CE175-4C

Database Management in Construction

Module 1
Lesson 2: Database
Management Basic Concepts
Edgar M. Adina
Instructor
 Learning Outcome

At the end of this lesson, students should be able to:

1. explain the basic principles of database and database
management systems;
2. differentiate relational and non-relational models of database
management systems;
3. identify areas in the construction industry that rely and
depends on database and database management systems.
Outline of Topics
• Purpose of Database Systems
• View of Data
• Data Models
• Data Definition Language
• Data Manipulation Language
• Transaction Management
• Storage Management
• Database Administrator
• Database Users
• Overall System Structure
Database Management System (DBMS)
• Collection of interrelated data
• Set of programs to access the data
• DBMS contains information about a particular enterprise
• DBMS provides an environment that is both convenient and efficient to use.
• Database Applications:
• Banking: all transactions
• Airlines: reservations, schedules
• Universities: registration, grades
• Sales: customers, products, purchases
• Manufacturing: production, inventory, orders, supply chain
• Human resources: employee records, salaries, tax deductions
• Engineering and Construction: Design, construction, operation, management
• Databases touch all aspects of our lives
Purpose of Database System
• In the early days, database applications were built on top of file
systems
• Drawbacks of using file systems to store data:
• Data redundancy and inconsistency
• Multiple file formats, duplication of information in different files
• Difficulty in accessing data
• Need to write a new program to carry out each new task
• Data isolation — multiple files and formats
• Integrity problems
• Integrity constraints (e.g. account balance > 0) become part of program code
• Hard to add new constraints or change existing ones
Purpose of Database Systems (Cont.)
• Drawbacks of using file systems (cont.)
• 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
Levels of Abstraction
• Physical level describes how a record (e.g., customer) is stored.
• Logical level: describes data stored in database, and the relationships
among the data.
type customer = record
name : string;
street : string;
city : integer;
end;
• View level: application programs hide details of data types. Views can also
hide information (e.g., salary) for security purposes.
View of Data An architecture for a database system
Instances and Schemas
• Similar to types and variables in programming languages
• Schema – the logical structure of the database
• e.g., the database consists of information about a set of customers and accounts and the relationship
between them)
• Analogous to type information of a variable in a program
• Physical schema: database design at the physical level
• Logical schema: database design at the logical level
• Instance – the actual content of the database at a particular point in time
• Analogous to the value of a variable
• Physical Data Independence – the ability to modify the physical schema without changing the logical
schema
• Applications depend on the logical schema
• In general, the interfaces between the various levels and components should be well defined so that
changes in some parts do not seriously influence others.
Data Models
• A collection of tools for describing
• data
• data relationships
• data semantics
• data constraints
• Entity-Relationship model
• Relational model
• Other models:
• object-oriented model
• semi-structured data models
• Older models: network model and hierarchical model
Entity-Relationship Model
Example of schema in the entity-relationship model
Entity Relationship Model (Cont.)
• E-R model of real world
• Entities (objects)
• E.g. customers, accounts, bank branch
• Relationships between entities
• E.g. Account A-101 is held by customer Johnson
• Relationship set depositor associates customers with accounts
• Widely used for database design
• Database design in E-R model usually converted to design in the relational
model (coming up next) which is used for storage and processing
Relational Model Attributes
• Example of tabular data in the relational model
customer- customer- customer- account-
Customer-id
name street city number
192-83-7465 Johnson Alma Palo Alto A-101

019-28-3746 Smith North Rye A-215

192-83-7465 Johnson Alma Palo Alto A-201

321-12-3123 Jones Main Harrison A-217

019-28-3746 Smith North Rye A-201

A Sample Relational Database
Data Definition Language (DDL)
• Specification notation for defining the database schema
• E.g.
create table account (
account-number char(10),
balance integer)
• DDL compiler generates a set of tables stored in a data dictionary
• Data dictionary contains metadata (i.e., data about data)
• database schema
• Data storage and definition language
• language in which the storage structure and access methods used by the database
system are specified
• Usually an extension of the data definition language
Data Manipulation Language (DML)
• Language for accessing and manipulating the data organized by the
appropriate data model
• DML also known as query language
• Two classes of languages
• Procedural – user specifies what data is required and how to get those data
• Nonprocedural – user specifies what data is required without specifying how
to get those data
• SQL is the most widely used query language
SQL
• SQL: widely used non-procedural language
• E.g. find the name of the customer with customer-id 192-83-7465
select customer.customer-name
from customer
where customer.customer-id = ‘192-83-7465’
• E.g. find the balances of all accounts held by the customer with customer-id 192-83-7465
select account.balance
from depositor, account
where depositor.customer-id = ‘192-83-7465’ and
depositor.account-number = account.account-number
• Application programs generally access databases through one of
• Language extensions to allow embedded SQL
• Application program interface (e.g. ODBC/JDBC) which allow SQL queries to be sent to a
database
Database Users
• Users are differentiated by the way they expect to interact with the
system
• Application programmers – interact with system through DML calls
• Sophisticated users – form requests in a database query language
• Specialized users – write specialized database applications that do not
fit into the traditional data processing framework
• Naïve users – invoke one of the permanent application programs that
have been written previously
• E.g. people accessing database over the web, bank tellers, clerical staff
Database Administrator
• 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
• Storage structure and access method definition
• Schema and physical organization modification
• Granting user authority to access the database
• Specifying integrity constraints
• Acting as liaison with users
• Monitoring performance and responding to changes in requirements
Transaction Management

• A transaction is a collection of operations that performs a single

logical function in a database application
• Transaction-management component ensures that the database
remains in a consistent (correct) state despite system failures (e.g.,
power failures and operating system crashes) and transaction failures.
• Concurrency-control manager controls the interaction among the
concurrent transactions, to ensure the consistency of the database.
Storage Management
• Storage manager is a program module that provides the interface
between the low-level data stored in the database and the application
programs and queries submitted to the system.
• The storage manager is responsible to the following tasks:
• interaction with the file manager
• efficient storing, retrieving and updating of data
Overall System Structure
Application Architectures

Two-tier architecture: E.g. client programs using ODBC/JDBC to

communicate with a database
Three-tier architecture: E.g. web-based applications, and
applications built using “middleware”