Lecture 2

• Database system concepts & Architecture

• Conceptual Data modeling and Database Design

Fundamentals of Database
 DATABASE SYSTEM CONCEPTS & ARCHITECTURE

Data model and their categories

Schemas, Instances and states

Level of Abstraction

Data Independence and Classification of DBMS

Fundamentals of Database
 CONT’D…

 Data model: a collection of concepts that can be used to describe the structure of a database.

 Structure of Database : data types, relationships, and constraints

 Basic operations

 Categories of data model

1. High-level or Conceptual data models: provide concepts that are close to the way many users
perceive data: uses

 Entities

 Attributes

 Relationships

Fundamentals of Database
 CONT’D…

2. Representational or implementation data models: which provide concepts that

may be easily understood by end users

 widely used relational data model, constraints, operations and languages (standard
SQL).

3. Low-level or Physical data models: provide concepts that describe the details
of how data is stored on the computer storage media. (computer specialists, not for
end users)

 record formats, record orderings, and access paths (search by Index or Key word)

Fundamentals of Database
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Schema

Description of a database is called the database schema, which is

specified during database design and is not expected to change frequently.

A displayed schema is called a schema diagram

Fundamentals of Database
 CONT’D…

schema diagram

Fundamentals of Database
 RELATION SCHEMA

The Schema (or description) of a Relation:

 Denoted by R(A1, A2, .....An)

 R is the name of the relation

 The attributes of the relation are A1, A2, ..., An

Example:

CUSTOMER (Cust-id, Cust-name, Address, Phone#)

 CUSTOMER is the relation name

 Defined over the four attributes: Cust-id, Cust-name, Address, Phone#

Fundamentals of Database
 In a given database state, each schema construct has its own current set of instances; for
example, the STUDENT construct will contain the set of individual student entities
(records) as its instances.

 Valid state is a state that satisfies the structure and constraints of DB

Fundamentals of Database
THE THREE LEVEL OF ABSTRACTION (THE
THREE-SCHEMA ARCHITECTURE)
 CONT’D…
Goal: separate the user application from physical database

1. Internal level: describes detail physical storage structure of the DB.

2. Conceptual level: hides the detail of physical storage structure and focus on describing entities,
data type etc. what data is stored

3. External level: describes the part of the DB that the user interested in and hide the rest of the
database from the user group.

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 CONT’D…
Data Independence:

We can define two types of data independence

1. Logical data independence: is the capacity to change the conceptual schema

without having to change external schemas or application programs. (expand by
adding data item, reduce)
2. Physical data independence: is the capacity to change the internal schema
without having to change the conceptual schema
For example, by creating additional access structures - to improve the performance
of retrieval or update.
Fundamentals of Database
 CONT’D…

Classification of DBMSs

We can classify DBMS based on different criterion

 Based on which data model used

 number of users supported by the system (single user vs multi user)

 number of sites over which the database is distributed.(centralized vs distributed)

Fundamentals of Database
 READING ASSIGNMENT

• Database system environment

• Centralized and client-server Architecture
• XML Data model which is standard for exchanging data over the Web
 Chapter 2

Conceptual Data modeling and Database Design

Fundamentals of Database
 OUTLINE

Basic concepts:
 Relation

 Entity, attributes

constraints

ER Model Concepts

ER Diagrams - Notations

Fundamentals of Database, Chapter 1

 CONT’D…

Informally, a relation looks like a table of values.

A relation typically contains a set of rows.

The data elements in each row represent certain facts that correspond to a real-world entity or
relationship

In the formal model, rows are called tuples

 Entity: represents a real-world object or concept

 Relationships: among two or more entities represents an association among the entities.

Each column has a column header that gives an indication of the meaning of the data items
 In the formal model, the column header is called an attribute name (or just attribute)

 Attributes : represents some property of interest that further describes an entity.

Fundamentals of Database
EXAMPLES OF A RELATION

Fundamentals of Database
 CONT’D…

Each attribute has a domain or a set of valid values.

 For example, the domain of Cust-id is 6 digit numbers

A tuple is an ordered set of values (enclosed in angled brackets ‘< … >’)

Each value is derived from an appropriate domain.

A row in the CUSTOMER relation is a 4-tuple and would consist of four values, for example:
 <“632895”, "John Smith", "101 Main St. Atlanta, GA 30332", "(404) 894-2000">

 This is called a 4-tuple as it has 4 values

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 CONT’D…

A domain D Examples:

• Usa_phone_numbers. The set of ten-digit phone numbers valid in the United

States.

• Grade_point_averages. Possible values of computed grade point averages; each

must be a real (floating-point) number between 0 and 4.

• Student_ages: Greater than 18

• Employee_age: Possible ages of employees in a company; each must be an

integer value between 15 and 80.
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
A domain has a logical definition:


Example: “USA_phone_numbers” are the set of 10 digit phone numbers valid in the U.S.


A domain also has a data-type or a format defined for it.


The USA_phone_numbers may have a format: (ddd)ddd-dddd where each d is a decimal digit.


Dates have various formats such as year, month, date formatted as yyyy-mm-dd, or as dd

mm,yyyy etc.

Fundamentals of Database
 PROPERTIES OF RELATIONS

 Tuple in a relation do not have any particular order

 Each value in a tuple is an atomic value; that is, it is not divisible into
components within the framework of the basic relational model. Hence,
composite and multi value attributes are not allowed

 NULL values, which are used to represent the values of attributes that may be
unknown or may not apply to a tuple.

Fundamentals of Database
 RELATIONAL MODEL CONSTRAINTS

Constraints are conditions that must hold on all valid relation states.

There are three main types of constraints in the relational model:

 Key constraints

 Entity integrity constraints

 Referential integrity constraints

Another implicit constraint is the domain constraint

 Every value in a tuple must be from the domain of its attribute (or it could be null, if allowed for that
attribute)

Fundamentals of Database
 KEY
CONSTRAINTS

 All tuple in a relation must be distinct. This means that no two tuple can have the
same combination of values for all their attributes

 Suppose that we denote one subset of attributes by SK; then for any two distinct
tuple t1 and t2 in a relation state r of R, we have the constraint that:
t1[SK]≠t2[SK]

 Any such set of attributes SK is called a super key of the relation schema R

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 CONT’D…

 A super key SK specifies a uniqueness constraint that no two distinct tuples in any
state r of R can have the same value for SK.

 A super key can have redundant attributes, however, so a more useful concept is
that of a key, which has no redundancy

 key satisfies two properties:

1. Two distinct tuples in any state of the relation cannot have identical values for
(all) the attributes in the key. This first property also applies to a super key.

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 CONT’D…

2. It is a minimal super key—that is, a super key from which we cannot remove any
attributes and still have the uniqueness constraint in condition 1 hold. This property
is not required by a super key. Hence a key is also a super key but not vice versa.
Consider the STUDENT relation .

The attribute set {Ssn} is a key of STUDENT because no two student tuples can
have the same value for Ssn. Any set of attributes that includes Ssn—for example,
{Ssn,Name,Age}—is a super key

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 CONT’D…

 The value of a key attribute can be used to identify uniquely each tuple in the relation.
For example, the Ssn value 305-61-2435 identifies uniquely the tuple corresponding to
Benjamin Bayer in the STUDENT relation

 a relation schema may have more than one key. In this case, each of the keys is called a
candidate key. For example, the CAR relation has two candidate keys: License_number
and Engine_serial_number.

 It is common to designate one of the candidate keys as the primary key of the relation.

Fundamentals of Database
 CONT’D…

Notice that when a relation schema has several candidate keys, the choice of one to
become the primary key is somewhat arbitrary; however, it is usually better to choose
a primary key with a single attribute or a small number of attributes. The other
candidate keys are designated as unique keys, and are not underlined.

Fundamentals of Database
 ENTITY INTEGRITY
CONSTRAINT

 The entity integrity constraint states that no primary key value can be NULL. This
is because the primary key value is used to identify individual tuple in a relation.
Having NULL values for the primary key implies that we cannot identify some tuple

 Key constraints and entity integrity constraints are specified on individual

relations

Fundamentals of Database
 REFERENTIAL INTEGRITY
CONSTRAINT

 The referential integrity constraint is specified between two relations and is used to maintain the consistency among
tuple in the two relations.

 Informally, the referential integrity constraint states that a tuple in one relation that refers to another relation must refer to
an existing tuple in that relation.

Foreign key

 The conditions for a foreign key, given below , specify a referential integrity constraint between the two relation schemas
R1 and R2.

 A set of attributes FK in relation schema R1 is a foreign key of R1 that references relation R2 if it satisfies the following
rules:

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 CONT’D…
1. The attributes in FK have the same domain(s) as the primary key attributes PK of R2; the
attributes FK are said to reference or refer to the relation R2.

2. A value of FK in a tuple t1 of the current state r1(R1) either occurs as a value of PK for
some tuple t2 in the current state r2(R2) or is NULL.

In the former case, we have t1[FK] = t2[PK], and we say that the tuple t1 references or
refers to the tuple t2.

In this definition,R1 is called the referencing relation and R2 is the referenced relation. If
these two conditions hold, a referential integrity constraint from R1 to R2 is said to hold.

Fundamentals of Database
 CONT’D…
• Draw relational database schema that we call
COMPANY = {EMPLOYEE, DEPARTMENT, DEPT_LOCATIONS, PROJECT}

• EMPLOYEE (A1,A2… An)

• DEPARTMENT,
• DEPT_LOCATIONS,
• PROJECT,

Fundamentals of Database
 CONT’D…
• Draw relational database schema that we call COMPANY = {EMPLOYEE, DEPARTMENT,
DEPT_LOCATIONS, PROJECT, WORKS_ON, DEPENDENT}
• EMPLOYEE (A1,A2… An)
• DEPARTMENT,
• DEPT_LOCATIONS,
• PROJECT,
• WORKS_ON,
• DEPENDENT

Fundamentals of Database
 CONT’D…

 All the above constraint also called state constraints because they define the constraints that a valid
state of the database must satisfy.

Fundamentals of Database
 RELATIONAL DATABASES AND RELATIONAL DATABASE SCHEMAS

 The definitions and constraints we have discussed so far apply to single relations and
their attributes.

 A relational database schema S is a set of relation schemas S = {R1,R2,...,Rm} and a set

of integrity constraints IC.

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 CONT’D…
 A database state that does not obey all the integrity constraints is called an invalid
state, and a state that satisfies all the constraints in the defined set of integrity
constraints IC is called a valid state.

 Each relational DBMS must have a data definition language (DDL) for defining a
relational database schema.

 Current relational DBMSs are mostly using SQL for this purpose

Fundamentals of Database
 UPDATE OPERATIONS AND CONSTRAINT VIOLATION

 The operations of the relational model can be categorized into retrievals and
updates

 The three basic operations that can change the states of relations in the
database: Insert, Delete, and Update (or Modify). They insert new data,
delete old data, or modify existing data records

 Whenever these operations are applied, the integrity constraints specified on

the relational database schema should not be violated.

Fundamentals of Database
 CONT’D…

The Insert Operation

 The Insert operation provides a list of attribute values for a new tuple t that is to be inserted
into a relation R

Insert can violate any of the four types of constraints discussed in the previous section.

Domain constraints can be violated if an attribute value is given that does not appear in the
corresponding domain or is not of the appropriate data type.

Key constraints can be violated if a key value in the new tuple t already exists in another tuple
in the relation r(R).

Entity integrity can be violated if any part of the primary key of the new tuple t is NULL.

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 CONT’D…


Referential integrity: It can be violated if the value of any foreign key in t refers

to a tuple that does not exist in the referenced relation.

Operation:
Insert <‘Cecilia’,‘F’,‘Kolonsky’, NULL,‘1960-04-05’,‘6357WindyLane, Katy, TX’,F,28000,NULL,4> into
EMPLOYEE.
Result: This insertion violates the entity integrity constraint (NULL for the primary key Ssn),so it is rejected.
Operation:
Insert<‘Alicia’,‘J’,‘Zelaya’,‘999887777’,‘1960-04-05’,‘6357WindyLane,Katy, TX’,F,28000,‘987654321’,4>
into EMPLOYEE.
Result: This insertion violates the key constraint because another tuple with the same Ssn value already exists
in the EMPLOYEE relation, and so it is rejected.
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 CONT’D…

Operation: Insert <‘Cecilia’, ‘F’, ‘Kolonsky’, ‘677678989’, ‘1960-04-05’, ‘6357 Windswept,

Katy,TX’,F,28000,‘987654321’,7> into EMPLOYEE.

Result: This insertion violates the referential integrity constraint specified on Dno in EMPLOYEE
because no corresponding referenced tuple exists in DEPARTMENT with Dnumber = 7

Operation: Insert <‘Cecilia’,‘F’,‘Kolonsky’,‘677678989’,‘1960-04-05’,‘6357 Windy Lane,

Katy,TX’,F,28000,NULL,4> into EMPLOYEE.

Result: This insertion satisfies all constraints, so it is acceptable.

 If an insertion violates one or more constraints, the default option is to reject the insertion and
correctly input again.

Fundamentals of Database
 DELETION OPERATION
The Delete operation can violate only referential integrity

 This occurs if the tuple being deleted is referenced by foreign keys from other tuple in the
database

Operation

Delete the WORKS_ON tuple with Essn = ‘999887777’and Pno = 10.

 Result: This deletion is acceptable and deletes exactly one tuple.

Operation: Delete the EMPLOYEE tuple with Ssn = ‘999887777’.

 Result: This deletion is not acceptable, because there are tuple in WORKS_ON that refer to this
tuple. Hence, if the tuple in EMPLOYEE is deleted, referential integrity violations will result.

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 CONT’D…

Update Operation

Updating an attribute that is neither part of a primary key nor of a foreign key
usually causes no problems; the DBMS need only check to confirm that the new
value is the correct data type and domain.

Fundamentals of Database
 RELATIONAL DBMS

 RDBMS stands for Relational Database Management System.

 RDBMS is the basis for SQL, the data in RDBMS is stored in database objects called tables .

 Current popular relational DBMSs (RDBMSs) includes

 IBM DB2 (from IBM),

 Oracle (from Oracle),

 Sybase DBMS (from Sybase) and

 SQL Server and

 Access (from Microsoft).

 In addition, several open source systems, such as My SQL and Postgre SQL,are available

Fundamentals of Database