EVELYN HONE COLLEGE OF APPLIED

ARTS AND COMMERCE

NAME: TAONGA NDHLOVU

QUESTION
1. What is a business rule, and what is its purpose in data modelling? How do you translate
business rules into data model components?
2. What is logical data independence and why is it important?
3. Explain the difference between logical and physical data independence, with example
4. Explain the difference between external, internal, and conceptual schemas. How are these
different schema layers related to the concepts of logical and physical data independence
5. Samson wants to store information (names, addresses, descriptions of embarrassing
moments, etc.) about the many ducks on his payroll. Not surprisingly, the volume of
data compels him to buy a database system. To save money, he wants to buy one with
the fewest possible features, and he plans to run it as a stand-alone application on his
PC clone. Of course, Samson does not plan to share his list with anyone. Indicate
which of the following DBMS features Samson should pay for; in each case, also
indicate why Samson should (or should not) pay for that feature in the system he buy.
A security facility. ii. Concurrency control. iii. Crash recovery. iv. A view
mechanism. v. Query language Due Date: 21Th October, 2022
1. Business rules
They are guidelines and narration scripts that guide the database models and help the designers
to develop the system by fully abiding with the business policies, guidelines, protocols and
procedures.

Business rules are intended to asserts business structures or to control or influence the behaviour
of the business, business rules describe the operations, definitions and constraints that apply to an
organization, business rules can apply to people, processes, corporate behaviour and computing
system in an organization and are put in place to help the organization achieve its goal.

Purpose of business rules in data modelling

The purpose of business rule in modelling, the business rules are essential to database designer
for several reason such as

They help by standardizing the company’s view of data.

They are used as communication tools in between users and designers.

Business rules allow the creator to develop relationship participation rules and constraints and to
create a correct data model.

They also allow the designer to understand business processes, and the nature, role and scope of
the data
How to translate business rules into data modelling components, the business rules are used to
define and govern the following components of a data model:
Entities:
Entities are physical world objects that form the basic locks around which the whole problem set
resolves.
An Entity is a type of object that comes in a real world whose appearance is unique from one
another, for example in a convenience store data model, the entities can be employee, inventory
and payroll.
Attributes:
The attributes are the properties of the entities that define their structure and characteristics.
Taking the above example, we have the entities of employees as name, age, salary, bonus etc. for
inventory the attributes can be inventory id, product name, description, brand, and price for
payroll attributes can be salary, date, bonus, annual increment.

Relationships:
The relationships are defined as the relations different entities have with each other.
For example, in the above instance, the relationship can be that some brands of products may
only be sold by a particular employee. Or no employee shall have more have more than one
bonus entry. There are various types of relationships namely 1:1, 1: m and m: n and are called
cardinals of an entity.

Constraints:
These refer to various restrictions that may be placed on the entities, attributes and relationships.
For example, in the above model the constraints can be that no employee id the product should
not be available after it’s after expiry date passes it should be noted that business rules govern
the structure of data models
2. Logical data independence:
Logical data independence is the key features of database management system for maintaining
data integrity and for maintaining overall effectiveness of data usage.
Logical data independence is an important part of three schema architecture which allows the
change or modification of conceptual schema without disturbing the external schema the
modifications in conceptual schema may include alteration of entities, attributes, relationship
changing of any of these elements will not disturb the external application programs which is a
key advantage of logical data independence feature of database management system.
3. Logical data independence is mainly concerned about the structure or the changing data
definition, it is also difficult to retrieve because the data is mainly dependent on the logical
structure of data as compared to the physical independence it is not easy to achieve logical data
independence the change in the logical level requires a change at the application level. The
modifications made at the logical level is significant whenever the logical structure of the
database is to be changed it is concerned with the conceptual schema.
Examples of logical data independence
To add / modify / delete a new attribute, entity, or relationship is possible without a rewrite of
existing application programs.
To break an existing record example divide the records into two or more records, merging two
records into one.
Physical data independence it is mainly concerned about how the data is stored into the system it
is easy to retrieve as compared to logical independence it is easy to achieve physical data
independence any changes at the physical level does not require to change at the application
level, the modification made at the internal level may or may not be need to improve the
performance of the structure it is concerned with the internal schema.
Examples of physical data independence
It is by the use of new storage device data like hard drive or magnetic tapes
Modifying the file organization technique in the database, changing the access methods
To change the compression techniques or hashing algorithms, changing of location of database
from say C drive to D drive
4. External Level:
This is the highest level in the three level architecture and closest to the user. It is also known as
the view level. The external level only shows the relevant database content to the users in the
form of views and hides the rest of the data. So different users can see the database as a different
view as per their individual requirements.
Conceptual Level:
The conceptual level is at a higher level than the physical level. It is also known as the logical
level. It describes how the database appears to the users conceptually and the relationships
between various data tables. The conceptual level does not care for how the data in the database
is actually stored.
Physical/ Internal Level:
This is the lowest level in the three level architecture. It is also known as the internal level. The
physical level describes how data is actually stored in the database. In the lowest level, this data
is stored in the external hard drives in the form of bits and at a little high level, it can be said that
the data is stored in files and folders. The physical level also discusses compression and
encryption techniques. Internal schema, contains the definition of the stored record, the method
representing the data fields, expresses the internal view and the access aids use.
How the schema layers relate to the concept of logical and physical data independence
Data independence it is the ability to modify the scheme definition in one level without affecting
the scheme definition at the next higher level.
Physical data independence, if is the ability to modify the physical scheme without causing
application programs to be rewritten.
Logical data independence, it is the ability to modify the logical scheme without causing
application programs to be rewritten
5. A security facility
Samson should pay for a security facility, because it will protect the confidentiality, integrity and
availability of his data, if he does not get a security facility his database system will be
vulnerable to attacks such as malware that can cause damage to the database system.
ii. Concurrency control
Samson does not need to pay for a concurrency control because he is using the database alone, he
is not running multiple transactions. Concurrency control is required to increase time efficiency
to maintain consistency data.
iii. Crash recovery
Samson should pay for a crash recovery because when the system is crashed he will roll back
incomplete transactions and completing committed transactions that were still in memory when
the crash occurred.
iv. A view mechanism
Samson should pay for a view mechanism because it will help him view the database table,
database views are saved in the database as named queries and can be used to save frequently
used, complex queries.
v. Query language
Samson should pay for a query language because it is a programming language that will help him
request and retrieve data from database and information system by sending queries.
REFERENCES
1. Ion Lungu, Manole Velicanu, Iuliana Botha, Database Systems – Present and Future.
2. Alan Brown, Peter Feiler - An Analysis Technique for Examining Integration in a Project
Support Environment -technical report cmu/sei-92-tr-003, January 1992
3. Mohammad Ghulam Ali. A Multidatabase System as 4-Tiered Client-Server Distributed
Heterogeneous Database System - (IJCSIS) International Journal of Computer Science and
Information Security Vol. 6, No. 2, 2009
4. D.C. Tsichritizis, A., Klug (Eds.), The. ANSI/X3/SPARC DBMS framework: report of the
study group on database management systems, Information Systems 3 (1978).
5. Basingstoke. Connolly, T. and Begg, C. (2002) Database systems: A practical approach to
design, implementation and management,
6. Addison-Wesley, Harlow. Date, C. J. (2000) an introduction to database systems, 6th edition,
Addison-Wesley, New York.