GWEN C GONDO

DATABASE SYTEMS

ASSIGNMENT 1

1(a) Logical data independence Logical data independence refers to the immunity of the external schemas to changes in the conceptual schema. Changes to the conceptual schema, such as the addition or removal of new entities, attributes, or relationships, should be possible without having to change existing external schemas or having to rewrite application programs. Physical data independence Physical data independence refers to the immunity of the conceptual schema to changes in the internal schema. Changes to the internal schema, such as using different file organizations or storage structures, using different storage devices, modifying indexes, or hashing algorithms, should be possible without having to change the conceptual or external schemas. (b) Domain constraints are restrictions on the set of values allowed for the attributes of relations. For example, the sex of a member of staff is either M or F, so the domain of the sex attribute is a single character string consisting of M or F. Entity integrity is a rule that applies to the primary keys of base relations and states that in a base relation no attribute of a primary key can be null. (c) Database schema is the overall description of the database. The schema is specified during the database design process and is not expected to change frequently. Database instance is the data in the database at any particular point in time. However, the actual data in the database may change frequently for example it changes every time we insert, alter or delete details. 2 Limitation of the traditional file-based system Data redundancy

Owing to the decentralized approach taken by each department, the file-based approach encouraged, if not necessitated, the uncontrolled duplication of data. Traditional file-based systems waste space by storing the same information in more than one file. In contrast, the database approach attempts to eliminate the redundancy by integrating the files so that multiple copies of the same data are not stored. By eliminating or controlling redundancy, we reduce the risk of inconsistencies occurring. Data dependence In file-based systems, the descriptions of the data and the logic for accessing the data are built into each application program, making the programs dependent on the data. A change to the structure of the data or a change to the way the data is stored on disk, can require substantial alterations to the programs that are affected by the change. In contrast, a DBMS separates the data descriptions from the applications, thereby making applications immune to changes in the data descriptions. This is known as data independence. The provision of data independence simplifies database application maintenance. Inefficient backup and recovery services Many file-based systems place the responsibility on the user to provide measures to protect the data from failures to the computer system or application program. This may involve taking a nightly backup of the data. In the event of a failure during the next day, the backup is restored and the work that has taken place since this backup is lost and has to be re-entered. In contrast, modern DBMSs provide facilities to minimize the amount of processing that is lost following a failure. 3 Conceptual database design, is the process of constructing a model of the information use in an enterprise that is independent of implementation details, such as the target DBMS, application programs, programming languages, or any other physical considerations. It is the first phase of

database design and involves the creation of a conceptual data model of the part of the enterprise that we are interested in modeling. Physical database design is the process of producing a description of the implementation of the database on secondary storage; it describes the base relations, file organizations, and indexes used to achieve efficient access to the data, and any associated integrity constraints and security measures. It is the third and final phase of the database design process during which the designer decides how the database is to be implemented. 4 Characteristics of relational database model 5(i) Interfile clustering is a file organization that stores related records of two or more relations in each block. Records of several different relations are stored in the same file; further, related records of the different relations are stored on the same block, so that one I/O operation fetches related records from all the relations. For example, records of the two relations can be considered to be related if they would match in a join of the two relations. (ii) Indexing is a data structure that allows the DBMS to locate particular records in a file more quickly and thereby speed response to user queries. An index in a database is similar to an index in a book. It is an auxiliary structure associated with a file that can be referred to when searching for an item of information, just like searching the index of a book, in which we look up a keyword to get a list of one or more pages the keyword appears on. An index obviates the need to scan sequentially through the file each time we want to find the item. In the case of database indexes, the required item will be one or more records in a file.