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CBSE Class–10 Information Technology

Revision Notes
Database Management System
Concept Of Database Management System

Relevant Knowledge
A database is an organized collection of data. You can visualize it as a container of information.
The data is typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality (for example, the availability of rooms in
hotels), in a way that supports processes requiring this information (for example, finding a hotel with facilities
such as Laundry, GYM etc…).
Suppose if you own a stationary shop, you need to keep detailed records of the materials available in your shop.
You also need to store information about pricing, stock levels for reordering, old stocks, etc. While in the
manual system, you would maintain several files with different bits of information; in the computerized system
you would use database programs such as Microsoft Access, OpenOffice.org Base, and MySQL, to organize the
data as per your business need. The database concept has evolved since the 1960s to ease increasing difficulties
in designing, building, and maintaining complex information systems (typically with many concurrent end-
users, and with a large amount of diverse data). In this lesson, you will learn database concepts and to work
with a Database Management System (DBMS).
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Database Management System

A database management system is a software package with computer programs that controls the creation,
maintenance, and use of a database. It allows organizations to conveniently develop databases for various
applications. A database is an integrated collection of data records, files, and other objects. A DBMS allows
different user application programs to concurrently access the same database. Well known DBMSs include
Oracle, IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Access, PostgreSQL, MySQL, FoxPro, and SQLite.
Data can be organized into two types:

Flat File: Data is stored in a single table. Usually suitable for less amount of data.
Relational: Data is stored in multiple tables and the tables are linked using a common field. Relational
is suitable for medium to large amount of data.

Database Servers
Database servers are dedicated computers that hold the actual databases and run only the DBMS and related
software. Typically databases available on the database servers are accessed through command line or graphic
user interface tools referred to as Frontends; database servers are referred to as Back-ends. Such type of data
access is referred to as a client-server model.

Advantages of Database

Reduces Data Redundancy

The database management systems contain multiple files that are to be stored in many different
locations in a system or even across multiple systems. Because of this, there were sometimes multiple
copies of the same file which lead to data redundancy.
This is prevented in a database as there is a single database and any change in it is reflected
immediately. Because of this, there is no chance of encountering duplicate data.

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Sharing of Data
In a database, the users of the database can share the data among themselves. There are various levels
of authorisation to access the data, and consequently the data can only be shared based with the
authorized users.
Many remote users can also access the database simultaneously and share the data between
themselves.
Data Integrity
Data integrity means that the data is accurate and consistent in the database. Data Integrity is very
important as there are multiple databases in a DBMS. All of these databases contain data that is visible
to multiple users. So it is necessary to ensure that the data is correct and consistent in all the databases
and for all the users.
Data Security
Data Security is an important concept in a database. Only authorised users should be allowed to access
the database and their identity should be authenticated using a username and password. Unauthorised
users should not be allowed to access the database under any circumstances as it violates the integrity
constraints.
Privacy
The privacy rule in a database states that only the authorized users can access a database according to
its privacy constraints. To secure data levels are set in the database and a user can only view the data
which is allowed to be seen. For example - In social networking sites, access constraints are different
for different accounts a user may want to access.
Backup and Recovery
Database Management System automatically takes care of backup and recovery. The users don't need
to backup data periodically because this is taken care of by the DBMS. Moreover, it also restores the
database after a crash or system failure to its previous condition.
Data Consistency
Data consistency is ensured in a database because there is no data redundancy. Data Consistency
means there should be multiple mismatching copies of the same data. All data appears consistently
across the database and must be same for all the users viewing the database. Moreover, any changes
made to the database are immediately reflected to all the users and there is no data inconsistency.

Features of Database
Let’s look at the example of your address book. What do you store in an address book? You may have people’s
name, address, phone number and maybe even their birthdays. There is a common element here – people. In
this example, each person is considered an “ITEM”.
So, database will store information about that person. When you were recording information in your address
book, what did you ask the people? What is your address? What is your phone number? etc. Each question that
we ask about our ITEM is a “field”. Now, say you make new friends and want to add their information to your
address book. You will ask questions, get the answers and create a new “record”. So, a record is a set of
information (made up of fields) stored in your database about one of the items. A “value” is the actual text or
numerical amount or date that you put in while adding information to your database. When you put all the
information together in a grid (like you do in a spreadsheet), a collection of similar records creates a table.
There are some key features of a database:

1. A database can have one or many tables. An address book example is a very simple one, in real world there
are many more details involved. A big company would have in its database, one table for its products, one
table for its suppliers, one table for its customer details, one for orders received and maybe many others.

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2. Each table in a database contains information about one type of item. So, a database is a container that
holds tables and other objects and manages how they can be used.
3. Another very important thing to remember is that when we put in information, we may have people with
the same name (there can be more than one Charu Arora) or the same address (members of a family). But
when creating a database an important feature is record uniqueness in every table. it is important to be
able to distinguish between different items having duplicate values.
Uniqueness helps to avoid accidental duplication of records caused by user or computer error. This can be
achieved by using some number or value that uniquely identifies a record. If such a unique value does not
exist in your fields, as the database designer, you can create a special additional field in a table where
unique numbers or values can be assigned for each new entry. Therefore, every table has a key field which
ensures that there are 100% unique values throughout the database.
4. Every database table should have one or more fields designated as key. You can assign a unique value to
this key for differentiating records that may have similar names or addresses.

Look at the following example of student database:

Name Standard Section

Ram X A

Ravi X A

Ravi X A

Sanjay X B

In this table, it will be extremely difficult to differentiate between student records as they have names that are
similar. To differentiate, you can add additional field - roll number - that will be unique for each record
(example below).

Roll no Name Standard Section

19 Ram X A

20 Ravi X A

21 Ravi X A

22 Sanjay X B

EXAMPLE OF RDBMS
You had used the example of an address book in the previous section. An address book uses only one table. But
look at a different situation. If you are a dealer selling a single type of item and want to record details of your
sales in the past month and also want the details of the client who purchased the item (name, address, phone,
date purchased, number of items bought etc), what would you do?
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You create a table Sales with all the details:

OrderID Customer Name Customer Address Phone Sale Date #ItemsBought

000789 Sheela Arora xxxxxNoida 2444490 01/11/12 3

000790 Vaibhav Mittal xxxxGhaziabad 2443358 01/11/12 4

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000791 Saurabh Tayal xxxxNew Delhi 2678945 01/11/12 12

000792 Vaibhav Mittal xxxxGhaziabad 2443258 02/11/12 23

000793 Prashant Singh xxxxRohtak 6784534 02/11/12 4

000794 Shila Arora xxxxxNoida 2444490 03/11/12 18

000795 Vaibhav Mittal xxxxGhaziabad 2443258 03/11/12 45

Do you see a problem here? Every time you sell an item to Sheela or Vaibhav or any other customer (client) you
need to store the details again. So, what is the solution? Create one table for client details and another for sale
details. Since each record has to be unique, you can insert a ClientID field to uniquely identify each client in the
client table. In the Sales table, you would give a point of reference which “points” to a particular record in the
Client table.
In the example here, the field ClientID occurs once in the Client table, but since one client can place many
orders, it occurs a number of times in the Sales table. Since we cannot have an order without a customer, we
call Client the parent and Sales the child table. Related tables like these share a common field. You store data
about people once, but refer to those people many times in the database.
When data is to be stored, maintained, and retrieved from multiple tables then special database software are
required known as Relational Database Management System. In the RDBMS data can be integrated using keys.
These are Primary Key, Composite Primary Key, and Foreign Key.
This unique field is called the Primary Key (PK). A primary key is a unique value that identifies a row in a
table. In our example, ClientID is the primary key in the Client table. Primary Keys are also indexed in the
database, making it faster for the database to search for a record. When primary key constraint is applied on
one or more columns then it is known as Composite Primary Key.
The referred field ClientID which occurs in the Sales table is called the Foreign key (FK). Hence, the foreign key
identifies a column or set of columns in one (referencing) table that refers to a column or set of columns in
another (referenced) table. The “one” side of a relation is always the parent, and provides the PK attributes to
be copied. The “many” side of a relation is always the child, into which the FK attributes are copied. Memorize
it: one, parent, PK; many, child, FK.

Another point to remember is that the end users will/may never have direct access to the database. They can
only see what you permit them to and can select only from the options you give them.

RDBMS
A relational database is a type of database. It uses a structure that allows us to identify and access data in
relation to another piece of data in the database. Often, data in a relational database is organized into tables.

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