File Organization Terms and Concepts on Database Management

What is DATABASE MANAGEMENT?

A database management system (DBMS) is a collection of interrelated data and a set of programs to access those data. The collection of data, usually referred to as the database contains information relevant to an enterprise. The primary goal of a DBMS is to provide a way to store and retrieve database information that is both convenient and efficient.

C H A R A C T E R

Character data, also known as text data or string data, can contain any character or symbol not intended for mathematics manipulation. For example: STU_LNAME, STU_FNAME, STU_INIT, STU_CLASS, and STU_PHONE are character, text or string attributes.

F I E L D

A character or group of characters (alphabetic/numeric) that has a specific meaning. A field might define a telephone number, a birth date, a customer name, a year-to-date (YTD) sales value and so on.

R E C O R D

A logically connected set of one or more fields that describes a person, place or thing. For example: The fields that constitute a record for a customer named J.D. Rudd might consist of J.D. Rudds name, address, phone number, date of birth, credit limit and unpaid balance.

F I L E

A collection of related records.

For example: A file might contain data about vendors of ROBCOR Company; or a file might contain the records for the students currently enrolled at Gigantic University.

D A T A B A S E

Contains the data you have collected and data about data known as metadata. A database is a shared integrated computer structure that have a collection of: 1. End-user data, that is, raw facts of interest to the end-user. 2. Metadata or data about data, through which the data are integrated.

E N T I T Y

Is simply person, place, event or thing which we intend to collect data. For example: In university environment, entity of interest might be students, faculty members, courses and any number of additional items for which data must be gathered. Each has certain characteristics known as attribute.

A T T R I B U T E

It describes a particular characteristic of the entity. For instance, the student entity might include the following attributes: student number, name, grade point average (GPA), date of enrollment, date of birth, home address, phone number, major and so on.

 Each attribute should be named appropriately to remind the user of its contents.
For example: If the entity is STUDENT a student attribute date of birth might be stored as STU_DOB or the student attribute home phone number might be stored as.. STU_HOME_PHONE.

K E Y F I E L D

A device that helps define entity relationships. The keys role is based on a concept known as determination. There are several kinds of keys: Super key -functionally determines all of the entitys attributes, the super key may be any of the ff: STU_NUM STU_NUM,STU_LNAME STU_NUM,STU_LNAME, STU_INIT

Candidate key Can be described as a super key without redundancies.

Super key Defined as a key that is used strictly for data retrieval purposes.

Q U E R Y

A statement requesting the retrieval of information. The portion of a DML that involves information retrieval called query language. Although technically incorrect, it is common practice to use the terms query language and data-manipulation language synonymously.

PREPARED BY:

Michelle A. Ogana