Database Management Systems

Database Management Systems
2. The Internal Level

This chapter discusses the issues related to how the data is physically stored on the disk and some of the access mechanisms commonly used for retrieving this data. Course Contents | Prev : Next
2.3 Hashing
Hashing is yet another method used for making retrievals faster. This method provides direct access to record on the basis of the value of a specific field called the hash_field. Here, when a new record is inserted, it is physically stored at an address which is computed by applying a mathematical function (hash function) to the value of the hash field. Thus for every new record, hash_address = f (hash_field), where f is the hash function. Later, when a record is to be retrieved, the same hash function is used to compute the address where the record is stored. Retrievals are faster since a direct access is provided and there is no search involved in the process. An example of a typical hash function is given by a numeric hash field, say an id, modulus a very large prime number. Q: Can there be more than one hash fields on a file? A: No
As hashing relates the field value to the address of the record, multiple hash fields will map a record to multiple addresses at the same time. Hence there can be only one hash field per file. Collisions : Consider the example of the CUSTOMER table given earlier while discussing clustering. Let CUST_ID be the hash field and the hash function be defined as ((CUST_ID mod 10000)*64 + 1025). The records with CUST_ID 10001, 10002, 10003 etc. will be stored at addresses 1089, 1153, 1217 etc. respectively. It is possible that two records hash to the same address leading to a collision. In the above example, records with CUST_ID values 20001, 20002, 20003 etc. will also map on to the addresses 1089, 1153, 1217 etc. respectively. And same is the case with CUST_ID values 30001, 30002, 30003 etc. The methods to resolve a collision are by using : 1. Linear Search: While inserting a new record, if it is found that the location at the hash address is already occupied by a previously inserted record, search for the next free location available in the disk and store the new record at this location. A pointer from the first record at the original hash address to the new record will also be stored. During retrieval, the hash address is computed to locate the record. When it is seen that the record is not available at the hash address, the pointer from the record at that address is followed to locate the required record.
In this method, the over head incurred is the time taken for the linear search to locate the next free location while inserting a record. 2. Collision Chain: Here, the hash address location contains the head of a list of pointers linking together all records which hash to that address.
In this method, an overflow area needs to be used if the number of records mapping on to the same hash address exceeds the number of locations linked to it.

3. The Relational Model
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3.1 Relational Databases: Terminology
Databases: Case Example Ord_Aug Ord # 101 102 103 104 105 Ord Date 02-08-94 11-08-94 21-08-94 28-08-94 30-08-94 Cust# 002 003 003 002 005 Ord_Items Ord # 101 101 101 102 103 104 104 105 Items Item # HW1 HW2 HW3 SW1 SW2 Descr Power Supply 101-Keyboard Mouse MS-DOS 6.0 MS-Word 6.0 Price 4000 2000 800 5000 8000 Customers Ord # 101 102 103 104 105 OrdDate 02-08-94 11-08-94 21-08-94 28-08-94 30-08-94 Cust# 002 003 003 002 005 Item # HW1 HW3 SW1 HW2 HW3 HW2 HW3 SW1 Qty 100 50 150 10 50 25 100 100
Term Relation A table
Meaning
Eg. from the given Case Example Ord_Aug, Customers, Items etc.
Tuple Attribute Cardinality of a relation Degree of a relation
A row or a record in a relation. A field or a column in a relation. The number of tuples in a relation.
A row from Customers relation is a Customer tuple. Ord_Date, Item#, CustName etc. Cardinality of Ord_Items relation is 8
The number of attributes in Degree of Customers relation is 3. a relation. The set of all values that can be taken by the attribute. An attribute or a combination of attributes that uniquely defines each tuple in a relation. An attribute or a combination of attributes in one relation R1 which indicates the relationship of R1 with another relation R2. The foreign key attributes in R1 must contain values matching with those of the values in R2 Domain of Qty in Ord_Items is the set of all values which can represent quantity of an ordered item. Primary Key of Customers relation is Cust#. Ord# and Item# combination forms the primary Key of Ord_Items Cust# in Ord_Aug relation is a foreign key creating reference from Ord_Aug to Customers. This is required to indicate the relationship between Orders in Ord_Aug and Customers. Ord# and Item# in Ord_Items are foreign keys creating references from Ord_Items to Ord_Aug and Items respectively.
Domain of an attribute
Primary Key of a relation
Foreign Key

3.2 Properties of Relations

No Duplicate Tuples: A relation cannot contain two or more tuples which have the same values for all the attributes. i.e., In any relation, every row is unique. Tuples are unordered: The order of rows in a relation is immaterial. Attributes are unordered: The order of columns in a relation is immaterial. Attribute Values are Atomic: Each tuple contains exactly one value for each attribute. It may be noted that many of the properties of relations follow the fact that the body of a relation is a mathematical set.

3.3 Integrity Rules

The following are the integrity rules to be satisfied by any relation: No Component of the Primary Key can be null. The Database must not contain any unmatched Foreign Key values. This is called the referential integrity rule. Q: A: Can the Foreign Key accept nulls? Yes, if the application business rule allows this.
How do we explain this? Unlike the case of Primary Keys, there is no integrity rule saying that no component of the foreign key can be null. This can be logically explained with the help of the following example: Consider the relations Employee and Account as given below. Employee Emp# X101 X102 X103 X104 EmpName Shekhar Raj Sharma Vani EmpCity Bombay Pune Nagpur Bhopal EmpAcc# 120001 120002 Null 120003
Account ACC# 120001 120002 120003 120004 OpenDate 30-Aug-1998 29-Oct-1998 01-Jan-1999 04-Mar-1999 BalAmt 5000 1200 3000 500
EmpAcc# in Employee relation is a foreign key creating reference from Employee to Account. Here, a Null value in EmpAcc# attribute is logically possible if an Employee does not have a bank account. If the business rules allow an employee to exist in the system without opening an account, a Null value can be allowed for EmpAcc# in Employee relation. In the case example given, Cust# in Ord_Aug cannot accept Null if the business rule insists that the Customer No. needs to be stored for every order placed.
The next issue related to foreign key reference is handling deletes / updates of parent? In the case example, can we delete the record with Cust# value 002, 003 or 005 ? The default answer is NO, as long as there is a foreign key reference to these records from some other table. Here, the records are referenced from the order records in Ord_Aug relation. Hence Restrict the deletion of the parent record. Deletion can still be carried if we use the Cascade or Nullify strategies. Cascade: Delete/Update all the references successively or in a cascaded fashion and finally delete/update the parent record. In the case example, Customer record with Cust#002 can be deleted after deleting order records with Ord# 101 and 104. But these order records, in turn, can be deleted only after deleting those records with Ord# 101 and 104 from Ord_Items relation. Nullify: Update the referencing to Null and then delete/update the parent record. In the above example of Employee and Account relations, an account record may have to be deleted if the account is to be closed. For example, if Employee Raj decides to close his account, Account record with Acc# 120002 has to be deleted. But this deletion is not possible as long as the Employee record of Raj references it. Hence the strategy can be to update the EmpAcc# field in the employee record of Raj to Null and then delete the Account parent record of 120002. After the deletion the data in the tables will be as follows: Employee Emp# X101 X102 X103 X104 EmpName Shekhar Raj Sharma Vani EmpCity Bombay Pune Nagpur Bhopal EmpAcc# 120001 120002 Null Null 120003
Account ACC# 120001 120002 120003 120004 OpenDate 30-Aug-1998 29-Oct-1998 01-Jan-1999 04-Mar-1999 BalAmt 5000 1200 3000 500
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3.4 Relational Algebra Operators

The eight relational algebra operators are: 1. SELECT To retrieve specific tuples/rows from a relation.
Ord# 101 104
OrdDate 02-08-94 18-09-94
Cust# 002 002
2.
PROJECT To retrieve specific attributes/columns from a relation.
Descr Power Supply
Price 4000
101-Keyboard Mouse MS-DOS 6.0 MS-Word 6.0
2000 800 5000 8000
3.
PRODUCT To obtain all possible combination of tuples from two relations.
Descr 101 101 101 101 101 102 102
OrdDate 02-08-94 02-08-94 02-08-94 02-08-94 02-08-94 11-08-94 11-08-94
O.Cust# 002 002 002 002 002 003 003
C.Cust# 001 002 003 004 005 001 002
CustName Shah Srinivasan Gupta Banerjee Apte Shah Srinivasan
City Bombay Madras Delhi Calcutta Bombay Bombay Madras
4.
UNION To retrieve tuples appearing in either or both the relations participating in the UNION.
Eg: Consider the relation Ord_Jul as follows
(Table: Ord_Jul) Ord# 101 102 101 102 103 104 105 OrdDate 03-07-94 27-07-94 02-08-94 11-08-94 21-08-94 28-08-94 30-08-94 Cust# 001 003 002 003 003 002 005
Note: The union operation shown above logically implies retrieval of records of Orders placed in July or in August 5. INTERSECT To retrieve tuples appearing in both the relations participating in the INTERSECT.
Eg: To retrieve Cust# of Customers who've placed orders in July and in August Cust# 003
6.
DIFFERENCE To retrieve tuples appearing in the first relation participating in the DIFFERENCE but not the second.
Eg: To retrieve Cust# of Customers who've placed orders in July but not in August Cust# 001
7.
JOIN To retrieve combinations of tuples in two relations based on a common field in both the relations.
Eg: ORD_AUG join CUSTOMERS (here, the common column is Cust#) Ord# 101 102 103 104 105 OrdDate 02-08-94 11-08-94 21-08-94 28-08-94 30-08-94 Cust# 002 003 003 002 005 CustNames Srinivasan Gupta Gupta Srinivasan Apte City Madras Delhi Delhi Madras Bombay
Note: The above join operation logically implies retrieval of details of all orders and the details of the corresponding customers who placed the orders. Such a join operation where only those rows having corresponding rows in the both the relations are retrieved is called the natural join or inner join. This is the most common join operation.
Consider the example of EMPLOYEE and ACCOUNT relations. EMPLOYEE EMP # X101 X102 X103 X104 ACCOUNT Acc# 120001 120002 120003 120004 OpenDate 30. Aug. 1998 29. Oct. 1998 1. Jan. 1999 4. Mar. 1999 BalAmt 5000 1200 3000 500 EmpName Shekhar Raj Sharma Vani EmpCity Bombay Pune Nagpur Bhopal Acc# 120001 120002 Null 120003
A join can be formed between the two relations based on the common column Acc#. The result of the (inner) join is : Emp# X101 X102 X104 EmpName Shekhar Raj Vani EmpCity Bombay Pune Bhopal Acc# 120001 120002 120003 OpenDate 30. Aug. 1998 29. Oct. 1998 1. Jan 1999 BalAmt 5000 1200 3000
Note that, from each table, only those records which have corresponding records in the other table appear in the result set. This means that result of the inner join shows the details of those employees who hold an account along with the account details. The other type of join is the outer join which has three variations the left outer join, the right outer join and the full outer join. These three joins are explained as follows: The left outer join retrieves all rows from the left-side (of the join operator) table. If there are corresponding or related rows in the right-side table, the correspondence will be shown. Otherwise, columns of the rightside table will take null values.
EMPLOYEE left outer join ACCOUNT gives: Emp# X101 X102 X103 EmpName Shekhar Raj Sharma EmpCity Bombay Pune Nagpur Acc# 120001 120002 NULL OpenDate 30. Aug. 1998 29. Oct. 1998 NULL BalAmt 5000 1200 NULL
X104
Vani
Bhopal
120003
1. Jan 1999
3000
The right outer join retrieves all rows from the right-side (of the join operator) table. If there are corresponding or related rows in the left-side table, the correspondence will be shown. Otherwise, columns of the left-side table will take null values.
EMPLOYEE right outer join ACCOUNT gives: Emp# X101 X102 X104 NULL EmpName Shekhar Raj Vani NULL EmpCity Bombay Pune Bhopal NULL Acc# 120001 120002 120003 120004 OpenDate 30. Aug. 1998 29. Oct. 1998 1. Jan 1999 4. Mar. 1999 BalAmt 5000 1200 3000 500
(Assume that Acc# 120004 belongs to someone who is not an employee and hence the details of the Account holder are not available here) The full outer join retrieves all rows from both the tables. If there is a correspondence or relation between rows from the tables of either side, the correspondence will be shown. Otherwise, related columns will take null values.
EMPLOYEE full outer join ACCOUNT gives: Emp# X101 X102 X103 X104 NULL EmpName Shekhar Raj Sharma Vani NULL EmpCity Bombay Pune Nagpur Bhopal NULL Acc# 120001 120002 NULL 120003 120004 OpenDate 30. Aug. 1998 29. Oct. 1998 NULL 1. Jan 1999 4. Mar. 1999 BalAmt 5000 1200 NULL 3000 500
Q: What will the result of a natural join operation between R1 and R2?
A:
a1 a2 a3
b1 b2 b3
c1 c2 c3
8.
DIVIDE Consider the following three relations:
R1 divide by R2 per R3 gives: a1 Thus the result contains those values from R1 whose corresponding R2 values in R3 include all R2 values.

4. Structured Query Language (SQL)
4.1 SQL : An Overview

The components of SQL are: a. Data Manipulation Language Consists of SQL statements for operating on the data (Inserting, Modifying, Deleting and Retrieving Data) in tables which already exist. b. Data Definition Language Consists of SQL statements for defining the schema (Creating, Modifying and Dropping tables, indexes, views etc.) c. Data Control Language
Consists of SQL statements for providing and revoking access permissions to users Tables used: Ord_Aug Ord # 101 102 103 104 105 Ord Date 02-08-94 11-08-94 21-08-94 28-08-94 30-08-94 Cust# 002 003 003 002 005 Ord_Items Ord # 101 101 101 102 103 104 104 105 Items Item # HW1 HW2 HW3 SW1 SW2 Descr Power Supply 101- Keyboard Mouse MS-DOS 6.0 MS-Word 6.0 Price 4000 2000 800 5000 8000 Customers Cust # 001 002 003 004 005 CustName Shah Srinivasan Gupta Banerjee Apte City Bombay Madras Delhi Calcutta Bombay Item # HW1 HW3 SW1 HW2 HW3 HW2 HW3 SW1 Qty 100 50 150 10 50 25 100 100
4.2 DML SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE statements.

The SELECT statement Retrieves rows from one or more tables according to given conditions. General form: SELECT [ ALL | DISTINCT ] <attribute (comma)list> FROM <table (comma)list> [ WHERE <conditional expression>] [ ORDER BY [DESC] <attribute list>] [ GROUP BY <attribute (comma)list>] [ HAVING <conditional expression>]
Query 1: Some SELECT statements on the Case Example SELECT * <-----------------* -denotes all attributes in the table FROM items; Result Query 2: SELECT cust#,custname FROM customers; Result
Query 3: SELECT DISTINCT item# FROM ord_items; Result
Query 4: SELECT ord# "Order ", orddate "Ordered On" <---- In the result set the column headings will appear as Order and Ordered On instead of ord# and orddate. FROM ord_aug; Result
Query 5: SELECT item#, descr FROM items WHERE price>2000; Result
Query 6: SELECT custname
FROM customers WHERE city<>'Bombay'; Result
Query 7: SELECT custname FROM customers WHERE UPPER(city)<>'BOMBAY'; Result
Query 8: SELECT * FROM ord_aug WHERE orddate > '15-AUG-94'; <---------Result Illustrates the use of 'date' fields. In SQL, a separate datatype (eg: date, datetime etc.) is available to store data which is of type date.
Query 9: SELECT * FROM ord_items WHERE qty BETWEEN 100 AND 200; Result
Query 10: SELECT custname FROM customers WHERE city IN ('Bombay', 'Madras'); <------The conditional expression evaluates to TRUE for those records for which the value of city field is in the list ('Bombay, 'Madras')
Result
Query 11: SELECT custname FROM customers WHERE custname LIKE 'S%' ; <-----------LIKE 'S%' - 'S' followed by zero or more characters
Result
Query 12: SELECT * FROM ord_items WHERE qty>100 AND item# LIKE 'SW%'; Result
Query 13: SELECT custname FROM customers WHERE city='Bombay' OR city='Madras'; Result
Query 14: SELECT * FROM customers WHERE city='Bombay' ORDER BY custname; <-------------------Result Records in the result set is displayed in the ascending order of custname
Query 15:
SELECT * FROM ord_items ORDER BY item#, qty DESC; <------------Display the result set in the ascending order of item#. If there are more than one records with the same item# , they will be displayed in the descending order of qty
Result
Query 16: SELECT descr, price ORDER BY 2 FROM items ORDER BY 2; <---------------------------Result ORDER BY the 2nd attribute (price) in the attribute list of the SELECT clause
Query 17:
SELECT ord#, ord_aug.cust#, custname <---------------FROM ord_aug, customers WHERE city='Delhi' AND ord_aug.cust# = customers.cust#; <---------------Result
SELECT statement implementing JOIN operation.
JOIN condition
Query 18: SELECT ord#, customers.cust#, city FROM ord_aug, customers WHERE ord_aug.cust# = customers.cust#; Result
Query 19: SELECT ord#, customers.cust#, city FROM ord_aug, customers (+) indicates outer join. Here it is a right outer join as indicated by the (+) after the WHERE ord_aug.cust# = customers.cust# (+); <---------right side field. Result Nested SELECT statements SQL allows nesting of SELECT statements. In a nested SELECT statement the inner SELECT is evaluated first and is replaced by its result to evaluate the outer SELECT statement. Query 20: SELECT item#, descr, price <---------------------------------------FROM items WHERE price > (SELECT AVG(price) FROM items); <-----Result Inner SELECT statement Outer SELECT statement
Query 21: SELECT cust#, custname <------------------------FROM customers WHERE city = ( SELECT city FROM customers WHERE custname='Shah'); Result Here the outer SELECT is evaluated as SELECT cust#, custname FROM customers WHERE city = "BOMBAY"
Arithmetic Expressions
+ * / () Arithmetic functions are allowed in SELECT and WHERE clauses.
Query 22: SELECT descr, price, price*0.1 "discount" FROM items WHERE price >= 4000 ORDER BY 3; Result Query 23: SELECT descr FROM items, ord_items WHERE price*qty > 250000 and items.item# = ord_items.item#; Result
Numeric Functions Query 24: SELECT qty, ROUND(qty/2,0) "qty supplied" FROM ord_items WHERE item#='HW2'; Result
Query 25: SELECT qty, TRUNC(qty/2,0) "qty supplied" FROM ord_items WHERE item#='HW2'; Result
Examples of Numeric Functions
MOD(n,m) SQRT(n) ROUND(n,m) TRUNC(n,m)
'm' indicates the number of digits after decimal points in the result.
Date Arithemetic
Date + No. of days Date - No. of days Date Date
Query 26: SELECT ord#, orddate+15 "Supply by" FROM ord_aug; Result
Date Functions MONTHS_BETWEEN(date1, date2) ADD_MONTHS(date, no. of months) SYSDATE Returns system date. Query 27: SELECT ord#, MONTHS_BETWEEN(SYSDATE,orddate) FROM ord_aug; Result
Query 28: SELECT TO_CHAR(orddate,' DD/MM/YYYY') <---FROM ord_aug; Result Converts the value of the date field orddate to character string of the format DD/MM/YYYY
Note: DD - day of month (1-31) D - day of week (1-7) DAY - name of day MM - month (01-12) MONTH - name of month MON - abbreviated name of month HH:MI:SS - hours:minutes:seconds fm - fill mode : suppress blank padding
Character Expressions & Functions || - Concatenate operator
Query 29: SELECT custname || ' - ' || city FROM customers; Result Examples of Character Functions: INITCAP(string) UPPER(string) LOWER(string) SUBSTR(string,start,no. of characters) Group Functions Group functions are functions which act on the entire column of selected rows.
Query 30: SELECT SUM(qty), AVG(qty) <-------------FROM ord_items WHERE item#='SW1'; Result SUM and AVG are examples of Group Functions. They compute the sum/average of qty values of all rows where item#='SW1'.
Examples of Group Functions: SUM AVG COUNT
MAX MIN Query 31: SELECT item#, SUM(qty) FROM ord_items GROUP BY item#; <------------------------Result GROUP BY clause used to group rows according to the value of item# in the result. SUM function acts individually on each group of rows.
Query 32: SELECT item#, SUM(qty) FROM ord_items GROUP BY item# HAVING SUM(qty)>100; <----------------Result HAVING clause used to apply the condition to be applied on the grouped rows and display the final result.
Query 33: SELECT item#, SUM(qty) FROM ord_items GROUP BY item# HAVING COUNT(*)>2; Result
The INSERT statement Inserts one or more tuples in a table. General forms:
To insert a single tuple INSERT INTO <table-name> [<attribute (comma)list>] VALUES <value list>; To insert multiple tuples INSERT INTO <table-name> [<attribute (comma)list>] SELECT [ ALL | DISTINCT ] <attribute (comma)list> FROM <table (comma)list>* [ WHERE <conditional expression>]; * - list of existing tables Sample INSERT statements from the Case Example Query 34: Insert all values for a new row INSERT INTO customers <------------------VALUES (006, 'Krishnan', 'Madras'); Inserts a single row in Customers Table. Attribute list need not be mentioned if values are given for all attributes in the tuple.
Query 35: Insert values of item# & descr columns for a new row INSERT INTO items (item#, descr) <---------VALUES ('HW4', '132-DMPrinter');
Attribute list mentioned since values are not given for all attributes in the tuple. Here Price column for the newly inserted tuple takes NULL value.
Query 36: Inserts a new row which includes a date field INSERT INTO ord_aug VALUES(106, '31-AUG-94', 005); Query 37: Inserts a new row with the date field being specified in non DD-MON-YY format INSERT INTO ord_aug VALUES (106, TO_DATE('310894','DDMMYY'), 005); The UPDATE statement
Updates values of one or more attributes of one or more tuples in a table. General form: UPDATE <table-name> SET <attribute-1 = value-1[, attribute-2 = value-2,...attribute-n = value-n] [ WHERE <conditional expression>]; Sample UPDATE statements from the Case Example Query 38: Changes price of item SW1 to 6000 UPDATE items SET price = 6000 WHERE item# ='SW1'; Query 39: Changes a wrongly entered item# from HW2 to SW2 UPDATE ord_items SET item# = 'SW2' WHERE ord#=104 AND item# = 'HW2'; The DELETE statement Deletes one or more tuples in a table according to given conditions General form: DELETE FROM <table-name> [ WHERE <conditional expression>]; Sample DELETE statements from the Case Example Query 40: Deletes Customer record with Customer Number 004 DELETE FROM customers WHERE cust# = 004;
DELETE FROM Ord_Items; <---------------------------------------
Deletes all rows in Ord_Items Table. The table remains empty after the DELETE operation.
4.3 DDL CREATE, ALTER, and DROP statements.

DDL statements are those which are used to create, modify and drop the definitions or structures of various tables, views, indexes and other elements of the DBMS. The CREATE TABLE statement Creates a new table. General form: CREATE TABLE <table-name> (<table-element (comma)list>*); * - table element may be attribute with its data-type and size or any integrity constraint on attributes. Some CREATE TABLE statements on the Case Example Query: CREATE TABLE customers ( cust# NUMBER(6) NOT NULL, custname CHAR(30) , city CHAR(20)); - This query Creates a table CUSTOMERS with 3 fields - cust#, custname and city. Cust# cannot be null Query: CREATE TABLE ord_sep <------------Creates a new table ord_sep, which has the same structure of ord_aug. The data in ord_aug is copied to the new table ord_sep.
AS SELECT * from ord_aug; - This query Creates table ORD_SEP as a cpy of ORD-AUG. Copies structure as well as data.
Query: CREATE TABLE ord_sep <-----------Creates a new table ord_sep, which has the same structure of ord_aug. No data in ord_aug is copied to the new table since there is no row which satisfies the 'always false' condition 1 = 2.
AS SELECT * from ord_aug WHERE 1 = 2; - This query Creates table ORD_SEP as a copy of ORD_AUG, but does not copy any data as the WHERE clause is never satisfied. The ALTER TABLE statement Alters the structure of an existing table. General form: ALTER TABLE <table-name> ADD | MODIFY (<table-element (comma)list); Examples of ALTER TABLE statement.
Query: ALTER TABLE customers MODIFY custname CHAR(35); <-------Modifies the data type/size of an attribute in the table
- This query changes the custname field to a character field of length 35. Used for modifying field lengths and attributes.
Query:
ALTER TABLE customers ADD (phone number(8), <----------------------credit_rating char(1)); Adds two new attributes to the Customers table. Here, for existing tuples (if any), the new attribute will take NULL values since no DEFAULT value is mentioned for the attribute.
- This query adds two new fields - phone & credit_rating to the customers table.
The DROP TABLE statement DROPS an existing table. General form: DROP TABLE <table-name>; Example: Query: DROP TABLE ord_sep; - The above query drops table ORD_SEP from the database Creating & Dropping Views A view is a virtual relation created with attributes from one or more base tables. SELECT * FROM myview1; at any given time will evaluate the view-defining query in the CREATE VIEW statement and display the result.
Query: CREATE VIEW myview1 AS SELECT ord#, orddate, ord_aug.cust#, custname FROM ord_aug, customers WHERE ord_aug.cust# = customers.cust#; - This query defines a view consisting of ord#, cust#, and custname using a join of ORD_AUG and CUSTOMERS tables. Query: CREATE VIEW myview2 (ItemNo, Quantity) AS SELECT item#, qty FROM ord_items; - This query defines a view with columns item# and qty from the ORD_ITEMS table, and renames these columns as ItemNo. and Quantity respectively. Query:
CREATE VIEW myview3 AS SELECT item#, descr, price FROM items WHERE price < 1000 WITH CHECK OPTION; <------------------WITH CHECK OPTION in a CREATE VIEW statement indicates that INSERTs or UPDATEs on the view will be rejected if they violate any integrity constraint implied by the view-defining query.
- This query defines the view as defined. WITH CHECK OPTION ensures that if this view is used for updation, the updated values do not cause the row to fall outside the view.
Query: DROP VIEW myview1; <---- To drop a view - this query drops the view MYVIEW1 Creating & Dropping Indexes Query: CREATE INDEX i_city <--------------ON customers (city); Creates a new index named i_city. The new index file(table) will have the values of city column of Customers table
Query: CREATE UNIQUE INDEX i_custname <--ON customers (custname); Creates an index which allows only unique values for custnames
Query: CREATE INDEX i_city_custname <--------ON customers (city, custname); Creates an index based on two fields : city and custname
Query: DROP INDEX i_city; <-------------------Drops index i_city

4.4 DCL GRANT and REVOKE statements.

DCL statements are those which are used to control access permissions on the tables, indexes, views and other elements of the DBMS. Granting & Revoking Privileges Query: Grants all permissions on the table customers to the user who logs in as 'ashraf'.
GRANT ALL <-----------------------ON customers TO ashraf;
Query: GRANT SELECT <----------------ON customers TO sunil; Grants SELECT permission on the table customers to the user 'sunil'. User 'sunil' does not have permission to insert, update, delete or perform any other operation on customers table.
Query: GRANT SELECT ON customers TO sunil
WITH GRANT OPTION; <-------------------
Enables user 'sunil' to give SELECT permission on customers table to other users.
Query: REVOKE DELETE <------------------------ON customers FROM ashraf; Database Management Systems Takes away DELETE permission on customers table from user
5. Recovery and Concurrency

Recovery and Concurrency in a DBMS are part of the general topic of transaction management. Hence we shall begin the discussion by examining the fundamental notion of a transaction.
5.1 Transaction
A transaction is a logical unit of work. Consider the following example: The procedure for transferring an amount of Rs. 100/- from the account of one customer to another is given.
Here, it has to be noted that the single operation amount transfer involves two database updates updating the record of from_cust and updating the record of to_cust. In between these two updates the database is in an inconsistent (or incorrect in this example) state. i.e., if only one of the updates is performed, one cannot say by seeing the database contents whether the amount transfer operation has been done or not. Hence to guarantee database consistency it has to be ensured that either both updates are performed or none are performed. If, after one update and before the next update, something goes wrong due to problems like a system crash, an overflow error, or a violation of an integrity constraint etc., then the first update needs to be undone. This is true with all transactions. Any transaction takes the database from one consistent state to another. It need not
necessarily preserve consistency of database at all intermediate points. Hence it is important to ensure that either a transaction executes in its entirety or is totally cancelled. The set of programs which handles this forms the transaction manager in the DBMS. The transaction manager uses COMMIT and ROLLBACK operations for ensuring atomicity of transactions. COMMIT The COMMIT operation indicates successful completion of a transaction which means that the database is in a consistent state and all updates made by the transaction can now be made permanent. If a transaction successfully commits, then the system will guarantee that its updates will be permanently installed in the database even if the system crashes immediately after the COMMIT. ROLLBACK The ROLLBACK operation indicates that the transaction has been unsuccessful which means that all updates done by the transaction till then need to be undone to bring the database back to a consistent state. To help undoing the updates once done, a system log or journal is maintained by the transaction manager. The before- and after-images of the updated tuples are recorded in the log. The properties of transaction can be summarised as ACID properties - ACID standing for atomicity, consistency, isolation and durability. Atomicity: A transaction is atomic. Either all operations in the transaction have to be performed or none should be performed. Consistency: Transactions preserve database consistency. i.e., A transaction transforms a consistent state of the database into another without necessarily preserving consistency at all intermediate points. Isolation: Transactions are isolated from one another. i.e., A transaction's updates are concealed from all others until it commits (or rolls back). Durability: Once a transaction commits, its updates survive in the database even if there is a subsequent system crash.

5.2 Recovery from System Failures

System failures (also called soft crashes) are those failures like power outage which affect all transactions in progress, but do not physically damage the database. During a system failure, the contents of the main memory are lost. Thus the contents of the database buffers which contain the updates of transactions are lost. (Note: Transactions do not directly write on to the database. The updates are written to database buffers and, at regular intervals, transferred to the database.) At restart, the system has to ensure that the ACID properties of transactions are maintained and the database remains in a consistent state. To attain this, the strategy to be followed for recovery at restart is as follows:
Transactions which were in progress at the time of failure have to be undone at the time of restart. This is needed because the precise state of such a transaction which was active at the time of failure is no longer known and hence cannot be successfully completed. Transactions which had completed prior to the crash but could not get all their updates transferred from the database buffers to the physical database have to redone at the time of restart. This recovery procedure is carried out with the help of: An online logfile or journal: The logfile maintains the before- and after-images of the tuples updated during a transaction. This helps in carrying out the UNDO and REDO operations as required. Typical entries made in the logfile are : Start of Transaction Marker Transaction Identifier Record Identifier Operations Performed Previous Values of Modified Data (Before-image or Undo Log) Updated Values of Modified Records (After-image or Redo Log) Commit / Rollback Transaction Marker Taking a checkpoint at specific intervals This involves the following two operations: 1. physically writing the contents of the database buffers out to the physical database. Thus during a checkpoint the updates of all transactions, including both active and committed transactions, will be written to the physical database. 2. physically writing a special checkpoint record to the physical log. The checkpoint record has a list of all active transactions at the time of taking the checkpoint.
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Recovery and Concurrency in a DBMS are part of the general topic of transaction management. Hence we shall begin the discussion by examining the fundamental notion of a transaction. Course Contents | Prev : Next
5.3 Recovery : An Example
At the time of restart, T3 and T5 must be undone and T2 and T4 must be redone. T1 does not enter the recovery procedure at all since it updates were all written to the database at time tc as part of the checkpoint proces
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5.4 Concurrency
Concurrency refers to multiple transactions accessing the same database at the same time. In a system which allows concurrency, some kind of control mechanism has to be in place to ensure that concurrent transactions do not interfere with each other. Three typical problems which can occur due to concurrency are explained here. 1. Lost Update Problem:
(To understand the above situation, assume that there is a record R, with a field, say Amt, having value 1000 before time t1. Both transactions A & B fetch this value at t1 and t2 respectively. Transaction A updates the Amt field in R to 800 at time t3. Transaction B updates the Amt field in R to 1200 at time t4. Thus after time t4, the Amt value in record R has value 1200. Update by Transaction A at time t3 is over-written by the Transaction B at time t4.) 2. Uncommitted Dependency Problem:
(To understand the above situation, assume that there is a record R, with a field, say Amt, having value 1000 before time t1. Transaction B fetches this value and updates it to 800 at time t1. Transaction A fetches R with Amt field value 800 at time t2. Transaction B rolls back and its update is undone at time t3. The Amt field takes the initial value 1000 during rollback. Transaction A continues processing with Amt field value 800 without knowing about B's rollback.) 3. Inconsistent Analysis Problem:

5.5 Locking
Locking: A solution to problems arising due to concurrency. Locking of records can be used as a concurrency control technique to prevent the above mentioned problems. A transaction acquires a lock on a record if it does not want the record values to be changed by some other transaction during a period of time. The transaction releases the lock after this time. Locks are of two types: 1. shared (S lock)
2.
and exclusive (X Lock)
A transaction acquires a shared (read) lock on a record when it wishes to retrieve or fetch the record. An exclusive (write) lock is acquired on a record when a transaction wishes to update the record. (Here update means INSERT, UPDATE or DELETE.) The following figure shows the Lock Compatibility matrix:
Normally, locks are implicit. A FETCH request is an implicit request for a shared lock whereas an UPDATE request is an implicit request for an exclusive lock. Explicit lock requests need to be issued if a different kind of lock is required during an operation. For example, if an X lock is to acquired before a FETCH it has to be explicitly requested for.
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5.6 Deadlocks
Locking can be used to solve the problems of concurrency. However, locking can also introduce the problem of deadlock as shown in the example below.
Deadlock is a situation in which two or more transactions are in a simultaneous wait state, each of them waiting for one of the others to release a lock before it can proceed. If a deadlock occurs, the system may detect it and break it. Detecting involves detecting a cycle in the Wait-For Graph (a graph which shows 'who is waiting for whom'). Breaking a deadlock implies choosing one of the deadlocked transactions as the victim and rolling it back, thereby releasing all its locks. This may allow some other transaction(s) to proceed. Deadlock prevention can be done by not allowing any cyclic-waits.
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6. Query Optimization
6.1 Overview
When compared to other database systems, query optimization is a strength of the relational systems. It can be said so since relational systems by themselves do optimization to a large extent unlike the other systems which leave optimization to the programmer. Automatic optimization done by the relational systems will be much more efficient than manual optimization due to several reasons like : uniformity in optimization across programs irrespective of the programmer's expertise in optimizing the programs. system's ability to make use of the knowledge of internal conditions (eg: volume of data at the time of querying) for optimization. For the same query, such conditions may be different at different times of querying. (In a manual system, this knowledge can be utilised only if the query is re-written each time, which is not practically possible.) system's ability to evaluate large number of alternatives to find the most efficient query evaluation method. In this chapter we shall look into the process of automatic query optimization done by the relational systems.
6.2 An Example of Query Optimization

Let us look at a query being evaluated in two different ways to see the dramatic effect of query optimization. Consider the following query. Select ORDDATE, ITEM#, QTY from ORDTBL, ORD_ITEMS where ORDTBL.ORD# = ORD_ITEMS.ORD# and ITEM# = 'HW3'; Assumptions: There are 100 records in ORDTBL
There are 10,000 records in ORD_ITEMS There are 50 order items with item# 'HW3' Query Evaluation Method 1 T1 = ORDTBL X ORD_ITEMS (Perform the Product operation as the first step towards joining the two tables) - 10000 X 100 tuple reads (1000000 tuple reads -> generates 1000000 tuples as intermediate result) - 1000000 tuples written to disk (Assuming that 1000000 tuples in the intermediate result cannot be held in the memory. 1000000 tuple writes to a temporary space in the disk.)
T2 = ORDTBL.ORD# = ORD_ITEMS.ORD# & ITEM# 'HW3'(T1) (Apply the two conditions in the query on the intermediate result obtained after the first step) - 1000000 tuples read into memory (1000000 tuple reads) - 50 selected (those tuples satisfying both the conditions. 50 held in the memory itself)
T3 = ORDDATE,ITEM#,QTY (T2) (Projection performed as the final step. No more tuple i/o s) - 50 tuples (final result) Total no. of tuple i/o s = 1000000 reads + 1000000 writes + 1000000 reads = 3000000 tuple i/o s
Query Evaluation Method 2
T1 =
ITEM#='HW3' (ORD_ITEMS) (Perform the Select operation on ORD_ITEMS as the first step)
- 10000 tuple reads (10000 tuple reads from ORD_ITEMS) - 50 tuples selected; no disk writes (50 tuples satisfy the condition in Select. No disk writes assuming that the 50 tuples forming the intermediate result can be held in the memory) T2 = ORDTBL JOIN T1 - 100 tuple reads (100 tuple reads from ORDTBL) - resulting relation with 50 tuples
T3 = ORDDATE, ITEM#, QTY(T2) (Projection performed as the final step. No more tuple i/o s) - 50 tuples (final result) Total no. of tuple i/o s = 10000 reads + 100 reads
= 10100 tuple i/o's Comparison of the two Query Evaluation Methods 10,100 tuple I/O's (of Method 2) v/s 3,000,000 tuple I/O's (of Method 1) ! Thus by sequencing the operations differently a dramatic difference can be made in the performance of queries. Here it needs to be noted that in the Method 2 of evaluation, the first operation to be performed was a 'Select' which filters out 50 tuples from the 10,000 tuples in the ORD_ITEMS table. Thus this operation causes elimination of 9950 tuples. Thus elimination in the initial steps would help optimization. Some more examples: 1. select CITY, COUNT(*) from CUSTTBL where CITY != 'BOMBAY' group by CITY; 2. select * from ORDTBL where to_char(ORDDATE,'dd-mm-yy') = '11-08-94'; select CITY, COUNT(*) from CUSTTBL group by CITY having CITY != 'BOMBAY'; select * from ORDTBL where ORDDATE = to_date('11-08-94', 'dd-mm-yy');
v/s
v/s
Here the second version is faster. In the first form of the query, a function to_char is applied on an attribute and hence needs to be evaluated for each tuple in the table. The time for this evaluation will be thus proportional to the cardinality of the relation. In the second form, a function to_date is applied on a constant and hence needs to be evaluated just once, irrespective of the cardinality of the relation. Moreover, if the attribute ORDDATE is indexed, the index will not be used in the first case, since the attribute appears in an expression and its value is not directly used. Database Management Systems
6.3 The Query Optimization Process

The steps of query optimization are explained below. A. Cast into some Internal Representation This step involves representing each SQL query into some internal representation which is more suitable for machine manipulation. The internal form typically chosen is a query tree as shown below. Query Tree for the SELECT statement discussed above:
B.
Convert to Canonical Form In this second step, the optimizer makes use of some transformation laws or rules for sequencing the internal operations involved. Some examples are given below. (Note: In all these examples the second form will be more efficient irrespective of the actual data values and physical access paths that exist in the stored database. ) Rule 1: (A JOIN B) WHERE restriction_A AND restriction_B
(A WHERE restriction_A) JOIN (B WHERE restriction_B) Restrictions when applied first, cause eliminations and hence better performance. Rule 2: (A WHERE restriction_1) WHERE restriction_2
A WHERE restriction_1 AND restriction_2 Two restrictions applied as a single compound one instead applying the two individual restrictions separately. Rule 3: (A[projection_1])[projection_2]
A[projection_2] If there is a sequence of successive projections applied on the same relation, all but the last one can be ignored. i.e., The entire operation is equivalent to applying the last projection alone. Rule 4: (A[projection]) WHERE restriction
(A WHERE restriction)[projection] Restrictions when applied first, cause eliminations and hence better performance. Reference [1] gives more such general transformation laws.
C. Choose Candidate Low-level Procedures In this step, the optimizer decides how to execute the transformed query. At this stage factors such as existence of indexes or other access paths, physical clustering of records, distribution of data values etc. are considered. The basic strategy here is to consider the query expression as a set of low-level implementation procedures predefined for each operation. For eg., there will be a set of procedures for implementing the restriction operation: one (say, procedure 'a') for the case where the restriction attribute is indexed, one (say, procedure 'b') where the restriction attribute is hashed and so on. Each such procedure has and associated cost measure indicating the cost, typically in terms of disk I/Os. The optimizer chooses one or more candidate procedures for each low-level operations in the query. The information about the current state of the database (existence of indexes, current cardinalities etc.) which is available from the system catalog will be used to make this choice of candidate procedures.
D. Generate Query Plans and Choose the Cheapest In this last step, query plans are generated by combining a set of candidate implementation procedures. This can be explained with the following example(A trivial one but illustrative enough). Assume that there is a query expression comprising a restriction, a join and a projection. Some examples, of implementation procedures available for each of these operations can be assumed as given in the table below. Implementation Procedure a b c
Operation Restriction Restriction Restriction
Condition Existing Restriction attribute is indexed Restriction attribute is hashed Restriction attribute is neither indexed nor hashed
Join Join Projection Projection
d e f g
Now the various query plans for the original query expression can be generated by making permutations of implementation procedures available for different operations. Thus the query plans can be adf - adg aef aeg bdf ... ... It has to be noted that in reality, the number of such query plans possible can be too many and hence generating all such plans and then choosing the cheapest will be expensive by itself. Hence a heuristic reduction of search space rather than exhaustive search needs to be done. Considering the above example, one such heuristic method can be as follows: If the system knows that the restriction attribute is neither indexed nor hashed, then the query plans involving implementation procedure 'c ' alone (and not 'a' and 'b') need to be considered and the cheapest plan can be chosen from the reduced set of query plans.

6.4 Query Optimization in Oracle

Some of the query optimization measures used in Oracle are the following: Indexes unnecessary for small tables. i.e., if the size of the actual data record is not much larger than the index record, the search time in the index table and the data table will be comparable. Hence indexes will not make much difference in the performance of queries. Indexes/clusters when retrieving less than 25% of rows. The overhead of searching in the index file will be more when retrieving more rows. Multiple column WHERE clauses Evaluations causing largest number of eliminations performed first JOIN-columns should be indexed. JOIN columns or Foreign Key columns may be indexed since queries based on these columns can be expected to be very frequent. Index not used in queries containing NULL / NOT NULL. Index tables will not have NULL / NOT NULL
entries. Hence need not search for these in the index table.

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2. The Internal Level