RDBMS Concepts
RDBMS Concepts
RDBMS Concepts
RDBMS
Concepts
RDBMS Concepts
1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 4
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RDBMS Concepts
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RDBMS Concepts
1. Introduction
The objective of this chapter is to introduce the main concepts of data storage and retrieval in
the context of database information systems.
It is intended that the SQL presented in this booklet be followed interactively and that you
should try all the given examples in the order in which they are presented. At the end of the
booklet you should have attained a thorough knowledge of SQL and its capabilities as an
interactive statement language.
In the main the SQL covered complies with the standard definition for SQL were proprietary
SQL features are referred to this will be made clear. On this basis the skills obtained from
this unit should be transferable across a wide range of RDBMS's which support SQL.
To facilitate interactive, study local RDBMS facilities will be made available to you.
To enable you to make effective use of your local facilities a number of RDBMS specific
appendices containing access instructions and other supplementary information specific to
your environment have been included.
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RDBMS Concepts
Data and its storage may be considered to be the heart of any information system. Data has
to be up-to-date, accurate, accessible in the required form and available to one or perhaps
many users at the same time.
For data to be of value it must be presented in a form that supports the various operational,
financial, managerial, decision-making, administrative and clerical activities within an
organisation.
To meet these objectives data needs to be stored efficiently - to avoid lengthy access times -
and with minimal duplication - to avoid lengthy update times and the possibility of
inconsistency and inaccuracy. For the data stored by a given organisation to have any value
at all its integrity (consistency and accuracy) must always be assured.
In this section we are going to consider what is know as the conceptual view (user view) of
stored data. As such we do not need to be concerned with how data is physically stored on
specific types of storage media; neither do we need to consider the various storage
structures and access methods applicable to retrieval of data from such media.
The data of an organisation takes the form of an abstract representation of objects and
events that occur within the organisation's environment. Within the context of an airline
company for example, such objects might include Aircraft, Passengers and Airports, and
include events such as Flights and the issuing of Tickets.
There are two principle approaches to the storage of data in a computer-based information
system. Data may be stored in separate files belonging to isolated information systems
operating within individual departments, or data may be stored in a database that may serve
as a resource available across all departments and functional areas. The following sections
consider these two approaches and their relative merits.
Before we consider the issues arising from file based storage let us firstly, establish some
general concepts and definitions relating to the storage of data in files.
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RDBMS Concepts
A file is a complete, named collection of information and the basic unit of storage that
enables a computer to distinguish one set of information from another. For example a file
named "Aircraft" might contain information about the different types of aircraft used by a
particular airline company and a file named "Airport" might hold details of all the airports from
which the airline operates.
2.2.2 Records
The data held within a file are organised into structured groups of related elements called
records. For example, a record describing an individual aircraft might be composed of the
data elements: “identifying number”, “name of manufacturer”; “description”, “classification”
(turbo-prop, jet, etc) “seating capacity” and so on. The aircraft file then contains zero, one, or
many such records; where each record describes an individual aircraft.
2.2.3 Fields
The individual elements of a record are referred to as fields. Hence from the example above,
“identifying number”, ”name of manufacturer”, “description”, “classification” and “seating
capacity”, each represent an individual field (element) of the aircraft record.
The data to be held within each field of a given record will possess certain characteristics in
terms of size (length measured in characters or digits) and type (numeric, alphabetic, dates,
etc). Each field of a record is allocated a particular data type that describes the allowed
characteristics of the data to be held by the field and further indicates the range of operations
which can be carried out on the field. For example, arithmetic operations would be valid on
fields containing numeric data but not on fields containing an address or a narrative
description.
2.2.5 Keys
A key is a field or combination of fields used to identify a record. When a key uniquely
identifies a record it is referred to as the primary key.
Continuing with the example of the Aircraft record, if a given value of the field “identifying
number” identifies an individual aircraft then it could serve as the primary key. Other fields
such as “manufacturer” for example, could also serve as alternative keys (secondary keys)
by which a set of records (eg all aircraft from a particular manufacturer) could be identified.
The use of individual data files each serving separate information system tends to lead to
situations in which an organisation maintains many copies of the same basic information.
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RDBMS Concepts
For example, consider a sales department which calculates bonuses payable to individual
sales personnel on the value of their sales; with actual bonus payments being made only
after confirmation that the sales invoices on which bonuses have been calculated have been
fully paid.
If the sales department was to operate its bonus scheme based on its own sales and receipts
files then the sales department would undoubtedly be holding copies of data such as
employee name, payroll number, invoice numbers and amounts received. These data would
already be recorded elsewhere in the organisation, perhaps by the personnel department and
by the accounts department.
A change in marital status resulting in a change of surname would result in the need to
update several files and queries against invoices resulting in debit or credit notes being
raised would also require the updating of several files.
Where several discrete files exist serving the immediate requirements of individual
departments there is a strong likelihood that the common or duplicated data held by these
files will get out of step with each other resulting in different versions of data being held by the
organisation. If the accounts receivable system in the example above issues a credit note
against an incorrectly totalled invoice and fails to advise the sales department of this then the
integrity of the sales department's files would be lost and as a result incorrect bonus
payments would be made.
Not withstanding the above consequences of file based information systems, taken from the
view point of an individual information system, it is a relatively easy matter to ensure that the
required files are designed to "perfectly" suit user/application needs. Taken in isolation, such
information systems are capable of presenting information in exactly the form required by
their users and also of providing highly efficient usage of storage and rapid retrieval times.
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RDBMS Concepts
For a generalised consideration of databases we may continue to apply the data storage
concepts (files, records, keys, etc) previously introduced for file based systems. However,
databases are not just a collection of files; through specific access controls provided by the
Database Management System (DBMS) databases are able to provide a central resource of
data that can be shared between users on an organisation wide basis.
To satisfy the information needs of users across an organisation the database has to be
designed (in terms of “files” and “record layouts”) in a generalised manner.
Consider the personnel and sales department's views of personnel records. The sales
department is only interested in a specific type of personnel record; those records for sales
men and women. The sales department might also only be interested in fields such as
payroll number, name and bonus. The personnel department would be interested in all
personnel records irrespective of job description (a field in the personnel record) and would
want record fields in addition to those of interest to the sales department. These might
include home-address, marital status, date-of-appointment, department, salary-scale and
scale-point, national insurance number and so on.
It is the role of the DBMS to provide facilities that enable data (from a generalised definition)
to be presented in the form required by specific users. So the DBMS should provide the
sales department with just those record fields which they require about sales personnel whilst
at the same time providing the personnel department with their requirements.
There are two major consequences arising from the shared usage of data, namely, security
and integrity.
Firstly, the DBMS must ensure that users are only allowed access to data that they are
authorised to access. In addition, access authorisation must also restrict the type of access;
limiting some users to read-only access for certain instances of data for example. So, if only
the accounts receivable users are permitted to adjust the value of invoices, by the issuing of
credit notes, then the sales department, whilst interested to see when full payment of an
invoice has been received, should not be permitted to change invoice records in any way.
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RDBMS Concepts
Secondly, the DBMS must also ensure that conflicting updates do not occur. In a stock
control system, a user updating the database for a customer order, must be given exclusive
access to the records of the ordered items so their “quantity on hand” fields may be updated.
Such exclusive access should prevent anyone from looking at out of date quantity on hand
figures and should also prevent two or more users from trying to update the same quantity on
hand values at the same time. This serialisation of record updating is controlled through the
DBMS, that in the case of the example above would issue locks on the records required by
each customer order transaction.
Because databases maintain data in a generalised form, converting this generalised form
into a series of user views as required, they are generally less efficient in terms of data
storage usage and in terms of access times compared with their individual counterpart file
based systems.
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3. Relational Databases
The relational model was developed by E F Codd at the IBM San Jose Research Laboratory
in the late 1960s. This work was published in 1970 under the title:
In this paper Codd defines the relational model and its capabilities mathematically.
Following this publication a number of research projects were undertaken in the early 1970s
with the aim of implementing a relational database management system. The earliest of
these projects included, System R at IBM, San Jose and INGRES at the University of
California, Berkeley.
The relational database model as defined by Codd included a number of alternative relational
query languages.
The INGRES project developed a query language called Quel that broadly complies with
Codd’s definition of a tuple relational calculus query language. Quel is still a part of the
INGRES DBMS available today; although in view of current trends SQL is generally chosen.
The System R project developed a series of query languages; the first of these called
SQUARE, was later developed into a more convenient form called SEQUEL. SEQUEL was
itself further developed into the form of today's SQL.
In 1986 the American National Standards Institute ANSI published an SQL standard the:
The DML part of the language is used to retrieve, delete and amend instances of data in the
database and where the DDL part of the language is used to describe the type of data to be
held by the database.
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RDBMS Concepts
In section 2 you were introduced to some general concepts and definitions relating to the
storage and retrieval of data. In a Relational Database all data may be viewed in the form of
simple two-dimensional tables and to distinguish this representation of data from that of other
representations we use a separate terminology to describe the data held in a Relational
Database.
There are in fact alternative terms used to describe the data in a relational database. The
first is taken from the formal definition of the relational model and the second is based on the
ability to view data in the form of simple tables. We will adopt the latter terminology for the
remainder of this booklet.
Equivalent Terms
Relational Databases Non Database
Relation Table File
Tuple Row Record
Attribute Column Field
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RDBMS Concepts
The table definitions for an "Airline Database" are given in detail in Appendix A6 and
summarised here.
The data held by these tables do not exist independently. Hence, there are a number of
inter-relationships that must be considered. The relationships between the tables in the
Airline Database are as follows:
• Each Flight has a specific type of Aircraft allocated to it; a given type of Aircraft may be
allocated to a number of different flights.
• Each Flight serves a particular Route; a Route being served by several Flights occurring
at different times of the day.
In a relational database, relationships such as these are implemented via so called foreign
keys.
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Any column of a given table constitutes a foreign key if it can contain value that refers to a
single row of another table; ie if the given column contains the value of the primary key of
another table. In the following example, Itinerary. TicketNo is a foreign key that supports
the one-to-many relationship between “ticket” and “itinerary”; ie a ticket comprises an itinerary
of one or more flight legs.
TICKET
100001 01-07-95 26
100002 25-08-95 28
100010 09-08-95 29
100011 11-08-95 24
100012 01-09-95 21
In Appendix A6 the primary key column(s) of each table appear underlined. If you look
closely you will notice that these columns also appear in other tables not underlined; where
they serve as a foreign key enabling one table to be referenced from another.
The ability to reference one table from another enables us to implement relationships
between one table and another.
For example, to find the seating capacity of the aircraft allocated to a particular flight we
would take the value of AircraftType for that flight, eg DC9, and look for the single row in the
Aircraft table with a key value of DC9. Conversely if we wanted to find all flights which have
been allocated with a DC9 aircraft we would list from the Flight table all rows with a value of
AircraftType equal to DC9.
The following exercise is designed to help you familiarise yourself with the tables of the
Airline Database and the relationships between them.
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RDBMS Concepts
Desk Exercise
Turn to the database schema and table contents given in Appendix A6 and attempt the
following questions:
1) Each airport is identified by a short code. What are the identification codes for Heathrow,
Leeds/Bradford and Brussels?
2) The airline provides flights on a number of different Routes; what is the description for
RouteNo 9.
3) On any given route the airline offers a number of different types of fare, "Standby Single",
"Eurobudget", etc. Find and list the complete range of "Return" fares offered by the
Airline.
5) What is the seating capacity (NoSeats) of the aircraft allocated to FlightNo BD412?
6) What are the names (AName) of the airports (FromAirport-ToAirport) used on FlightNo
BD80?
7) List the Itinerary (FlightNo, LegNo, FlightDate) for Ticket No 100001. What is the Fare for
this ticket and how much would the ticket cost?
8) List the names (AName) of the airports that will be visited by passenger R H Miller.
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The non-procedural nature of SQL is one of the principle characteristics of all 4GLs - Fourth
Generation Languages - and contrasts with 3GLs (eg, C, Pascal, Modula-2, COBOL, etc) in
which the user has to give particular attention to how data is to be accessed in terms of
storage method, primary/secondary indices, end-of-file conditions, error conditions (e.g.
Record NOT Found), and so on.
Sections 4.1 through 4.5 illustrate with examples the data retrieval capabilities of the SELECT
statement as well as introducing more general features of SQL such as arithmetic and logical
expressions which are equally as applicable to the UPDATE, DELETE and INSERT
statements which are dealt with separately in section 4.6.
Each section contains examples that illustrate the various options available with each
statement. You are advised to try out these examples for yourself. In addition, at the end of
each section there are a number of exercise queries designed to test your understanding of
the section.
Before proceeding further you should now refer to the appendices which explain how to
access to your local database facilities.
If you have any difficulties at this point ask your tutor for help.
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RDBMS Concepts
The simplest form of the SELECT statement consists of just two clauses.
SELECT column-list
FROM table-list ;
In order to list all the details (columns) recorded for each aircraft type we will list the name of
each column in the Aircraft table as follows.
Result:
For those queries in which all columns of a particular table are to be retrieved the column-list
may be replaced by an asterisk. Hence:
SELECT *
FROM Aircraft ;
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This query requires the selection of individual columns from the Passenger table and so we
simply list the columns required as follows:
Result:
name address
J Millar Englewood Cliffs
J D Ullman 1 Microsoft Way
A Smithson 16 Bedford St
D Etheridge 4 Maylands Avenue
E Simon 8 Cherry Street
D N Hamer 1 St Paul's Churchyard
D E Avison 5 Chancery Lane
G B Davis 25 Allenby Road
C Evans 63 Kew Green
A N Smith 81 Digby Crescent
T Pittman The Little House
J Peters 31 Lucas Road
K E Kendall 11 Rosedale Avenue
R H Miller 155 Kingston Road
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Example 4.1.3 - List all Flight No's with tickets issued against them
Flights with issued tickets are recorded in the Itinerary table. The following simple query lists
Flight No's from the Itinerary table.
SELECT FlightNo
FROM Itinerary ;
Result:
flight
BD80
BD95
BD80
BD95
BD82
BD54
BD776
BD655
BD652
BD775
BD772
BD655
BD652
BD412
BD419
BD412
BD419
BD224
BD255
BD256
BD275
BD412
BD582
BD589
BD332
BD51
BD774
BD659
BD658
BD771
BD54
31 rows retrieved
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However, a given FlightNo will appear as many times as the number of tickets issued for that
flight, therefore the result of this query contains duplicate rows. To remove duplicates from
the result of this sort of query SQL provides the DISTINCT function that is used as follows.
Result:
flight
BD224
BD225
BD256
BD275
BD332
BD412
BD419
BD51
BD54
BD582
BD589
BD652
BD655
BD658
BD659
BD771
BD772
BD774
BD775
BD776
BD80
BD82
BD95
23 rows retrieved
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+ Add
- Subtract
* Multiply
/ Divide
When included in the SELECT clause the results of an expression are displayed as a
calculated table column.
Example 4.1.4 - Assuming Tariffs are recorded excluding VAT, calculate and list Tariffs
inclusive of VAT
The are a number of different ways of calculating Fare prices inclusive of VAT (17.5%). The
following are all equivalent and valid arithmetic expressions for calculating VAT inclusive
values within the SELECT clause.
Result:
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To obtain a column name for the result column enter the following statement:
The result-column name must not have embedded spaces and it does not have quotes
around it.
Multiply (*) and divide (/) are evaluated before plus (+) and minus (-).
Multiply and divide are equal in precedence and plus and minus are equal in precedence.
Operators of equal precedence are evaluated in order of appearance from left to right.
Hence:
The order of evaluation may be controlled by the use of brackets. If in the above example, we
had wanted the + operator to be evaluated first then the following use of brackets would
make the expression
(6 + 4) / 2 ... evaluates to 5.
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SQL provides a number of special functions called aggregate functions that may be included
in the SELECT clause. Each of these functions operates over a named column and returns
(calculated from all selected rows) a single value.
SELECT AVG(NoSeats)
FROM Aircraft ;
Result:
col1
156.00
SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM Route ;
Result:
col1
10
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Aggregate functions return a single valued result, ie a calculated column with only one row.
As such these functions cannot be included in the SELECT clause with columns that are
multi-valued, ie resulting in two or more rows. On this basis the following query is illegal
and would not be processed by the DBMS.
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RDBMS Concepts
Exercise 1
3. List all Tickets with TicketDate appearing in the left most column.
4. From amongst all of the different aircraft types find the largest seating capacity. You are
not asked to find which particular aircraft type this seating capacity belongs to.
5. Calculate how many different AircraftTypes are allocated to timetabled flights by querying
the flights table.
6. Format the query given in Example 4.1.4 so that the expression price*1.175 is given a
result-column name of vat_price
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RDBMS Concepts
In the previous section we were concerned only with listing one or more columns from a
table. In this type of query all rows of the queried table are returned. More usually however,
we will only be interested in one or a small number of rows from a given table, those that
satisfy a particular condition. For example, if we wanted to find the number of seats on a
McDonnell Douglas DC9 Jet then only the one row in the Aircraft table that records this type
of aircraft would be of interest.
In order to select specific rows from a table we use the WHERE clause that is placed after
the FROM as follows.
SELECT column-list
FROM table-list
WHERE conditional-expression ;
When you use a WHERE clause, you are specifying a condition for SELECT to test when
processing each row of the table. Only those rows that test True against the condition are
listed in the result.
SELECT NoSeats
FROM Aircraft
WHERE AircaftType = 'DC9' ;
Result:
noseat
120
This illustrates the most commonly used form of the WHERE clause in which the
expressions consists of three elements:
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Comparison Operators
= equal to
<> (!=) not equal to
> greater than
< less than
>= greater than or equal to
<= less than or equal to
Constants
List of Values
Result:
adescription noseat
McDonnel Douglas Jet 120
Boeing 737-300 Jet 300
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RDBMS Concepts
Expressions formed from these comparison operators are known as logical expressions
because they evaluate to one of two possible logic states True or False.
In the above example, if a given row has a value in the Noseats column which is greater than
50 then the expression will evaluate to true, if the value is less than or equal to 50 the
expression will then evaluate to false. Only rows that cause the WHERE clause expression
to evaluate to true are listed in the result.
The BETWEEN operator provides a convenient way of selecting rows with a column value
that is within a specified range.
Example 4.2.3 - List the names and addresses of passengers with Pid's in the range 25
to 35 inclusive
Result:
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RDBMS Concepts
If required the NOT operator may be used to negate the result of the BETWEEN comparison.
Use of the NOT operator in this case would specify passengers whose Pid's are less than 25
or greater than 35, ie
Result:
The IN operator permits the selection of rows with a column value that matches any value
from a set of values.
Example 4.2.4 - Find the Tickets (No's) issued on Flight Nos BD54, BD80, BD412,
BD582, or BD332
Result:
ticketno flight
100001 BD80
100002 BD80
100011 BD54
100021 BD412
100022 BD412
100041 BD412
100051 BD582
100052 BD332
100100 BD54
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Result:
ticketno flight
100001 BD95
100002 BD95
100010 BD82
100012 BD776
100012 BD655
100012 BD652
100012 BD775
100020 BD772
100020 BD655
100020 BD652
100021 BD419
100022 BD419
100030 BD224
100030 BD255
100030 BD256
100030 BD275
100051 BD589
100100 BD51
100100 BD774
100100 BD659
100100 BD658
100100 BD771
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RDBMS Concepts
The comparison operators = and IN match exact values, however there are occasions when
an exact value for comparison is not known or where or a partial match only is all that is
required.
In these situations the LIKE operator allows rows to be selected that partially match a given
pattern of characters.
For this query we are interested in any Route which includes the character constant
'Birmingham' anywhere within its description.
SELECT *
FROM Route
WHERE RDescription LIKE '%Birmingham%' ;
Result:
routeno rdescription
9 Birmingham-Brussels
14 Heathrow-Birmingham
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RDBMS Concepts
Example 4.2.6 - Find the telephone numbers of all passengers with a surname of either
'Miller' or 'Millar'
Result:
name telno
J Millar 061 343 881
R H Miller 0638 4672
So far we have only considered the WHERE clause composed of single logical expressions.
There are many occasions however when selections need to be based on several conditions.
There may be a number of alternative conditions by which rows can be selected or there may
be a number of conditions that must be satisfied by all selected rows.
Individual logical expressions may be combined within the WHERE clause through the use of
the two Boolean operators:
AND
OR
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Example 4.2.7 - List the names and addresses of passengers with Pid's in the range 25
to 35 inclusive
Result:
Comparison operators (=, <, IN, LIKE, etc) are evaluated first, then the AND operators then
the OR operators. As with arithmetic operators brackets may be used to change the order of
evaluation. Contents of brackets being evaluated first.
If we take the query from Example 4.2.7 and consider three rows from the Passenger table
with values in the Pid column of 36, 24 and 30 respectively, then given the above precedence
rules, they would be evaluated as summarised in the table below.
As can be observed, for the AND operator to evaluate to true both of the tested conditions
must also be true.
The action of the AND and OR operators are summarised in the following tables in which 1
represents true and 0 represents false.
AND-Operator OR-Operator
0 AND 0 = 0 0 OR 0 = 0
1 AND 0 = 0 1 OR 0 = 1
0 AND 1 = 0 0 OR 1 = 1
1 AND 1 = 1 1 OR 1 = 1
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Example 4.2.8 - Find the Tickets (No's) issued on Flights BD54, BD80, BD412, BD582,
or BD332
In Example 4.2.4 we used the IN operator for this query; this is the equivalent SQL using the
OR operator.
Result:
ticketno flight
100001 BD80
100002 BD80
100011 BD54
100021 BD412
100022 BD412
100041 BD412
100051 BD582
100052 BD332
100100 BD54
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RDBMS Concepts
Example 4.2.9 - List the names and addresses of passengers who either have Pid's in
the range 25 to 35 inclusive or have a surname of 'Smith'
Result
pid name address
26 J Millar Englewood Cliffs
28 J D Ullman 1 Microsoft Way
29 A Smithson 16 Bedford St
30 D Etheridge 4 Maylands Avenue
34 E Simon 8 Cherry Street
90 A N Smith 81 Digby Crescent
Result:
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RDBMS Concepts
Exercise 2
2. Calculate the total ticket price for Ticket 100030 given the Tariff for each flight is $50.00.
Assign a suitable title to your result-column.
3. List full details of flights where the allocated aircraft is either a DC9 or a 737.
4. List full details of all flights from HROW (Heathrow), EMID (East Midlands) or BIRM
(Birmingham) where the allocated aircraft is a DC9.
6. List the FlightNo's and service details of flights from HROW (Heathrow) to BIRM
(Birmingham) with departure times after 07:00 and before 15:00.
7. List the names and addresses of all passengers whose names start with an initial of 'A'
and have surnames of either 'Smith' or 'Smithson'.
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RDBMS Concepts
The relational database model places no significance on the order in which rows appear in a
table. As such the order in which rows will appear in a given query result should be
considered to be indeterminate. Where a particular order is a required the ORDER BY
clause must be used.
SELECT column-list
FROM table-list
WHERE conditional-expression
ORDER BY order-columns ;
When used the ORDER BY clause must appear as the last clause in the SELECT statement.
The column or columns on which the result is to be ordered must appear in the column-list of
the SELECT clause.
Example 4.3.1 - List in descending order of FlightNo the Tickets (No's) and FlightNo's
for Flights BD54, BD80, BD412, BD582, or BD332
Result:
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RDBMS Concepts
As well as being able to order the results of a query by a single column we can specify a list
of columns on which to order the result. The first column on the list provides the primary
order, the second column is the ordered within the first and so on.
Result:
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RDBMS Concepts
Result:
In addition to being able to order the result of a query by a given table column it is also
possible to order by the values of an expression that appears within the SELECT clause, ie
by a calculated column.
If we wished to Order the result of this query in descending order of the calculated VAT
inclusive column the SQL would appear as follows.
Result:
faretype Vatprice
EUR $212.68
PXR $179.78
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Exercise 3
1. Modify the query given for Example 4.3.1 so that the result is listed in ascending order by
FlightNo.
2. List full details of flights from BIRM (Birmingham) to BRUS (Brussels) in descending order
by DepTime.
3. List full details of all flights in ascending order of Service within descending order of
Deptime.
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RDBMS Concepts
We noted in section 4.1.4 that an aggregate (group) column could not be mixed in the
SELECT clause with multi-valued columns. There are however, occasions when it is useful
to be able to list several groups within a single query. To enable this the SELECT statement
has an optional GROUP BY clause which is included immediately after the WHERE clause
(or after the FROM clause if the WHERE clause is not present).
SELECT column-list
FROM table-list
WHERE conditional-expression
GROUP BY group-columns ;
Example 4.4.1 - Count the number of flights on the Itineraries of TicketNo's 100010
to100020 inclusive
Result:
Ticketno col2
100010 1
100011 1
100012 4
100020 3
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RDBMS Concepts
In the same way that you can select specific rows through the use of the WHERE clause, you
can also select specific groups with the HAVING clause.
The HAVING clause compares some property of the group with a constant value. If a group
fulfils the condition of the logical expression in the HAVING clause it is included in the result.
SELECT column-list
FROM table-list
WHERE conditional-expression
GROUP BY group-columns
HAVING group-conditional-expression ;
Result:
ticketno col2
100012 4
100030 4
100100 6
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RDBMS Concepts
Exercise 4
1. The SQL given in Example 4.4.2 counts the FlightNo column. However, as there is one
row for each flight in a given Ticket's itinerary it is not necessary for the SQL to specify
any particular column. Modify the SQL given to reflect this fact.
3. List the most popular FareType based on currently recorded Itineraries. Your query should
list each FareType and its number of occurrences.
42
RDBMS Concepts
All of the queries considered up to this point have been based on single tables, ie resulting in
one or more columns selected from a single table named within the FROM clause.
Where queries are to be based on the columns of two or more tables the required results are
obtained by joining these tables together. The joined tables are specified in the FROM
clause, and are "linked" to each other by one or more common columns; ie columns
containing a range of values that each table has in common. The WHERE clause is then be
used to specify the conditions between these common columns on which the required rows
will be selected.
4.5.1 Equi-Joins
Example 4.5.1 - Find the seating capacity of the aircraft allocated to flight BD80
The type of aircraft (AircraftType) allocated to a particular flight (FlightNo) is recorded in the
Flight table whilst the seating capacity for each type of aircraft is recorded in the Aircraft
table.
Inspection of the Aircraft and Flight tables reveals that they are related to each other via the
common column, AircraftType. Hence we can join the Aircraft table and the Flight table,
selecting rows, where FlightNo in the Flight table is BD80 and AircraftType in the Flight table
is equal to AircraftType in Aircraft table.
The following SQL illustrates the required join; known as an equi-join because the
comparison operator in the join condition is = (equals).
SELECT NoSeats
FROM Aircraft, Flight
WHERE FlightNo = 'BD80'
AND Aircraft.AircraftType = Flight.AircraftType ;
Result:
noseat
300
43
RDBMS Concepts
We are not restricted to joins involving only two tables here is an example of a query that
needs to join three tables to obtain the required result.
Example 4.5.2 - List the description and seating capacity of the aircraft allocated to the
flights on TicketNo 100010
Result:
adescription noseat
Boeing 737-300 Jet 300
44
RDBMS Concepts
When joined tables have a common column-name you must make it clear which table is
being referenced by prefixing the column with its table-name. The column NoSeats in the
previous examples is not prefixed because this column-name appears only in the Aircraft
table and is therefore unambiguous.
The need to use a table-name prefix leads to fairly long column-name references. To avoid
this, tables may be allocated an abbreviated name (an alias) within the FROM clause by
which the table will be referenced elsewhere within the SELECT statement. The FROM
clause has the following general form
where the alias appears immediately after the table-name (separated by a space).
Result:
adescription noseat
Boeing 737-300 Jet 300
45
RDBMS Concepts
4.5.3 Non-Equi-Joins
The objective of this query is to find alternative flights that serve the same route as that
served by BD659 with the same departure airport but with earlier departure times.
The conditional expression for the join used in this query uses the inequality operator >
{greater than} and therefore represents a non-equi-join.
Result:
46
RDBMS Concepts
Table aliases used with example 4.5.2 to abbreviate table-names also allow you to give a
table a double alias thereby allowing you to join a table to itself as though it were two
separate tables. This is a very useful facility where a query needs to compare rows within the
same table. Example 4.5.3, as well as illustrating a non-equi-join also makes use of a self-
join with two aliases of the Flight table. This allows alternative flights to be found which serve
the same route as the given (currently booked) flight.
Example 4.5.4 - To fly from Heathrow (HROW) to Brussels (BRUS) passengers must
undertake their journey in two stages. List the FlightNo's, Airport's,
Departure and Arrival times for inter-connecting flights from
Heathrow to Brussels.
Result:
47
RDBMS Concepts
Exercise 5
1. List the full name of the airport from which flight BD275 departs.
2. List the full description and seating capacity of the aircraft allocated to flight BD582.
3. List the description and seating capacity of all the aircraft allocated to flights on the
Itineraries of Tickets issue to 'R H Miller'.
4. List the FareTypes and Descriptions of the Fares available on RouteNo 4 (Heathrow -
Edinburgh).
5. Calculate the total ticket price for Ticket number 100010 using Price from the Tariff table.
6. List the full name of the airport from which flight BD257 departs and the full name of the
airport at which flight BD257 arrives. Hint: each flight record refers to two Airport records
therefore the Airport table should appear twice in the FROM clause. Use aliases to
differentiate the first Airport reference from the second.
7. List for the flights on all East-Midlands Routes the FlightNo, service provided, aircraft used,
and seating capacity. Hint: use LIKE to obtain RouteNo's and join Route and Flight tables
on RouteNo. How are you going to find the seating capacity for each flight?
48
RDBMS Concepts
SQL provides three statements with which you can modify the contents of database tables.
UPDATE tablename
SET column-assignment-list
WHERE conditional-expression ;
where the column-assignment-list lists the columns to be updated and the values they are to
be set to and takes the general form:
where value may either be a constant or a column-expression which returns a value of the
same type as column-name.
The WHERE clause is optional. When used, the WHERE clause specifies a condition for
UPDATE to test when processing each row of the table. Only those rows that test True
against the condition are updated with the new values.
49
RDBMS Concepts
Example 4.6.1 - Increase the price of the Standby Single (STS) Tariff on Route 13 (East
Midlands-Paris) by $5.00
UPDATE Tariff
SET Price = Price + 5
WHERE RouteNo = 13
AND FareType = 'STS' ;
Without the WHERE clause the UPDATE statement updates all rows of the table.
UPDATE Tariff
SET Price = Price * 1.1 ;
The INSERT statement has two distinct variations the first, and simplest, inserts a single row
into the named table.
Example 4.6.3 - Assume that two new types of aircraft are to be brought into service
by the airline-company; the Shorts-360 and Fokker-Friendship F24
The type code (AircraftType) for these aircraft will be 'S60' and 'F24' respectively. The 'S60'
has a seating capacity of 36 and the 'F24' has a seating capacity of 48.
Note: if the input values match the order and number of columns in the table then column-list
can be omitted.
50
RDBMS Concepts
The INSERT statement may also be used in conjunction with a SELECT statement query to
copy the rows of one table to another.
Only the specified columns of those rows selected by the query are inserted into the named
table.
The columns of the table being copied-from and those of the table being copied-to must be
type compatible.
If the columns of both tables match in type and order then the column-list may be omitted
from the INSERT clause.
Example 4.6.4 - Copy Passenger records with Pids in the range 91 - 94 to an archive
table APassenger
Note: the APassenger table must exist at the time this statement is executed.
51
RDBMS Concepts
The DELETE statement removes those rows from a given table that satisfy the condition
specified in the WHERE clause.
Example 4.6.5 - Delete rows from the Passenger table for Pid's 91, 92, 93, and 94
DELETE
FROM Passenger
WHERE Pid IN (91, 92, 93, 94) ;
Example 4.6.6 - Remove all Archived passengers records from the 'live' Passenger
table
This example of DELETE employs a sub-query as a part of the WHERE clause to compile a
list of Pid's from the "archived passenger table", APassenger.
Where rows in the Passenger table are found with a Pid value which matches a value in the
list they are removed by the DELETE statement. See section 6.1 on sub-queries later on.
DELETE
FROM Passenger
WHERE Pid IN
( SELECT Pid
FROM APassenger ) ;
The WHERE clause is optional, when omitted all rows of the named table are removed. For
example
DELETE
FROM Aircraft ;
52
RDBMS Concepts
Table updates, deletions and insertions are not made permanent until you end your sql (or
isql) session and exit from the DBMS. Whilst your database tables are in this uncommitted
state you can see the changes you have made as if they were permanent but other users
who may have privileges to access your tables cannot.
At any time during the period that your tables are in an uncommitted state you may reinstate
the changed tables to their state prior to those changes by using the rollback statement that
is simply entered as:
rollback ;
In addition it is possible to limit how much of your work INGRES will rollback by issuing
savepoints between the consecutive SQL statements of a given transaction. Savepoints are
issued with a name (which may begin with a number) that is then used in conjunction with
rollback to identify the point in the transaction to rollback to.
A transaction commences on the execution of your first SQL statement and includes all
subsequent SQL statements issued up to the point where you issue a commit or at the point
where you end your INGRES session. So, for example:
At any time during an SQL session your uncommitted database changes may be committed
to the database by issuing the commit statement as follows:
commit ;
Having committed your pending database changes all users will then be able to see those
changes.
53
RDBMS Concepts
All of the statements considered in previous sections belong to the data manipulation part of
the SQL language and allow users to interrogate and change the data of selected database
tables.
In this section we will consider two statements which form the data definition part of the
INGRES/SQL language, namely:
The following examples of the CREATE statement are shown with INGRES data types. See
Appendix A4 for details of the data types and storage structures supported by INGRES.
In it simplest form the SQL (DDL) statement used to create a database table has the
following syntax:
Example 5.1.1 - Consider the CREATE statement used to create the Airport table
definition for the Airline Database
54
RDBMS Concepts
The name chosen for a table must be a valid INGRES name as detailed in Appendix A2.3.
The names chosen for the columns of a table must also be valid INGRES names as detailed
in Appendix A2.3.
Data Types
Each column must be allocated an appropriate data type - INGRES Data Types Appendix A4.
In addition, key columns, ie columns used to uniquely identify individual rows of a given table,
may be specified to be NOT NULL. The DBMS will then ensure that columns specified as
NOT NULL always contain a value. Note: zero and space are values.
55
RDBMS Concepts
It is also possible with the following variation of the CREATE statement to create a new table
definition and copy rows into the new table with a single statement.
Example 5.1.2 - Let us suppose that want to create an exact copy of the Ticket table
that we will call Ticket2
As Ticket2 is inheriting the same number of columns, the same order of columns, and the
same column names as Ticket, the column-lists used in this example could have been
omitted.
If we had wanted to create Ticket2 containing only a sub-set of the rows from the Ticket table
then we would have used the WHERE clause to specify the required selection conditions.
Create a new base table owned by the user who issues the statement:
Where the with_clause consists of the word with followed by a comma-separated list of one
or more of the following:
56
RDBMS Concepts
[no ]journaling
/* default without journaling */
[no ]duplicates
/* default duplicates allowed */
key = (columnlist)
fillfactor = n
/* defaults - 50%hash, 80%isam,80%btree */
minpages = n
/* No of hash primary pages - default 16 */
maxpages = n
/* No of hash primary pages - default no limit */
leaffill = n
/* %fill - btree leaf index pages - default 70% */
nonleaffill = n
/* %fill - tree nonleaf indexpages - default 80%*/
compression[ = ([[no]key] [,[no]data])] | nocompression
A table can have a maximum of 300 columns and a table row may be a maximum of 2000
bytes wide. Note: nullable columns require an additional byte of storage for the null indicator.
The name and data type of each column in the new table are specified by columnname and
format arguments respectively.
Columnname can be any valid INGRES name - must be unique within the table.
Format specifies the datatype and length of the column and uses the following syntax:
The column does not accept nulls and INGRES supplies a default value if no value given.
with system_maintained
Used in conjunction with a logical key data types (ie table_key or object_key). INGRES
automatically assigns a unique value to the column when a row is appended to the table.
When a database table becomes redundant it may be dropped from the database as follows:
57
RDBMS Concepts
1) Create the archive table APassenger with the same column names and data types as the
Passenger table. Reference Appendix A6.2 or use the help statement to see the
Passenger table definition.
2) Copy rows to the Apassenger table from the Passenger table according to the SQL
specification given in Example 4.6.4. Use appropriate SQL to confirm that you have
copied the required rows into the APassenger table.
3) Create using a single statement a new table called People that is an exact copy of (ie
contains the same rows of data) the Passenger table.
5) Delete those rows (passenger records) in the People table that appear in the Apassenger
table. Use appropriate SQL to confirm that you have deleted the required records.
7) Create using a single statement a new table called Craft which is an exact copy of (ie
contains the same rows of data) as the Aircraft table.
8) Add the two new aircraft types given in Example 4.6.3 to the Craft table. Use appropriate
SQL to confirm that the two new aircraft have been inserted correctly.
9) Reduce by 4 the seating capacity of all aircraft recorded in the Craft table. Use
appropriate SQL to confirm that you have updated the table correctly.
10) KEEP the Craft table you will need it later! However, make a note of how you could have
removed this table at this point without using the Drop statement.
58
RDBMS Concepts
A View, as we will see, is a definition for a "virtual table" (virtual because there is no
permanent allocation of storage space) that is assembled at reference time from selected
rows and/or columns of one or more real tables.
1) They enable users to see data, from a generalised database design, in the form most
convenient for their needs.
2) They may be employed as a security mechanism for restricting user access to specific
tables columns and/or rows.
The statement used to create a view has the following general form:
You can display the specification of the views you have created using the help statement
whose general syntax is as follows:
When a view is no longer required it may be dropped from the database with the DROP
statement:
As we noted with Example 4.5.4, there are no direct flights from Heathrow (HROW) to
Brussels (BRUS). To simplify the query required to list the departure times of interconnecting
flights we will specify a view called Brussels-Link.
59
RDBMS Concepts
Example 5.2.1 - List the FlightNo's, Airport's, Departure and Arrival times for flights
from 1500 that link Heathrow with Brussels
Result:
There are many instances where access to private data within a database needs to be
restricted to specific users.
It is possible to create such access restrictions using views. In this section we will consider
just one example of how access may be controlled by creating a view which consists of
different rows depending on the user who is querying the view.
Example 5.2.2 - Let us suppose that we want to allow all passengers to view their
itineraries from a visual display at the airport by logging on to the
Airline's DBMS under their Passenger ID as held in the Passenger
table (the Pid column)
The DBMS provides a pseudo-column user that holds the name (login) of the person
currently querying the database. The pseudo-column user may then be used in the WHERE
clause like any other table column. The following view will automatically return the itinerary
belonging to the enquiring passenger.
60
RDBMS Concepts
This view would need to be accessible to all, so we would need to assign read-only privileges
to the view. We would do this with the grant statement as follows:
The following SQL would then list only the itinerary belonging to the enquiring passenger.
61
RDBMS Concepts
Exercise 7
1. Passengers travelling from Heathrow to Paris must pick up a link flight from East Midlands.
Create a View of the interconnecting flights between HROW (Heathrow) and PARI (Paris).
2. List, based on an appropriate join with the view created in (1), the possible arrival times at
Paris based upon a departure from Heathrow on flight BD224.
62
RDBMS Concepts
This section returns to the SELECT statement and considers some slightly more complex
queries that demonstrate the flexibility and strength of SQL as a data manipulation language.
6.1 Sub-Queries
Example 6.1.1 - List the description of the aircraft with the largest seating capacity
This appears to be a very straightforward and simple query. But it requires a query that will
need to compare every aircraft row with all other rows of the aircraft table to find the one row
for the aircraft with the largest seating capacity.
The SQL needed to find the largest seating capacity (the largest value of NoSeats) is simply:
SELECT MAX(NoSeats)
FROM Aircraft;
Result:
col1
300
But to which AircraftType does this seating capacity belong? We need to list the AircraftType
that corresponds to this value of NoSeats, ie
SELECT AircraftType
FROM Aircraft
WHERE NoSeats = "largest seating capacity"
63
RDBMS Concepts
SQL allows us to specify a sub-query within the WHERE clause which is executed before the
main outer query to return one or more rows which may then be compared with the rows
returned by the outer query. Putting the above queries together uses the following SQL.
SELECT AircraftType
FROM Aircraft
WHERE NoSeats = ( SELECT MAX(NoSeats)
FROM Aircraft );
Result:
aircra
737
Note: the sub-query appears is in brackets indicating that it will return its result before the
execution of the outer query.
SELECT AircraftType
FROM Aircraft
WHERE NoSeats >= ALL ( SELECT NoSeats
FROM Aircraft );
Example 6.1.2 - List all aircraft that are not allocated to any timetabled Flights
For this example we will consider the SQL components required for each part of the query.
Firstly, we need to obtain a list of aircraft types from the Flights tables; those aircraft which
are allocated to one or more timetabled flights, ie:
Result:
aircra
ATP
DC9
737
64
RDBMS Concepts
We require the AircraftTypes recorded in the Aircraft table that do not appear in this list, ie:
Note: craft table created earlier will be used for this example.
SELECT AircraftType
FROM Craft
WHERE AircraftType NOT IN ("the list of allocated aircraft")
SELECT AircraftType
FROM Craft
WHERE AircraftType NOT IN
( SELECT DISTINCT AircraftType
FROM Flights );
Result:
aircra
S60
F24
Note equivalencies between the IN and ANY/ALL operators when used to compare
against a subquery generated list:
65
RDBMS Concepts
Exercise 8
1. By use of the IN operator and a sub-query list the names and addresses of passengers
with tickets for flight BD80.
2. List the names and addresses of passengers with Standby Single (SBS) or Standard
Return (SDR) tickets for flight BD54.
66
RDBMS Concepts
In the previous examples of subqueries each subquery was seen to be executed once;
returning its result for use by the main (outer) query.
In correlated sub-queries the sub-query executes once for each row returned by the outer
query.
Example 6.2.1 - List the names and addresses of passengers with tickets made up of
itineraries with only one flight
Result:
name address
A Smithson 16 Bedford St
C Evans 63 Kew Green
T Pittman The Little House
K E Kendall 11 Rosedale Avenue
For each row in the passenger table the value of Pid for that row is passed into the subquery.
The subquery executes once for each value of Pid passed from the outer query and returns
the value of COUNT (the number of rows in the ticket-itinerary join, ie flight legs, which satisfy
the subquery WHERE condition, ie flights for this Pid) to the WHERE clause in the outer
query. Where COUNT equals one for the current Pid its corresponding row in the passenger
table is listed in the result.
67
RDBMS Concepts
The EXISTS operator enables us to test whether or not a subquery has returned any rows.
NOT EXISTS evaluates to true if zero rows have been selected and
evaluates to false if one or more rows have been selected.
Example 6.2.2 - List the names and addresses of passengers who purchased their
Tickets on 01-AUG-92
Result:
name address
J Millar Englewood Cliffs
T Pittman The Little House
68
RDBMS Concepts
We have seen how a query may be composed of subqueries whose results are returned for
evaluation within a WHERE clause.
We can also combine the results of pairs of queries and/or subqueries by using the following
Set Operators.
Note: MINUS and INTERSECTION are included here for completeness they are NOT
available in INGRES.
69
RDBMS Concepts
The MINUS operator takes as its operands, the results of two separate queries and returns
(as its result) the rows from the first query which do not appear in the results of second query.
Example 6.3.1 - Find names of the airports from which direct flights may be taken to all
of the following destinations:
BELF (Belfast)
BIRM (Birmingham)
EDIN (Edinburgh)
EMID (East Midlands)
LBDR (Leeds/Bradford)
LVPL (Liverpool)
TEES (Teeside)
SELECT AName
FROM Airport A
WHERE NOT EXISTS
( ( SELECT DISTINCT F.ToAirport
FROM Flight F
WHERE F.ToAirport IN ('BELF','BIRM','EDIN',
'EMID','LBDR','LVPL','TEES') )
MINUS
( SELECT DISTINCT T.ToAirport
FROM Flight T
WHERE A.Airport = T.FromAirport ) );
The first subquery returns all flight destinations (airports) that exist in the Flights table
corresponding with the given list.
The second subquery (correlated) takes each airport in turn from the Airport table (outer
query) as a departure point (FromAirport) and generates a list of all possible direct
destinations (ToAirport).
The MINUS operator compares the set of available destination airports with the set of direct
destinations possible from each departure point (Airport). If there are no airports in the first
query that are not in the second, then we have found a departure point from which we can
reach all of the available destinations directly.
If there are zero rows returned, ie the list of available destinations not reached is zero, then
the NOT EXISTS evaluates to true and the current ANAME from the Airport table is listed in
the result.
70
RDBMS Concepts
The INTERSECT operator allows us to find the common rows from the results of two
separate queries (or subqueries). The following example shows the intersection of two
queries.
Example 6.3.2 - Find the Names and Addresses of passengers flying from HROW
(Heathrow) to BIRM (Birmingham) and from BIRM to HROW. Not
necessarily on the same ticket.
NAME ADDRESS
----------- ---------------------------
G B Davis 25 Allenby Road
R H Miller 155 Kingston Road
The first query returns the names and addresses of passengers flying from Heathrow to
Birmingham.
The second query returns the names and addresses of passengers flying from Birmingham
to Heathrow.
The INTERSECT operator returns the rows from the first query which also appear in the rows
from the second query, ie those passengers flying from Heathrow to Birmingham and from
Birmingham to Heathrow.
71
RDBMS Concepts
The UNION operator allows us to combine distinct rows from the results of two separate
queries (or subqueries). The following example shows the union of two queries.
Example 6.3.3 - Find the Names and Addresses of passengers flying from HROW
(Heathrow) to BIRM (Birmingham) and from BIRM to HROW or both
Result:
Name address
D Etheridge 4 Maylands Avenue
G B Davis 25 Allenby Road
R H Miller 155 Kingston Road
The first query returns the names and addresses of passengers flying from Heathrow to
Birmingham.
The second query returns the names and addresses of passengers flying from Birmingham
to Heathrow.
The UNION operator returns the rows from the first query plus the rows from the second
query and removes any resulting duplicates. We see listed those passengers whom are
either flying from Heathrow to Birmingham, or whom are flying from Birmingham to Heathrow,
or both.
72
RDBMS Concepts
Exercise 9
1. List the names and addresses of any passenger on a single ticket with more than 5 flights.
2. Find the names of those passengers who are taking all of the flights that
J Millar is taking.
3. Rewrite the SQL statement given for Example 6.3.2 so that it compares flights for the
same ticket and find those passenger’s with return tickets HROW to BIRM and back.
Note: you will need to use correlated sub-queries and an alternative query strategy to find
the intersection.
4. Using correlated sub-queries find the Names of those passengers with a ticket to fly from
HROW (Heathrow) to PARI (Paris) without a return flight to HROW; ie those passengers
with non-return tickets.
73
RDBMS Concepts
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