Lecture 1

Introduction to Databases

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Recent Developments (1)
 Social Networks started capturing a lot of
information about people and about
communications among people-posts, tweets,
photos, videos in systems such as:
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Linked-In
 All of the above constitutes data

 Search Engines, Google, Bing, Yahoo: collect

their own repository of web pages for searching

purposes Slide 1- 2
Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe
Recent Developments (2)
 New Technologies are emerging to manage vast
amounts of data generated on the web:
 Big Data storage systems involving large clusters
of distributed computers (Chapter 25)
 NOSQL (Non-SQL, Not Only SQL) systems
(Chapter 24)
 A large amount of data now resides on the
“cloud” which means it is in huge data centers
using thousands of machines.

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 1- 3

Basic Definitions
 Database:
 A collection of related data.

 Data:
 Known facts that can be recorded and have an implicit meaning.

Eg. Telephone Number, Name. Data have little meaning unless

organized in some logical manner
 Mini-world:
 Some part of the real world about which data is stored in a

database. For example, student grades and transcripts at a

university.
 Database Management System (DBMS):
 A software package/system to facilitate the creation and

maintenance of a computerized database.

 Database System:
 The DBMS software together with the data itself. Sometimes, the

applications are also included.

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Simplified database system environment

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Impact of Databases and Database
Technology
 Businesses: Banking, Insurance, Retail,
Transportation, Healthcare, Manufacturing
 Service industries: Financial, Real-estate, Legal,
Electronic Commerce, Small businesses
 Education : Resources for content and Delivery
 More recently: Social Networks, Environmental
and Scientific Applications, Medicine and
Genetics
 Personalized applications: based on smart mobile
devices
Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 1- 6
What a DBMS does to make things
easier
 Define a particular database in terms of its data types,
structures, and constraints
 Construct or load the initial database contents on a
secondary storage medium
 Manipulating the database:
 Retrieval: Querying, generating reports
 Modification: Insertions, deletions and updates to its content
 Accessing the database through Web applications
 Processing and sharing by a set of concurrent users and
application programs – yet, keeping all data valid and
consistent

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Other DBMS Functionalities
 DBMS may additionally provide:
 Protection or Security measures to prevent
unauthorized access
 “Active” processing to take internal actions on data
 Presentation and visualization of data
 Maintenance of the database and associated
programs over the lifetime of the database
application

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Application Programs and DBMS
 Applications interact with a database by
generating
- Queries: that access different parts of data and
formulate the result of a request
- Transactions: that may read some data and
“update” certain values or generate new data and
store that in the database

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 1- 9

Example of a Database
(with a Conceptual Data Model)
 Mini-world for the example:
 Part of a UNIVERSITY environment
 Some mini-world entities:
 STUDENTs
 COURSEs
 SECTIONs (of COURSEs)
 (Academic) DEPARTMENTs
 INSTRUCTORs

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 1- 10

Example of a Database
(with a Conceptual Data Model)
 Some mini-world relationships:
 SECTIONs are of specific COURSEs
 STUDENTs take SECTIONs
 COURSEs have prerequisite COURSEs
 INSTRUCTORs teach SECTIONs
 COURSEs are offered by DEPARTMENTs
 STUDENTs major in DEPARTMENTs

 Note: The above entities and relationships are typically

expressed in a conceptual data model, such as the
ENTITY-RELATIONSHIP data model (see Chapters 3, 4)

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Example of a Simple Database

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Main Characteristics of the Database
Approach
 Self-describing nature of a database system:
 A DBMS catalog stores the description of a particular
database (e.g. data structures, types, and constraints)
 The description is called meta-data*.
 This allows the DBMS software to work with different
database applications.
 Insulation between programs and data:
 Called program-data independence.
 Allows changing data structures and storage organization
without having to change the DBMS access programs

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Example of a Simplified Database Catalog

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Main Characteristics of the Database
Approach (continued)
 Data Abstraction:
 A data model is used to hide storage details and
present the users with a conceptual view of the
database.
 Programs refer to the data model constructs rather
than data storage details
 Support of multiple views of the data:
 Each user may see a different view of the
database, which describes only the data of
interest to that user.

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Main Characteristics of the Database
Approach (continued)
 Sharing of data and multi-user transaction
processing:
 Allowing a set of concurrent users to retrieve from and to
update the database.
 Concurrency control within the DBMS guarantees that each
transaction is correctly executed or aborted
 Recovery subsystem ensures each completed transaction
has its effect permanently recorded in the database
 OLTP (Online Transaction Processing) is a major part of
database applications. This allows hundreds of concurrent
transactions to execute per second.

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Advantages of Using the Database
Approach
 Controlling redundancy in data storage and in
development and maintenance efforts.
 Sharing of data among multiple users.
 Restricting unauthorized access to data. Only the
DBA staff uses privileged commands and
facilities.
 Providing persistent storage for program Objects
 E.g., Object-oriented DBMSs make program
objects persistent– see Chapter 12.
 Providing storage structures (e.g. indexes) for
efficient query processing – see Chapter 17.
Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 1- 17
Advantages of Using the Database
Approach (continued)
 Providing optimization of queries for efficient
processing
 Providing backup and recovery services
 Representing complex relationships among data
 Enforcing integrity constraints on the database

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 1- 18

Database Design

 Focuses on the design of the database structure

that will be used to store and manage end-user
data
 Well-designed database
 Facilitates data management
 Generates accurate and valuable information
 Poorly designed database causes difficult-to-
trace errors

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Figure1.6 - A Simple File System

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Figure 1.8 - Contrasting Database and
File Systems

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Contrasting Database and File
Systems
File System Database Management System

A file system is a software application A database management system, or

that organizes and maintains files on DBMS, is a software application that
a storage device. It manages the allows you to access, create, and
storage and retrieval of data. manage databases.

The database is a software

application and is not shipped as a
The file system is more related to an part of the operating system. It is
operating system and is shipped as a more about organizing the data and
part of the operating system itself. implementing techniques to keep the
data consistent and to have faster
access to the data.

The use of a database management

A file system does not allow for system is efficient because there are
efficient data storage and retrieval. numerous techniques for storing and
retrieving data.

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

 Contrasting Database and File
Systems
It does not provide data recovery In DBMS, there is a backup recovery
services. option for data.
There is no crash recovery A crash recovery method is provided
mechanism in the file system. by DBMS.
A good protection method is provided
It’s difficult to keep a file system safe.
by DBMS.
Redundancy is minimized to a great
Data redundancy is higher in a file
extent in a database management
management system.
system.
The file system has a higher level of
data inconsistency. Same data might
A database management system has
be stored at multiple places yet have
a low level of data inconsistency.
different values leading to data
inconsistency.

Concurrency is not available in this A concurrency facility is provided by a

system. database management system.
It is less expensive than a database
It is costlier than that of a file system.
management system.

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Figure 1.9 - The Database System
Environment

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 25

Table 1.3 - Database Career Opportunities

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe