1.Explain database administrator and describe the roles and responsibilities.

● A person who has central control of the both the data and programs that access those data,
over the system is called a database administrator (DBA). Coordinates all the activities of
the database system; the database administrator has a good understanding of the
enterprise’s information resources and needs.
● Database administrator’s duties include:
● Schema definition. The DBA creates the original database schema by execut-
ing a set of data definition statements in the DDL.
● Storage structure and access-method definition.
● Schema and physical-organization modification. The DBA carries out changes
to the schema and physical organization to reflect the changing needs of the
organization, or to alter the physical organization to improve performance.
● Granting of authorization for data access. By granting different types of
authorization, the database administrator can regulate which parts of the
database various users can access. The authorization information is kept in a
special system structure that the database system consults whenever someone
attempts to access the data in the system.
● Routine maintenance. Examples of the database administrator’s routine
maintenance activities are:
◦ Periodically backing up the database, either onto tapes or onto remote
servers, to prevent loss of data in case of disasters such as flooding.
◦ Ensuring that enough free disk space is available for normal operations,
and upgrading disk space as required.
◦ Monitoring jobs running on the database and ensuring that performance
is not degraded by very expensive tasks submitted by some users.
● Specifying integrity constraints
● Acting as liaison with users

2.Explain Traditional file system vs Databse Management system.

Traditional file systems
​ Data redundancy and inconsistency - duplication of information in different
files.
• Uncontrolled duplication of data is undesirable for following reasons:
Duplication costs time and money to enter data more than once.
It takes additional storage space thus again increasing associated costs. It can be avoided
by sharing data files.
It may lead to data inconsistency.
​ Difficulty in accessing data
  Need to write a new program to carry out each new task.

• Data isolation — multiple files and formats.

• When data is isolated in separate files, it is more difficult to access data and to ensure that
data is correct.
• Also, the structure of file depends on application programming language. Thus the direct
incompatibility of such files makes it difficult to process jointly.
•

• Integrity problems
• Integrity constraints(e.g. account balance > 0) become part of program code
• Hard to add new constraints or change existing ones.
•
Atomicity of updates
Failures may leave database in an inconsistent state with partial updates
carried out.
E.g. transfer of funds from one account to another should either complete or
not happen at all.

• Concurrent access by multiple users

• Concurrent accessed needed for performance.
• Uncontrolled concurrent accesses can lead to inconsistencies
 E.g. two people reading a balance and updating it at the same time.
• Security problems
Database systems offer solutions to all the above problems(Explain the points below
briefly)
1. Control of data redundancy
2. Data consistency
3. More information from the same amount of data
4. Sharing of data
5. Improved data integrity
6. Improved security
7. Enforcement of standards
8. Economy of scale
9. Balance of conflicting requirements
10. Improved data accessibility and responsiveness
11. Increased productivity
12. Improved maintenance through data independence

3.Explain DBMS structure architecture with a diagram.

For the system to be usable, it must retrieve data efficiently. The need for efficiency
has led designers to use complex data structures to represent data in the database.
Since many database-system users are not computer trained, developers hide the
complexity from users through several levels of abstraction, to simplify users’
interactions with the system:

• Physical level. The lowest level of abstraction describes how the data are actually
stored. The physical level describes complex low-level data structures in detail.
• Logical level. The next-higher level of abstraction describes what data are stored
in the database, and what relationships exist among those data. The logical level
thus describes the entire database in terms of a small number of relatively simple
structures. Although implementation of the simple struc tures at the logical level may
involve complex physical-level structures, the user of the logical level does not need
to be aware of this complexity. This is referred to as physical data independence.
Database administrators, who must decide what information to keep in the database,
use the logical level of abstraction.
• View level. The highest level of abstraction describes only part of the entire
database. Even though the logical level uses simpler structures, complexity remains
because of the variety of information stored in a large database. Many users of the
database system do not need all this information; instead, they need to access only
a part of the database. The view level of abstraction exists to simplify their
interaction with the system. The system may provide many views for the same
database.
4.Explain characteristics of DBMS.
A Database Management System (DBMS) is software that facilitates the management,
organization, retrieval, and manipulation of data in a structured manner. Here are some
key characteristics of a DBMS:

1. Data Abstraction:
- DBMS provides a level of abstraction that separates the physical storage details from
the user. Users interact with the data through high-level queries and commands without
needing to understand the underlying storage structure.

2. Data Integrity:
- DBMS enforces data integrity constraints to maintain the accuracy and consistency
of the data. This includes enforcing rules such as primary keys, foreign keys, and data
validation rules.

3. Data Security:
- DBMS offers security mechanisms to control access to the database. It ensures that
only authorized users can perform specific operations on the data and provides features
like authentication, authorization, and encryption to protect data.

4. Concurrent Access and Transaction Management:

- DBMS allows multiple users to access the database simultaneously while
maintaining data consistency. It employs transaction management to ensure that a
group of related operations are treated as a single, atomic unit, guaranteeing data
integrity.

5. Data Independence:
- DBMS provides both logical and physical data independence. Logical data
independence allows changes to the database schema without affecting the application
programs. Physical data independence allows changes to the physical storage without
affecting the logical schema.

6. Centralized Data Management:

- DBMS centralizes data storage and management, reducing data redundancy and
ensuring that data is stored in a structured, organized manner.

7. Data Backup and Recovery:

- DBMS provides features for data backup and recovery, allowing organizations to
safeguard their data against loss or corruption.

8. Data Redundancy Control:

 - DBMS helps minimize data redundancy by ensuring that data is stored in a
structured and normalized format, reducing the chances of inconsistency.

5. Explain 3 levels of DBMS.

For the system to be usable, it must retrieve data efficiently. The need for efficiency
has led designers to use complex data structures to represent data in the database.
Since many database-system users are not computer trained, developers hide the
complexity from users through several levels of abstraction, to simplify users’
interactions with the system:

• Physical level. The lowest level of abstraction describes how the data are actually
stored. The physical level describes complex low-level data structures in detail.
• Logical level. The next-higher level of abstraction describes what data are stored
in the database, and what relationships exist among those data. The logical level
thus describes the entire database in terms of a small number of relatively simple
structures. Although implementation of the simple struc tures at the logical level may
involve complex physical-level structures, the user of the logical level does not need
to be aware of this complexity. This is referred to as physical data independence.
Database administrators, who must decide what information to keep in the database,
use the logical level of abstraction.
• View level. The highest level of abstraction describes only part of the entire
database. Even though the logical level uses simpler structures, complexity remains
because of the variety of information stored in a large database. Many users of the
database system do not need all this information; instead, they need to access only
a part of the database. The view level of abstraction exists to simplify their
interaction with the system. The system may provide many views for the same
database.

6. Explain Generalization.

● Generalization is a bottom up design process which combines a number

of entity sets that share some common features (namely, they are
described by the same attributes and participate in the same relationship
sets).
● On the basis of their commonalities,generalization synthesizes these
entity sets into a single, higher-level entity set.
● Generalization is used to emphasize the similarities among lower-level
entity sets and to hide the differences; it also permits an economy of
representation in that shared attributes are not repeated.
● Generalization suppresses the difference among several entity types, identifying
their common features, and generalize them into a single superclass of which
the original types are special subclasses.
For eg.:
7. Explain Specialization.

​ It is a Top-down design process in which we designate sub groupings within an

entity set that are distinctive from other entities in the set.

​ These sub groupings become lower-level entity sets that have attributes or
participate in relationships that do not apply to the higher-level entity set.

​ Depicted by a triangle component labeled IS A (E.g.

customer “is a” person).

​ Attribute inheritance – a lower-level entity set inherits all the attributes and
relationship participation of the higher- level entity set to which it is linked.
For eg:
 Here we can see that the specialization of person allows us to distinguish among
person entities according to whether they correspond to employees or students: in
general, a person could be an employee, a student, both, or neither.

8. Explain different types of attributes.

15. Explain Relational model and list the characteristics of Relation in relational
model.