1

Introduction
• Flat File Systems
• Database Management System (DBMS)
• Database Applications
• Purpose of DBMS
• Database Users
• DBMS Architecture
• Instances and Schemas
• Data Independence
• Data Models
• Client/Server Architecture
Nanda Kishor Ray 1-1
 Flat-file Systems
• In early processing systems, an organization's information
was stored as groups of records in separate files. The file
processing systems consisted of a few data files and many
application programs. Each file, called a flat file, contained
processed information for one specific function, such as
accounting or inventory.
• A flat file system stores data in a plain text file. Each line
of the text file holds one record, with fields separated by
delimiters, such as commas or tabs.
• A File Management System (FMS) accommodate flat files
that have no relation to other files. This type of database is
ideal for a simple databases that do not contain a lot of
repeated information. Examples include excel spreadsheet
or word data list file. Nanda Kishor Ray 1-2
 Database Management System
• A database is the collection of related persistent data and
contains information relevant to an enterprise. The
database is also called the repository or container for a
collection of data files. For example, university database
for maintaining information about students, courses and
grades in university.
• A database system is basically just a computerized
record-keeping system. A database system involves four
major components: data, hardware, software, and users.
• The database management system (DBMS) is the
software that handles all access to the database. It is
defined as the collection of interrelated data and a set of
programs to access those data.
Nanda Kishor Ray 1-3
 Database Management System
• Users of a DBMS system can perform the following basic
operations on the database:
 Adding new, empty files to the database.
 Inserting data into existing files.
 Retrieving data from existing files.
 Changing data in existing files.
 Deleting data from existing files.
 Removing existing files from the database.

Nanda Kishor Ray 1-4

 Database Applications
• Databases form an essential part of almost all enterprises.
Some database applications are given below:
 Banking: For customer information, accounts, and loans, and
banking transactions.
 Airlines: For reservation and schedule information.
 Universities: For student information, course registrations, and
grades.
 Credit card transactions: For purchase on credit cards and
generation of monthly statements.
 Telecommunication: For keeping records of call made, generating
monthly bills, maintaining balances on prepaid calling cards, and
storing information about the communication networks.
 Finance: For storing information about holdings, sales, and
purchase of financial instruments such as stocks and bonds.
Nanda Kishor Ray 1-5
 Database Applications
 Sales: For customer, product, and purchase information.
 Manufacturing: For management of supply chain and for tracking
production of items in factories, inventories of items in
warehouses/stores, and orders for items.
 Human resources: For information about employees, salaries,
payroll taxes and benefits, and for generation of paychecks.

Nanda Kishor Ray 1-6

 Purpose of DBMS
• In early days, database applications were built on top of
file systems. These systems have many drawbacks.
Database systems offer solutions to all the drawbacks of
file systems. The benefits using DBMS are:
 Redundancy can be reduced: The database is said to be
redundant if the same information is duplicated in several places
(data files). For example, the address and telephone number of a
particular customer may appear in a file that consists of saving-
account records and in a file that consists of checking-account
records. We can reduce redundancy by using DBMS.
 Inconsistency can be avoided: The database is said to be
inconsistent if various copies of the same data may no longer
agree. For example, a changed customer address may be reflected
in saving account but not elsewhere in the system. By using
DBMS we can avoid inconsistency.
Nanda Kishor Ray 1-7
 Purpose of DBMS
 Data can be shared: The data in the database can be shared
among many users and applications.
 Transaction support can be provided: A transaction involves
several database operations. For example, transfer of a cash
amount from account A to account B. In this example two update
operations are required.
 Integrity can be maintained: The problem of integrity is the
problem of ensuring that the data in database is correct. By using
DBMS, we can maintain integrity problems.
 Security can be enforced: Not every user of the database system
should be able to access all data.
 Efficient Backup and Recovery can be provided: Provide
facilities for recovering from software and hardware failures to
reinstate database to previous consistent state.
 Data in the database can be accessed easily.
Nanda Kishor Ray 1-8
 Database Users
• Database users can be classified into two categories: actors
on the scene and workers behind the scene.
• Actors on the Scene:
 These people’s jobs involve develop, use, and administer the
database. These people are classified into following categories:
 Database administrators: These people are responsible for
authorizing access to the database, for coordinating and monitoring
its use, acquiring software and hardware resources, controlling its
use and monitoring efficiency of operations. Thus DBA is
responsible for the overall control of the system at technical level.
Hence, DBA is responsible for the following tasks:
• Defining Conceptual Schema
• Defining Internal Schema
• Defining Security & Integrity Constraints
Nanda Kishor Ray 1-9
 Database Users
• Monitoring performance & responsibilities to changing requirements
• Liaising with users
• Defining Dump and Reload policies
 Database Designers: These people are responsible for defining
the content, the structure, the constraints, and functions or
transactions against the database. They must communicate with the
end-users and understand their needs.
 End Users: They use the database for querying, updating and
generating reports. End-users can be categorized as follows:
• Casual end users: They access database occasionally when needed.
They use sophisticated database query language. They are middle or
high-level managers.
• Naive or Parametric end users: They make up a large section of the
end-user population. They use previously well-defined functions in
the form of “canned transactions” against the database. For example,
bank-tellers, reservation clerks.

Nanda Kishor Ray 1-10

 Database Users
• Sophisticated end users: They have clear knowledge of database
system facilities to construct complex queries. They are Engineers,
Scientists. They make use of most database facilities.
• Stand-alone end user: They make use of personal databases by using
ready-made program packages that provide easy-to-use menu based
interface.
 System Analysts and Application Programmers:
• System analysts determine the requirements of end users, especially
naive and parametric end users and develop specifications for canned
transactions that meet these requirements.
• Application programmers implement these specifications as
programs; then they test, debug, document and maintain these canned
transactions.

Nanda Kishor Ray 1-11

 Database Users
• Workers Behind the Scene:
 These people are associated with the design, development, and
operation of the DBMS software and system environment. These
people are not actively interested in the database itself. These
people are classified into following types:
 DBMS System Designers and implementers: These people
design and implement the DBMS modules and interfaces as a
software package.
 Tool Developers: These persons design and implement tools – the
software packages that facilitate database system design and use
and that help improve performance.
 Operators and Maintenance Personnel: These personnel are
responsible for the actual running and maintenance of the hardware
and software environment for the database system.

Nanda Kishor Ray 1-12

 DBMS Architecture
• The DBMS architecture proposed by ANSI/SPARC
(American National Standards Institute, Standards Planning
And Requirements Committee) (ANSI/SPARC architecture)
is defined at three levels. This architecture is also called
three-schema architecture.
• This architecture provides three levels of abstraction to
simplify users’ interaction with the system.
• It provides users with an abstract view of data. The system
hides certain details of how data are stored and maintained.
• The goal of this architecture is to separate the user
applications from physical database.
• It divides the system into three levels of abstraction: the
internal or physical level, the logical or conceptual level, and
the external or view level.
Nanda Kishor Ray 1-13
 DBMS Architecture
End Users

External External External

• • •
Level View 1 View n
external/conceptual
mapping
Conceptual Conceptual Schema
Level
conceptual/internal
mapping
Internal Internal Schema
Level

Stored Database
Nanda Kishor Ray 1-14
 DBMS Architecture
• Physical Level or Internal Level:
 It is the lowest level of abstraction and describes how the data in the
database are actually stored.
 This level describes complex low-level data structures in detail and is
concerned with the way the data is physically stored.
 Data only exists at physical level.
• Logical Level or Conceptual Level:
 This is the next higher level of abstraction and describes what data are
stored in the database, and what relationships exist among those data.
 It describes the structure of whole database and hides details of
physical storage structure.
 It concentrates on describing entities, data types, relationships,
attributes and constraints.
 All of the views must be derivable from this conceptual schema.
Nanda Kishor Ray 1-15
 DBMS Architecture
• View Level or External Level:
 It is the highest level of abstraction and is concerned with the way
the data is seen by individual users.
 This level simplifies the users’ interaction with the system.
 It includes a number of user views and hence is guided by the end
user requirement.
 It describes only those part of the database in which the users are
interested and hides rest of all from those users. Each user group
refers to its own external schema.
• The DBMS must transform a request specified on an
external schema into a request against the conceptual
schema, and then into a request on the internal schema for
processing over the database. The process of transforming
requests and results between levels is called mapping.
Nanda Kishor Ray 1-16
 Instances and Schemas
• Instances:
 Databases change over time as information is inserted and deleted.
The collection of information stored in the database at a particular
moment is called an instance of the database.
 It is also known as database state.
• Schema:
 The overall design of the database which is not expected to change
frequently is called the database schema.
 There are three schemas, partitioned according to the levels of
abstraction. The physical schema describes the database design at
physical level. The logical schema describes the database design at
the logical level. The schema at the view level is sometimes called
subschema and describes the view of the database. A database may
have several subschema.
Nanda Kishor Ray 1-17
 Data Independence
• The three schema architecture further explains the concept
of data independence, the capacity to change the schema at
one level without having to change the schema at the next
higher level.
 Logical Data Independence
 Physical Data Independence
• Logical Data Independence:
 The capacity to change the conceptual schema without having to
change the external schemas and their associated application
programs.
• Physical Data Independence:
 The capacity to change the internal schema without having to
change the conceptual schema.
Nanda Kishor Ray 1-18
 Data Independence
• For example, the internal schema may be changed when
certain file structures are reorganized or new indexes are
created to improve database performance
• When a schema at a lower level is changed, only the
mappings between this schema and higher-level schemas
need to be changed in a DBMS that fully supports data
independence. The higher-level schemas themselves are
unchanged.
• Hence, the application programs need not be changed since
they refer to the external schemas.

Nanda Kishor Ray 1-19

 Data Models
• The basic structure or design of the database is the data
model. A data model is a collection of conceptual tools for
describing data, data relationships, data semantics, and
consistency constraints. Some data models are given below:
• Entity-Relationship Model:
 Entity-relationship (E-R) model is a high level data model based
on a perception of a real world that consists of collection of basic
objects, called entities, and of relationships among these entities.
 An entity is a thing or object in the real world that is distinguishable
from other objects.
 Entities are described in a database by a set of attributes.
 A relationship is an association among several entities.
 The set of all entities of the same type is called an entity set and the
set of all relationships of the same type is called a relationship set.
Nanda Kishor Ray 1-20
 Data Models
 Overall logical structure of a database can be expressed graphically
by E-R diagram. The basic components of this diagram are:
• Rectangles (represent entity sets)
• Ellipses (represent attributes)
• Diamonds (represent relationship sets among entity sets)
• Lines (link attributes to entity sets and entity sets to relationship sets)
 The figure below shows an example of E-R diagram.

Nanda Kishor Ray 1-21

 Data Models
 In addition, the E-R model also represents certain constraints to
which the contents of the database must conform. The constraints
are mapping cardinalities and participation constraints.
(discussed later)
• Relational Model:
 It is the current pervasive model. The relational model is a lower
level model that uses a collection of tables to represent both data and
relationships among those data. Each table has multiple columns,
and each column has a unique name. Each table corresponds to an
entity set or relationship set, and each row represents an instance of
that entity set or relationship set.
 Relationships link rows from two tables by embedding row
identifiers (keys) from one table as attribute values in the other table.
 Structured query language (SQL) is used to manipulate data stored
in tables.
Nanda Kishor Ray 1-22
Fig: A sample relational
Nanda Kishor Ray database 1-23
 Data Models
 The relational data model is the most widely used data model, and a
vast majority of current database systems are based on the relational
model. The relational model is at a lower level of abstraction than
the E-R model. Database designs are often carried out in the E-R
model, and then translated to the relational model.
• Object-oriented Model:
 This model represents an entity set as a class. A class represents
both object attributes as well as the behavior of the entity.
 Instances of class are objects. Within an object, the class attributes
takes specific values. However the behavior patterns of the class is
shared by all the objects belonging to the class.
 Attribute values can be primitive data types usually associated with
databases and programming languages or other objects. The object-
oriented model maintains relationships through ‘logical-
containment’.
Nanda Kishor Ray 1-24
 Data Models
• Object Relational Model:
 This model combines the features of the object-oriented data model
and relational data model.
• Semistructured Model:
 This model permits the specification of data where individual data
items of the same type may have different set of attributes. The
extensible markup language (XML) is widely used to represent
semistructured data.
• Hierarchical Model:
 This model assumes that a tree structure is the most frequently
occurring relationship.
• Network Model:
 The network model replaces the hierarchical tree with a graph thus
allowing more general connections among the nodes. This model
was evolved to speciallyNanda Kishor
handle Ray
non-hierarchical relationships. 1-25
 Client/Server Architecture
• In client/server architecture, user interface and application programs are
located on the client side and query and transaction facility are located
on the server side.
• The server is often called a query server or transaction server because it
provides these two functionality. It is also called an SQL server since
most servers are based on the SQL language and standard.
• The user interface programs and application programs can run on the
client side.
• When DBMS access is required, the program establishes a connection to
the DBMS which is on the server side.
• Once the connection is created, the client program can communicate
with the DBMS.
• Some interfaces that provide an application programming interface
(API) that allow client side programs to call the DBMS are ODBC
(Open Database Connectivity) and JDBC (Java Database Connectivity).
Nanda Kishor Ray 1-26
 Client/Server Architecture
• Other variations of clients are also possible. For example, in some
DBMSs, more functionality is transferred to clients including user
interface, data dictionary functions, interactions with programming
language compilers, global query optimization, concurrency control,
and recovery across multiple servers. In such situations the server may
be called the Data Server.
• The architecture described so far is called two-tier architecture
because the software components are distributed over two systems:
client and server.
• Many Web applications use an architecture called the three-tier
architecture which adds an intermediate layer (middle tier or
application server or Web server) between the client and the database
server.
• This server plays an intermediary role by storing business rules
(procedures or constraints) that are used to access data from the database
server. Nanda Kishor Ray 1-27
 Client/Server Architecture
• It can also improve database security by checking a client's credentials
before forwarding a request to the database server.
• Clients contain GUI interfaces and some additional application-specific
business rules.
• Advances in encryption and decryption technology make it safer to
transfer sensitive data from server to client in encrypted form, where it
will be decrypted.

Nanda Kishor Ray 1-28