Today’s Lecture:

Database SW

• In our 4th & final Lesson on productivity software, we will continue our discussion from last week
on data management
• We will find out about relational databases
• We will also implement a simple relational database
Let’s continue on with the tabular approach. We stored data in a table last time, and liked it. Let’s revisit
that table and then put together another one

Table from the Last Lecture

Another table …

Calculus & Smith Sahib Good Publishers 325 N
Analytical
Geometry
Sung-e-Kilometer 29 Y
Publishers
Accounting Zamin Geoffry
Secrets
kim zainBooks 199 Y
Champion
The Terrible
Twins
Good Bye Mr. John
Khan
zainBooks 1000
Y

kim

Title Author Publisher Price InStock

Good Bye Mr. kim
Calculus &
Analytical Geometry
The Terrible Twins
Good Bye Mr. kim

Title

Miftah Muslim 2002.12.25 Surface
Karen Kaur 2002.12.24 Air
Aadil Ali 2002.12.26 Air
Aadil Ali 2002.12.26 Air

Customer Shipment Type

This & the previous table are related

• They share a column, & are related through it
• A program can match info from a field in one table with info in a corresponding field of another
table to generate a 3rd table that combines requested data from both tables
• That is, a program can use matching values in 2 tables to relate info in one to info in the other

Q: Who is zainBooks’ best customer?

• That is, who has spent the most money on the online bookstore?
• To answer that question, one can process the inventory and the shipment tables to generate a third
table listing the customer names and the prices of the books that they have ordered

The generated table

Can you now process this table to find the answer to our question

Relational Databases

• Databases consisting of two or more related tables are called relational databases
• A typical relational database may have anywhere from 10 to over a thousand tables
• Each column of those tables can contain only a single type of data (contrast this with spreadsheet
columns!)
• Table rows are called records; row elements are called fields
• A relational database stores all its data inside tables, and nowhere else
• All operations on data are done on those tables or those that are generated by table operations
• Tables, tables, and nothing but tables!

37.1 RDBMS

• Relational DBMS software
• Contains facilities for creating, populating, modifying, and querying relational databases
• Examples:
–Access
–FileMaker Pro
–SQL Server
–Oracle

The Trouble with Relational DBs

• Much of current SW development is done using the object-oriented methodology
• When we want to store the object-oriented data into an RDBMS, it needs to be translated into a
form suitable for RDBMS

The Trouble with Relational DBs

• Then when we need to read the data back from the RDBMS, the data needs to be translated back
into an object-oriented form before use
• These two processing delays, the associated processing, and time spent in writing and maintaining
the translation code are the key disadvantages of the current RDBMSes
1000
325
199
1000

Price

Miftah Muslim
Karen Kaur
Aadil Ali
Aadil Ali

Customer

– DB2
– Objectivity/DB
– MySQL
– Postgres

Solution?

• Don’t have time to discuss that, but try searching the Web on the following terms:
• Object-oriented databases
– Object-relational databases

Classification of DBMS w.r.t. Size

• Personal/Desktop/Single-user (MB-GB)
– Examples: Tech. papers’ list; Methai shop inventory
– Typical DMBS: Access
• Server-based/Multi-user/Enterprise (GB-TB)
– Examples: HBL; Amazon.com
– Typical DMBS: Oracle, DB2
• Seriously-huge databases (TB-PB-XB)
– Examples: 2002 – BaBar experiment at Stanford (500TB); 2005 – LHC database at CERN (1XB)
– Typical DMBS: Objectivity/DB

37.2 Some Terminology

• Primary Key is a field that uniquely identifies each record stored in a table
• Queries are used to view, change, and analyze data. They can be used to:
– Combine data from different tables, efficiently
– Extract the exact data that is desired
• Forms can be used for entering, editing, or viewing data, one record at a time
• Reports are an effective, user-friendly way of presenting data. All DBMSes provide tools for
producing custom reports.
• Data normalization is the process of efficiently organizing data in a database. There are two goals
of the normalization process:
– Eliminate redundant data
– Storing only related data in a table

Before we do a demo, let me just mention my favorite database application:

Data Mining

• The process of analyzing large databases to identify patterns
• Example: Mining the sales records from a zainBooks could identify interesting shopping patterns
like “53% of customers who bought book A also bought book B”. This pattern can be put to good use!
• Dat a mining often utilizes intelligent systems’ techniques

Let’s now demonstrate the use of a desktop RDBMS

• We will create a new relational database
• It will consist of two tables
• We will populate those tables
• We will generate a report after combining the data from the two tables

Access Tutorial

http://www.microsoft.com/education/DOWNLOADS
/tutorials/classroom/office2k/acc2000.doc

Today’s Lecture:

• In this final Lesson on productivity software, we continued our discussion from last week on data
management
• We found out about relational databases
• We also implemented a simple relational database

Next Lecture’ Goals

(Cyber Crime)

• To know the different types of computer crimes that occur over cyber space
• To familiarize ourselves with with several methods that can be used to minimize the effect of these
crimes
• To get familiar with a few policies and legislation designed to tackle cyber crime