Unit- I

Relational databases
 Syllabus

Purpose of Database System – Views of data – Data

Models – Database System Architecture –
Introduction to relational databases – Relational
Model – Keys – Relational Algebra – SQL
fundamentals – Advanced SQL features –
Embedded SQL– Dynamic SQL.

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Purpose of DBMS:

DBMS contains information about a particular enterprise

Collection of interrelated data
Set of programs to access the data
An environment that is both convenient and efficient to use
Database Applications:
Banking: transactions
Airlines: reservations, schedules
Universities: registration, grades
Sales: customers, products, purchases
Online retailers: order tracking, customized recommendations
Manufacturing: production, inventory, orders, supply chain
Human resources: employee records, salaries, tax deductions
Databases can be very large.
Databases touch all aspects of our lives
 Design Phases

 The initial phase of database design is to characterize fully the data

needs of the prospective database users.
 Next, the designer chooses a data model and, by applying the concepts
of the chosen data model, translates these requirements into a
conceptual schema of the database.
 A fully developed conceptual schema also indicates the functional
requirements of the enterprise. In a “specification of functional
requirements”, users describe the kinds of operations (or transactions)
that will be performed on the data.

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 Data Models
 A collection of tools for describing
 Data
 Data relationships
 Data semantics
 Data constraints
 Relational model
 Entity-Relationship data model (mainly for database design)
 Object-based data models (Object-oriented and Object-relational)
 Semistructured data model (XML)
 Other older models:
 Network model
 Hierarchical model

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 Database Architecture

The architecture of a database systems is greatly influenced by

the underlying computer system on which the database is running:
 Centralized
 Client-server
 Parallel (multi-processor)
 Distributed

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 Database Architecture
 The design of a DBMS depends on its architecture. It can be centralized or
decentralized or hierarchical. The architecture of a DBMS can be seen as
either single tier or multi-tier. An n-tier architecture divides the whole system
into related but independent n modules, which can be independently
modified, altered, changed, or replaced.
 In 1-tier architecture, the DBMS is the only entity where the user directly sits
on the DBMS and uses it. Any changes done here will directly be done on the
DBMS itself. It does not provide handy tools for end-users. Database
designers and programmers normally prefer to use single-tier architecture.
 If the architecture of DBMS is 2-tier, then it must have an application
through which the DBMS can be accessed. Programmers use 2-tier
architecture where they access the DBMS by means of an application. Here
the application tier is entirely independent of the database in terms of
operation, design, and programming.

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10
 Database (Data) Tier − At this tier, the database resides along with its query
processing languages. We also have the relations that define the data and
their constraints at this level.
 Application (Middle) Tier − At this tier reside the application server and the
programs that access the database. For a user, this application tier presents an
abstracted view of the database. End-users are unaware of any existence of
the database beyond the application. At the other end, the database tier is not
aware of any other user beyond the application tier. Hence, the application
layer sits in the middle and acts as a mediator between the end-user and the
database.
 User (Presentation) Tier − End-users operate on this tier and they know
nothing about any existence of the database beyond this layer. At this layer,
multiple views of the database can be provided by the application. All views
are generated by applications that reside in the application tier.

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 Introduction to Relational Databases
 A Relational database management system (RDBMS) is a database
management system (DBMS) that is based on the relational model as
introduced by E. F. Codd.
 The data in an RDBMS is stored in database objects which are called as
tables. This table is basically a collection of related data entries and it
consists of numerous columns and rows.
 Every table is broken up into smaller entities called fields. The fields in the
CUSTOMERS table consist of ID, NAME, AGE, ADDRESS and SALARY.
 A field is a column in a table that is designed to maintain specific information
about every record in the table.
 A record is also called as a row of data is each individual entry that exists in a
table. For example, there are 7 records in the above CUSTOMERS table.

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Relational model

attributes
(or columns)

tuples
(or rows)

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 Attribute Types

 The set of allowed values for each attribute is called the domain of the
attribute
 Attribute values are (normally) required to be atomic; that is,
indivisible
 The special value null is a member of every domain
 The null value causes complications in the definition of many
operations

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 Relation Schema and Instance
 A1, A2, …, An are attributes

 R = (A1, A2, …, An ) is a relation schema

Example:
instructor = (ID, name, dept_name, salary)
 Formally, given sets D1, D2, …. Dn a relation r is a subset of
D1 x D2 x … x Dn
Thus, a relation is a set of n-tuples (a1, a2, …, an) where each ai  Di

 The current values (relation instance) of a relation are specified by

a table
 An element t of r is a tuple, represented by a row in a table

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 Relations are Unordered

 Order of tuples is irrelevant (tuples may be stored in an arbitrary order)

 Example: instructor relation with unordered tuples

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 Database
 A database consists of multiple relations

 Information about an enterprise is broken up into parts

instructor
student
advisor

 Bad design:
univ (instructor -ID, name, dept_name, salary, student_Id, ..)
results in

 repetition of information (e.g., two students have the same instructor)

 the need for null values (e.g., represent an student with no advisor)
 Normalization theory (Chapter 7) deals with how to design “good” relational
schemas

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 Keys
 Let K  R
 K is a superkey of R if values for K are sufficient to identify a unique tuple of
each possible relation r(R)
 Example: {ID} and {ID,name} are both superkeys of instructor.
 Superkey K is a candidate key if K is minimal
Example: {ID} is a candidate key for Instructor
 One of the candidate keys is selected to be the primary key.

 which one?
 Foreign key constraint: Value in one relation must appear in another
 Referencing relation
 Referenced relation

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 Relational Algebra
 Relational algebra is a procedural query language, which takes instances of
relations as input and yields instances of relations as output.
 It uses operators to perform queries. An operator can be either unary or
binary. They accept relations as their input and yield relations as their
output.
 Relational algebra is performed recursively on a relation and intermediate
results are also considered relations.
 The fundamental operations of relational algebra are as follows −
 Select
 Project
 Union
 Set different
 Cartesian product
 Rename

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 Introduction to SQL

 Overview of the SQL Query Language

 Data Definition
 Basic Query Structure
 Additional Basic Operations
 Set Operations
 Null Values
 Aggregate Functions
 Nested Subqueries
 Modification of the Database

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 History
 IBM Sequel language developed as part of System R project at the
IBM San Jose Research Laboratory
 Renamed Structured Query Language (SQL)
 ANSI and ISO standard SQL:
 SQL-86, SQL-89, SQL-92
 SQL:1999, SQL:2003, SQL:2008
 Commercial systems offer most, if not all, SQL-92 features, plus
varying feature sets from later standards and special proprietary
features.
 Not all examples here may work on your particular system.

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 Data Definition Language
The SQL data-definition language (DDL) allows the
specification of information about relations, including:
 The schema for each relation.
 The domain of values associated with each attribute.
 Integrity constraints
 And as we will see later, also other information such as
 The set of indices to be maintained for each relations.
 Security and authorization information for each relation.
 The physical storage structure of each relation on disk.

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 Domain Types in SQL
 char(n). Fixed length character string, with user-specified length n.
 varchar(n). Variable length character strings, with user-specified
maximum length n.
 int. Integer (a finite subset of the integers that is machine-dependent).
 smallint. Small integer (a machine-dependent subset of the integer domain
type).
 numeric(p,d). Fixed point number, with user-specified precision of p
digits, with n digits to the right of decimal point.
 real, double precision. Floating point and double-precision floating point
numbers, with machine-dependent precision.
 float(n). Floating point number, with user-specified precision of at least n
digits.
 More are covered in Chapter 4.

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 Create Table Construct
 An SQL relation is defined using the create table command:
create table r (A1 D1, A2 D2, ..., An Dn,
(integrity-constraint1),
...,
(integrity-constraintk))
 r is the name of the relation
 each Ai is an attribute name in the schema of relation r
 Di is the data type of values in the domain of attribute Ai
 Example:
create table instructor (
ID char(5),
name varchar(20) not null,
dept_name varchar(20),
salary numeric(8,2))
 insert into instructor values (‘10211’, ’Smith’, ’Biology’, 66000);
 insert into instructor values (‘10211’, null, ’Biology’, 66000);
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 Integrity Constraints in Create Table

 not null
 primary key (A1, ..., An )
 foreign key (Am, ..., An ) references r

Example: Declare dept_name as the primary key for department

.
create table instructor (
ID char(5),
name varchar(20) not null,
dept_name varchar(20),
salary numeric(8,2),
primary key (ID),
foreign key (dept_name) references department)

primary key declaration on an attribute automatically ensures not null

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 And a Few More Relation Definitions
 create table student (
ID varchar(5),
name varchar(20) not null,
dept_name varchar(20),
tot_cred numeric(3,0),
primary key (ID),
foreign key (dept_name) references department) );
 create table takes (
ID varchar(5),
course_id varchar(8),
sec_id varchar(8),
semester varchar(6),
year numeric(4,0),
grade varchar(2),
primary key (ID, course_id, sec_id, semester, year),
foreign key (ID) references student,
foreign key (course_id, sec_id, semester, year) references section );
 Note: sec_id can be dropped from primary key above, to ensure a student cannot
be registered for two sections of the same course in the same semester

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 And more still
 create table course (
course_id varchar(8) primary key,
title varchar(50),
dept_name varchar(20),
credits numeric(2,0),
foreign key (dept_name) references department) );
 Primary key declaration can be combined with attribute
declaration as shown above

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 Drop and Alter Table Constructs
 drop table student
 Deletes the table and its contents
 delete from student
 Deletes all contents of table, but retains table
 alter table
 alter table r add A D
 where A is the name of the attribute to be added to relation
r and D is the domain of A.
 All tuples in the relation are assigned null as the value for
the new attribute.
 alter table r drop A
 where A is the name of an attribute of relation r
 Dropping of attributes not supported by many databases

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 Basic Query Structure

 The SQL data-manipulation language (DML) provides the ability

to query information, and insert, delete and update tuples
 A typical SQL query has the form:

select A1, A2, ..., An

from r1, r2, ..., rm
where P

 Ai represents an attribute
 Ri represents a relation
 P is a predicate.
 The result of an SQL query is a relation.

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 The select Clause
 The select clause list the attributes desired in the result of a query
 corresponds to the projection operation of the relational algebra
 Example: find the names of all instructors:
select name
from instructor
 NOTE: SQL names are case insensitive (i.e., you may use upper- or lower-case
letters.)
 E.g. Name ≡ NAME ≡ name
 Some people use upper case wherever we use bold font.

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 The select Clause (Cont.)

 SQL allows duplicates in relations as well as in query results.

 To force the elimination of duplicates, insert the keyword distinct after
select.
 Find the names of all departments with instructor, and remove
duplicates
select distinct dept_name
from instructor
 The keyword all specifies that duplicates not be removed.

select all dept_name

from instructor

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 Weak Entity Sets (Cont.)

 An alternative way to deal with this redundancy is to not store the attribute
course_id in the section entity and to only store the remaining attributes
section_id, year, and semester. However, the entity set section then does
not have enough attributes to identify a particular section entity uniquely;
although each section entity is distinct, sections for different courses may
share the same section_id, year, and semester.
 To deal with this problem, we treat the relationship sec_course as a special
relationship that provides extra information, in this case, the course_id,
required to identify section entities uniquely.
 The notion of weak entity set formalizes the above intuition. A weak entity
set is one whose existence is dependent on another entity, called its
identifying entity; instead of associating a primary key with a weak entity,
we use the identifying entity, along with extra attributes called
discriminator to uniquely identify a weak entity. An entity set that is not a
weak entity set is termed a strong entity set.

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 The select Clause (Cont.)

 An asterisk in the select clause denotes “all attributes”

select *
from instructor
 The select clause can contain arithmetic expressions involving the
operation, +, –, , and /, and operating on constants or attributes of
tuples.
 The query:
select ID, name, salary/12
from instructor
would return a relation that is the same as the instructor relation, except
that the value of the attribute salary is divided by 12.

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 The where Clause

 The where clause specifies conditions that the result must satisfy
 Corresponds to the selection predicate of the relational algebra.
 To find all instructors in Comp. Sci. dept with salary > 80000
select name
from instructor
where dept_name = ‘Comp. Sci.' and salary > 80000
 Comparison results can be combined using the logical connectives and,
or, and not.
 Comparisons can be applied to results of arithmetic expressions.

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 The from Clause

 The from clause lists the relations involved in the query

 Corresponds to the Cartesian product operation of the relational
algebra.
 Find the Cartesian product instructor X teaches
select 
from instructor, teaches
 generates every possible instructor – teaches pair, with all attributes
from both relations
 Cartesian product not very useful directly, but useful combined with
where-clause condition (selection operation in relational algebra)

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Cartesian Product: instructor X teaches
instructor teaches

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 Joins
 For all instructors who have taught some course, find their names and the
course ID of the courses they taught.
select name, course_id
from instructor, teaches
where instructor.ID = teaches.ID
 Find the course ID, semester, year and title of each course offered by the
Comp. Sci. department
select section.course_id, semester, year, title
from section, course
where section.course_id = course.course_id and
dept_name = ‘Comp. Sci.'

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 Natural Join
 Natural join matches tuples with the same values for all common
attributes, and retains only one copy of each common column
 select *
from instructor natural join teaches;

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 Natural Join Example
 List the names of instructors along with the course ID of the courses that they
taught.

 select name, course_id

from instructor, teaches
where instructor.ID = teaches.ID;

 select name, course_id

from instructor natural join teaches;

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 The Rename Operation

 The SQL allows renaming relations and attributes using the as clause:
old-name as new-name
 E.g.
 select ID, name, salary/12 as monthly_salary
from instructor

 Find the names of all instructors who have a higher salary than
some instructor in ‘Comp. Sci’.
 select distinct T. name
from instructor as T, instructor as S
where T.salary > S.salary and S.dept_name = ‘Comp. Sci.’
 Keyword as is optional and may be omitted
instructor as T ≡ instructor T
 Keyword as must be omitted in Oracle

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 String Operations
 SQL includes a string-matching operator for comparisons on character
strings. The operator “like” uses patterns that are described using two
special characters:
 percent (%). The % character matches any substring.
 underscore (_). The _ character matches any character.
 Find the names of all instructors whose name includes the substring “dar”.
select name
from instructor
where name like '%dar%'
 Match the string “100 %”
like ‘100 \%' escape '\'

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 String Operations (Cont.)
 Patters are case sensitive.
 Pattern matching examples:
 ‘Intro%’ matches any string beginning with “Intro”.
 ‘%Comp%’ matches any string containing “Comp” as a substring.
 ‘_ _ _’ matches any string of exactly three characters.
 ‘_ _ _ %’ matches any string of at least three characters.

 SQL supports a variety of string operations such as

 concatenation (using “||”)
 converting from upper to lower case (and vice versa)
 finding string length, extracting substrings, etc.

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 Ordering the Display of Tuples
 List in alphabetic order the names of all instructors
select distinct name
from instructor
order by name
 We may specify desc for descending order or asc for ascending order,
for each attribute; ascending order is the default.
 Example: order by name desc
 Can sort on multiple attributes
 Example: order by dept_name, name

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 Where Clause Predicates

 SQL includes a between comparison operator

 Example: Find the names of all instructors with salary between $90,000
and $100,000 (that is,  $90,000 and  $100,000)
 select name
from instructor
where salary between 90000 and 100000
 Tuple comparison
 select name, course_id
from instructor, teaches
where (instructor.ID, dept_name) = (teaches.ID, ’Biology’);

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 Duplicates
 In relations with duplicates, SQL can define how many copies of
tuples appear in the result.
 Multiset versions of some of the relational algebra operators – given
multiset relations r1 and r2:

1.  (r1): If there are c1 copies of tuple t1 in r1, and t1 satisfies

selections ,, then there are c1 copies of t1 in  (r1).
2. A (r ): For each copy of tuple t1 in r1, there is a copy of tuple
A (t1) in A (r1) where A (t1) denotes the projection of the
single tuple t1.
3. r1 x r2 : If there are c1 copies of tuple t1 in r1 and c2 copies of
tuple t2 in r2, there are c1 x c2 copies of the tuple t1. t2 in r1 x r2

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 Duplicates (Cont.)
 Example: Suppose multiset relations r1 (A, B) and r2 (C) are as
follows:
r1 = {(1, a) (2,a)} r2 = {(2), (3), (3)}
 Then B(r1) would be {(a), (a)}, while B(r1) x r2 would be
{(a,2), (a,2), (a,3), (a,3), (a,3), (a,3)}
 SQL duplicate semantics:

select A1,, A2, ..., An

from r1, r2, ..., rm
where P
is equivalent to the multiset version of the expression:
 A ,A ,,A ( P (r1  r2    rm ))
1 2 n

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 Set Operations

 Find courses that ran in Fall 2009 or in Spring 2010

(select course_id from section where sem = ‘Fall’ and year = 2009)
union
(select course_id from section where sem = ‘Spring’ and year = 2010)
 Find courses that ran in Fall 2009 and in Spring 2010

(select course_id from section where sem = ‘Fall’ and year = 2009)
intersect
(select course_id from section where sem = ‘Spring’ and year = 2010)

 Find courses that ran in Fall 2009 but not in Spring 2010

(select course_id from section where sem = ‘Fall’ and year = 2009)
except
(select course_id from section where sem = ‘Spring’ and year = 2010)

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 Set Operations
 Set operations union, intersect, and except
 Each of the above operations automatically eliminates duplicates
 To retain all duplicates use the corresponding multiset versions union
all, intersect all and except all.

Suppose a tuple occurs m times in r and n times in s, then, it occurs:

 m + n times in r union all s
 min(m,n) times in r intersect all s
 max(0, m – n) times in r except all s

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 Null Values
 It is possible for tuples to have a null value, denoted by null, for some
of their attributes
 null signifies an unknown value or that a value does not exist.
 The result of any arithmetic expression involving null is null
 Example: 5 + null returns null
 The predicate is null can be used to check for null values.
 Example: Find all instructors whose salary is null.
select name
from instructor
where salary is null

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 Null Values and Three Valued Logic

 Any comparison with null returns unknown

 Example: 5 < null or null <> null or null = null
 Three-valued logic using the truth value unknown:
 OR: (unknown or true) = true,
(unknown or false) = unknown
(unknown or unknown) = unknown
 AND: (true and unknown) = unknown,
(false and unknown) = false,
(unknown and unknown) = unknown
 NOT: (not unknown) = unknown
 “P is unknown” evaluates to true if predicate P evaluates to
unknown
 Result of where clause predicate is treated as false if it evaluates to
unknown

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 Aggregate Functions
 These functions operate on the multiset of values of a column
of a relation, and return a value
avg: average value
min: minimum value
max: maximum value
sum: sum of values
count: number of values

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 Aggregate Functions (Cont.)
 Find the average salary of instructors in the Computer Science
department
 select avg (salary)
from instructor
where dept_name= ’Comp. Sci.’;
 Find the total number of instructors who teach a course in the Spring
2010 semester
 select count (distinct ID)
from teaches
where semester = ’Spring’ and year = 2010
 Find the number of tuples in the course relation
 select count (*)
from course;

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 Aggregate Functions – Group By
 Find the average salary of instructors in each department
 select dept_name, avg (salary)
from instructor
group by dept_name;
 Note: departments with no instructor will not appear in result

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 Nested Subqueries
 SQL provides a mechanism for the nesting of subqueries.
 A subquery is a select-from-where expression that is nested within
another query.
 A common use of subqueries is to perform tests for set membership, set
comparisons, and set cardinality.

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 Example Query

 Find courses offered in Fall 2009 and in Spring 2010

select distinct course_id

from section
where semester = ’Fall’ and year= 2009 and
course_id in (select course_id
from section
where semester = ’Spring’ and year= 2010);
 Find courses offered in Fall 2009 but not in Spring 2010

select distinct course_id

from section
where semester = ’Fall’ and year= 2009 and
course_id not in (select course_id
from section
where semester = ’Spring’ and year= 2010);

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 Example Query
 Find the total number of (distinct) studentswho have taken course
sections taught by the instructor with ID 10101

select count (distinct ID)

from takes
where (course_id, sec_id, semester, year) in
(select course_id, sec_id, semester, year
from teaches
where teaches.ID= 10101);

 Note: Above query can be written in a much simpler manner. The

formulation above is simply to illustrate SQL features.

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 Set Comparison

 Find names of instructors with salary greater than that of some (at
least one) instructor in the Biology department.

select distinct T.name

from instructor as T, instructor as S
where T.salary > S.salary and S.dept_name = ’Biology’;

 Same query using > some clause

select name
from instructor
where salary > some (select salary
from instructor
where dept_name = ’Biology’);

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 Definition of Some Clause

 F <comp> some r t  r such that (F <comp> t )

Where <comp> can be:     

0
(5 < some 5 ) = true
(read: 5 < some tuple in the relation)
6
0
(5 < some 5 ) = false

0
(5 = some 5 ) = true

0
(5  some 5 ) = true (since 0  5)
(= some)  in
However, ( some)  not in

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 Example Query
 Find the names of all instructors whose salary is greater than the
salary of all instructors in the Biology department.

select name
from instructor
where salary > all (select salary
from instructor
where dept_name = ’Biology’);

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 Definition of all Clause
 F <comp> all r t  r (F <comp> t)

0
(5 < all 5 ) = false
6
6
(5 < all 10 ) = true

4
(5 = all 5 ) = false

4
(5  all 6 ) = true (since 5  4 and 5  6)
( all)  not in
However, (= all)  in

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 Test for Empty Relations
 The exists construct returns the value true if the argument subquery is
nonempty.
 exists r  r  Ø
 not exists r  r = Ø

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 Correlation Variables
 Yet another way of specifying the query “Find all courses taught in
both the Fall 2009 semester and in the Spring 2010 semester”
select course_id
from section as S
where semester = ’Fall’ and year= 2009 and
exists (select *
from section as T
where semester = ’Spring’ and year= 2010
and S.course_id= T.course_id);
 Correlated subquery
 Correlation name or correlation variable

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 Not Exists
 Find all students who have taken all courses offered in the Biology
department.

select distinct S.ID, S.name

from student as S
where not exists ( (select course_id
from course
where dept_name = ’Biology’)
except
(select T.course_id
from takes as T
where S.ID = T.ID));

 Note that X – Y = Ø  X Y

 Note: Cannot write this query using = all and its variants

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 Embedded SQL
 Embedded SQL statements are used in COBOL programs to perform
standard SQL operations.
 Embedded SQL statements are preprocessed by the SQL processor before the
application program is compiled.
 COBOL is known as the Host Language. COBOL-DB2 applications are
those applications that include both COBOL and DB2.
 Embedded SQL statements work like normal SQL statements with some
minor changes. For example, the output of a query is directed to a predefined
set of variables which are referred as Host Variables.
 An additional INTO clause is placed in the SELECT statement.

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 Dynamic SQL
 Dynamic SQL is a programming technique that allows you to construct SQL
statements dynamically at runtime.

 It allows you to create more general purpose and flexible SQL statement
because the full text of the SQL statements may be unknown at compilation.

 For example, you can use the dynamic SQL to create a stored procedure that
queries data against a table whose name is not known until runtime.

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