Lecture 1:

Introduction to databases

Timothy G. Griffin

Easter Term 2008 IB/Dip/IIG

www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Teaching/current/Databases/ 1

Database Prehistory

Data entry

Query processing

Storage and retrieval

Sorting

Early Automation
Data management and application code
were all tangled together
Hard to modify
Hard to generalize

Many competing approaches

Data manipulation code written at very low
levels of abstraction

Our Hero --- E. F. Codd

Edgar F. "Ted" Codd ( August 23, 1923 - April 18, 2003) was a British computer scientist
who invented relational databases while working for IBM.
He was born in Portland, Dorset, studied maths
and chemistry at Oxford. He was a pilot in the
Royal Air Force during WWII. In 1948 he joined IBM
in New York as a mathematical programmer. He fled
the USA to Canada during the McCarthy period.
Later, he returned to the USA to earn a doctorate in CS
from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He then
joined IBM research in San Jose.
His 1970 paper A Relational Model of Data for
Large Shared Data Banks changed everything.
In the mid 1990s he coined the term OLAP.
4

Database Management Systems (DBMSs)

Your Applications
Go Here

DBMS

Raw Resources (bare metal)

Database abstractions
allow this interface to
be cleanly defined and
this allows applications
and data management
systems to be
implemented
separately.

Today, Database Systems are Ubiquitous

Database system design from the European Bioinformatics Institute (Hinxton UK)

Service Tools

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Development
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Submission tools

Submitters

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Database
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Q/C etc

Production DB

End Users

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(computation)

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Updates
Updates

What is a database system?

A database is a large, integrated
collection of data
A database contains a model of
something!
A database management system
(DBMS) is a software system designed to
store, manage and facilitate access to the
database
7

What does a database system

do?
Manages Very Large Amounts of Data
Supports efficient access to Very Large
Amounts of Data
Supports concurrent access to Very
Large Amounts of Data
Supports secure, atomic access to Very
Large Amounts of Data

Databases are a Rich Area for

Computer Science
Programming languages and software
engineering (obviously)
Data structures and algorithms (obviously)
Logic, discrete maths, computation theory
Some of todays most beautiful theoretical results are
in finite model theory --- an area derived directly
from database theory

Systems problems: concurrency, operating

systems, file organisation, networks, distributed
systems
Many of the concepts covered in this course are classical --- they form
the heart of the subject. But the field of databases is still evolving and
producing new and interesting research (hinted at in lectures 11 & 12).

What this course is about

According to Ullman, there are three
aspects to studying databases:
1. Modelling and design of databases
2. Programming
3. DBMS implementation

This course addresses 1 and 2

10

Course Outline
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

Introduction
Entity-Relationship Model
The Relational Model
The Relational Algebra
The Relational Calculus
Schema refinement: Functional
dependencies
Schema refinement: Normalisation
Transactions
Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)
More OLAP
Basic SQL and Integrity Constraints
Further relational algebra, further SQL
11

Recommended Reading

Date, An introduction to database systems, 8th ed.

Elmasri & Navathe, Fundamentals of database systems, 4th ed.
Silberschatz, Korth & Sudarshan, Database system concepts, 4th
ed.
Ullman & Widom, A first course in database systems.

OLAP
DB2/400: Mastering Data Warehousing Functions. (IBM Redbook) Chapters 1 &
2 only. http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg245184.html
Data Warehousing and OLAP
Hector Garcia-Molina (Stanford University)
http://www.cs.uh.edu/~ceick/6340/dw-olap.ppt
Data Warehousing and OLAP Technology for Data Mining Department of
Computing
London Metropolitan University
http://learning.unl.ac.uk/csp002n/CSP002N_wk2.ppt

12

Some systems to play with

1. mysql:
www.mysql.org
Open source, quite powerful

2. PostgreSQL:
www.postgresql.org
Open source, powerful

3. Microsoft Access:

Simple system, lots of nice GUI wrappers

4. Commercial systems:

Oracle 10g (www.oracle.com)

SQL Server 2000 (www.microsoft.com/sql)
DB2 (www.ibm.com/db2)
13

Database system architecture

It is common to describe databases in two ways
The logical level:
What users see, the program or query language
interface,

The physical level:

How files are organised, what indexing mechanisms
are used,

It is traditional to split the logical level into two:

overall database design (conceptual) and the
views that various users get to see
A schema is a description of a database
14

Three-level architecture
External
Schema 1

Conceptual
level
Physical
level

External
Schema 2

Conceptual
Schema

External

Schema n
External
level

Internal
Schema

15

Logical and physical data

independence
Data independence is the ability to change the
schema at one level of the database system
without changing the schema at the next higher
level
Logical data independence is the capacity to
change the conceptual schema without
changing the user views
Physical data independence is the capacity to
change the internal schema without having to
change the conceptual schema or user views
16

Database design process

Requirements analysis
User needs; what must database do?

Conceptual design

Next Lecture

High-level description; often using E/R model

Logical design
Translate E/R model into (typically) relational schema

Schema refinement
Check schema for redundancies and anomalies

Physical design/tuning
Consider typical workloads, and further optimise
17

The Fundamental Tradeoff of Database

Performance Tuning
De-normalized data can often result in faster
query response
Normalized data leads to better transaction
throughput, and avoids update anomalies
(corruption of data integrity)
Yes, indexing data can speed up transactions, but this just proves
the point --- an index IS redundant data. General rule of thumb:
indexing will slow down transactions!
What is more important in your database --- query response
or transaction throughput? The answer will vary.
What do the extreme ends of the spectrum look like?

18

A Theme of this Course:

OLTP vs. OLAP
OLTP = Online Transaction Processing
Need to support many concurrent transactions
(updates and queries)
Normally associated with the operational database
that supports day-to-day activities of an organization.

OLAP = Online Analytic Processing

Often based on data extracted from operational
database, as well as other sources
Used in long-term analysis, business trends.

19

Design Heterogeneity
De-normalized Derived Tables
--- for fast access

Database system design from

the European
Bioinformatics Institute (Hinxton UK)

Other archives
Database
design

Development
DB

ha
ng
e

Q/C etc

Production DB

End Users

ex
c

Submission tools

Submitters

Da
ta

Service Tools

Normalized Tables

Service DB

D
at

Add value
(computation)

aD

Add value (review etc.)

ist
r

ib
.

Releases
Releases
&
&
20
Updates
Updates