliability of the system.

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Steps of Database Design

1. Requirement analysis

To determine how to construct the DBMS for an application, the designer must first determine
the scope of the problem requiring the database system.

Requirement analysis are used to define the scope of the requirement of an application

It includes

Defining the human factors of the application

Defining the application’s functionality

Defining all the information managed and used by the application

Determining from where to where all interfaces to an application are derived

Identifying all the resource requirements including hardware, software and other physical
resources.

Deciding on the security requirements and mechanisms

Defining the quality, reliability, performance and operational aspect of the application.

2. Information Modeling

The objective of information modeling is to identify the major entities that are fundamental in an
application and model them in the target database schema model

The information collected during the requirement analysis stage forms the input for information
modeling. This information will enable the database designer to fully and correctly define the
major entities to be modeled in the database

The attributes that define the entities of the application are grouped together according to the
data model used and stored for further reference.

3. Design Constraints

The database systems require certain controls and limits for it to truly represent the real-world
system behavior.

These limits or controls are called constraints in database parlance

There are many kinds of database constraints as follows

a. Structural Constraint
b. Type Constraint
c. Range Constraint

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d. Relationship Constraint
e. Temporal Constraint

1. Structural Constraint

The structure of the information within the database gives an idea about entities in the database.

For example, simple data structures are represented using simple structures while complex data
structures will need advanced structures.

Structural constraints are specified to force the placement of information into structures that best
matches the application

2. Type constraints

A type constraint limits the application to only one representation of information for an entity’s
attribute.

For example, the database designer might want to limit the name attribute to a fixed length
character string, the age attribute to a number etc. Type constraints allow a limitation of the range
of information representations that an attribute can have.

3. Range Constraints

Range constraints can limit the values an attribute can take. It refers to the possible values that a
particular data item can have. Range constraints can be used to limit the value of a particular
attribute within a range.

For example, We can specify that the employee numbers should be in the range 1000-9999.

4. Relational constraints

These constraints represent relationships on values between entities. For example, there could
be a relationship constraint between the entities Manager and Employee that the maximum
bonus of manager should not be greater than six times that of the employee

5. Temporal Constraints

These constraints indicate the time period for which some information is valid. For example, the
value of attribute sale tax or exercise duty is valid for a specific period. Once the period is over,
new values will come into effect.

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Database Security
Database security involves protecting a database from unauthorized access, malicious destruction and
even any accidental loss or misuse. Due to the high value of data incorporate databases, there is strong
motivation for unauthorized users to gain access to it, for instance, competitors or dissatisfied employees

The competitors may have strong motivation to access confidential information about product
development plans, cost-saving initiatives and customer profiles.

Some may want to access information regarding unannounced financial results, business transactions and
even customers credit card numbers. They may not only steal the valuable information, in fact, if they
have access to the database, they may even destroy it and great havoc may occur.

Fig: Threats to Computer System

There are various ways how we can secure our system. The types of computer-based controls to threats
on computer systems range from physical controls to administrative policies and procedures.

1. Authorization

Authorization is the granting of a right or privilege that enables a subject to have legitimate access
to a system or a system’s object.

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Usually, a user or subject can gain access to or a system through individual user accounts where
each user is given a unique identifier, which is used by the operating system to determine that
they have the authorization to do so.

2. Access Control

Access controls to a database system is based on the granting and revoking of privileges. A
privilege allows a user to create or access (that is read, write or modify) a database object or to
execute a DBMS utility.

The DBMS keeps track of how these privileges are granted to users and possibly revoked, and
ensures that at all times only users with necessary privileges can access an object.

3. Views

A view is created by querying one or more of the base tables, producing a dynamic result table
for the user at the time of the request. The user may be allowed to access the view but not the
base tables which the view is based. The view mechanism hides some parts of the database from
certain users and the user is not aware of the existence of any attributes or rows that are missing
from the view.

4. Backup and recovery

Backup is the process of periodically taking a copy of the database and log file to offline storage
media. Backup is very important for a DBMS to recover the database following a failure or
damage.

5. Encryption

Encryption is the process of encoding of the data using a special algorithm that renders the data
unreadable by any program without the decryption key . Data encryption can be used to protect
highly sensitive data like customer credit card numbers or user password. Some DBMS products
include encryption routines that would automatically encode the sensitive data when they are
stored or transmitted over communication channels

6. RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks)

The DBMS should continue to operate even though if one of the hardware components fails. The
hardware that the DBMS is running on must be fault-tolerant where the DBMS should continue
operating and processing even if there is hardware failure.

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The main hardware components that should be fault-tolerant are disk drives, disk controllers,
CPU, power supplies and cooling fans

Data Warehouse
Data Warehouse is a collection of data designed to support management decision making. The primary
goal of a data warehouse is providing access to the data of an organization, data consistency, capacity to
separate and combine data, inclusion of tools set to query, analyze and present information, publishing
user data, driving business engineering etc.

A data warehouse essentially combines information from several sources into one comprehensive
database. For example, in the business world, a data warehouse might incorporate customer information
from a company's point-of-sale systems (the cash registers), its website, its mailing lists and its comment
cards. Alternatively, it might incorporate all the information about employees, including time cards,
demographic data, salary information, etc.

Fig: Concept of Data Warehouse

By combining all of this information in one place, a company can analyze its customers in a more holistic
way, ensuring that it has considered all the information available. Data warehousing also makes data
mining possible, which is the task of looking for patterns in the data that could lead to higher sales and
profits.

The collection of data used by data warehouse may be characterized as subject-oriented, integrated, non-
volatile and time-variants.

1. Subject Oriented

Data is arranged and optimized to provide answer to questions from diverse functional areas.
Data is organized and summarized by topic like Sales/Marketing/Finance/Distribution etc.

2. Integrated

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The data warehouse is a centralized, consolidated database that integrates data derived from the
entire organization.

3. Multiple Sources
4. Diverse Sources
5. Diverse Formats
6. Time Variant

The Data Warehouse represents the flow of data through time. It contains projected data from
statistical models. Data is periodically uploaded then time-dependent data is recomputed.

7. Non-Volatile

Once data is entered it is NEVER removed. It represents the company’s entire history–Near term
history is continually added to it. It is always growing and must support terabyte databases and
multiprocessors. It is Read-Only database for data analysis and query processing

Data Warehouse Architecture

The main benefits of implementing a data warehouse are cost-effective decision-making, better business
intelligence, enhanced customer service, business re-engineering, information system re-engineering etc.

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Data Mining
Data mining refers to extracting or mining knowledge from large amounts of data. It is the computational
process of discovering patterns in large data sets involving methods at the intersection of artificial
intelligence, machine learning, statistics, and database systems.

The overall goal of the data mining process is to extract information from a data set and transform it into
an understandable structure for further use.

The key properties of data mining are

1. Automatic discovery of patterns

2. Prediction of likely outcomes
3. Creation of actionable information
4. Focus on large datasets and databases

Given databases of sufficient size and quality, data mining technology can generate new business
opportunities by providing following capabilities

1. Automated prediction of trends and behaviors

Data mining automates the process of finding predictive information in large databases. A typical
example of a predictive problem is targeted marketing. Data mining uses data on past
promotional mailings to identify the targets most likely to maximize return on investment in
future mailings.

2. Automated discovery of previously unknown patterns

Data mining tools sweep through databases and identify previously hidden patterns in one step.
An example of pattern discovery is the analysis of retail sales data to identify seemingly unrelated
products that are often purchased together. Other pattern discovery problems include detecting
fraudulent credit card transactions and identifying anomalous data that could represent data
entry keying errors

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Tasks of Data Mining

Data mining involves six common classes of tasks;

1. Anomaly detection (Outlier/change/deviation detection)

The identification of unusual data records, that might be interesting or data errors that require
further investigation.

2. Association rule learning (Dependency modelling)

It searches for relationships between variables. For example a supermarket might gather data on
customer purchasing habits. Using association rule learning, the supermarket can determine
which products are frequently bought together and use this information for marketing purposes.
This is sometimes referred to as market basket analysis.

3. Clustering

It is the task of discovering groups and structures in the data that are in some way or another
"similar", without using known structures in the data.

4. Classification

It is the task of generalizing known structure to apply to new data. For example, an e-mail
program might attempt to classify an e-mail as "legitimate" or as "spam".

5. Regression

It attempts to find a function which models the data with the least error.

6. Summarization

It provides more compact representation of the data set, including visualization and report
generation

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Architecture of Data Mining

Fig: Architecture of Data Mining

1. Knowledge Base:

This is the domain knowledge that is used to guide the search or evaluate the interestingness of
resulting patterns. Such knowledge can include concept hierarchies, used to organize attributes
or attribute values into different levels of abstraction.

2. Data Mining Engine:

This is essential to the data mining system and ideally consists of a set of functional modules for
tasks such as characterization, association and correlation analysis, classification, prediction,
cluster analysis, outlier analysis, and evolution analysis

3. Pattern Evaluation Module:

This component typically employs interestingness measures interacts with the data mining
modules so as to focus the search toward interesting patterns. It may use interestingness
thresholds to filter out discovered patterns. For efficient data mining, it is highly recommended

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to push the evaluation of pattern interestingness as deep as possible into the mining process so
as to confine the search to only the interesting patterns.

4. User interface:

This module communicates between users and the data mining system, allowing the user to
interact with the system by specifying a data mining query or task, providing information to help
focus the search, and performing exploratory data mining based on the intermediate data mining
results.

In addition, this component allows the user to browse database and data warehouse schemas or
data structures, evaluate mined patterns, and visualize the patterns in different forms

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Database Administrator
A database administrator (DBA) is a specialized computer systems administrator who maintains a
successful database environment by directing or performing all related activities to keep the data secure.

The top responsibility of a DBA is to maintain data integrity. This means the DBA will ensure that data is
secure from unauthorized access but is available to users.

DBA is responsible for backing up systems in case of power outages or other disasters. A DBA is also
frequently involved in tasks related to training employees in database management and use, designing,
implementing, and maintaining the database system and establishing policies and procedures related to
the organization's data management policy.

Database administrator can be classified as

1. System DBA Overview

System DBAs typically have a background in system architecture and are responsible for the
physical and technical aspects of a database. This can include installing upgrades and patches to
fix program bugs and ensuring that the database works properly in a firm's computer system.

2. Application DBA Overview

Application DBAs use complex programming languages to write or debug programs that work with
the database. Usually this database has been designed for a specific application or a set of
applications, such as customer service software.

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