BCA-402 : DBMS (2009)

Q1)Answer the following :(a)what is data inconsistency? Data inconsistency exists when different and conflicting versions of the same data appear in different places. Data inconsistency creates unreliable information, because it will be difficult to determine which version of the information is correct. (It's difficult to make correct - and timely - decisions if those decisions are based on conflicting information.) Data inconsistency is likely to occur when there is data redundancy. Data redundancy occurs when the data file/database file contains redundant - unnecessarily duplicated - data. That's why one major goal of good database design is to eliminate data redundancy. (b)What do you understand by DBTG CODASYL model? The Data Base Task Group (DBTG) was a working group founded in 1965 (initially named the List Processing Task Force and later renamed to DBTG in 1967) by the Cobol Committee, formerly Programming Language Committee, of the Conference of Data Systems Language (CODASYL).In April 1971, the DBTG published a report containing specifications of a Data Manipulation Language (DML) and a Data Definition Language (DDL) for standardization of network database model. The first DBTG proposals had already been published in 1969. The specification was subsequently modified and developed in various committees and published by other reports in 1973 and 1978. The specification is often referred to as the DBTG database model or the CODASYL database model. As well as the data model, many basic concepts of database terminology were introduced by this group, notably the concepts of schema and subschema. (c)Write any five DML commands of network model. A data manipulation language (DML) is a family of syntax elements similar to a computer programming language used for inserting, deleting and updating data in a database. Data manipulation language comprises the data change statements which modify stored data. Example:
SELECT ... FROM ... WHERE ... INSERT INTO ... VALUES ... UPDATE ... SET ... WHERE ... DELETE FROM ... WHERE ...

(d)What is the Difference Between an Entity and Attributes?

An entity represents a thing that can exist independently and that can be identified uniquely. More specifically, an entity often represents a class, group or category of similar objects. Most often, an entity represents a real world object such as a car or an employee.
Attributes

Properties of entities are called attributes; represent a sub group of information of the object represented by the entity. Attributes define the individual instances and help to differentiate between each instance by describing their characteristic. It is important to note that attributes cannot be set-valued and they should be atomic. Naveen Purohit

Difference

In entity-relationship modeling, entities represent real world objects/things that can be identified as unique and independent, while attributes represent the properties of those entities. In relational databases, entities become tables (each row representing individual instances), whereas attributes become columns of those corresponding tables. (e)What do you understand by Inverted files? A sequence of (key, pointer) pairs where each pointer points to a record in adatabase which contains the key value in some particular field. The index is sorted on the key values to allow rapid searching for a particular key value, using e.g. binary search. The index is "inverted" in the sense that the key value is used to find the record rather than the other way round. For databases in which the records may be searched based on more than one field, multiple indices may be created that are sorted on those keys. An index may contain gaps to allow for new entries to be added in the correct sort order without always requiring the following entries to be shifted out of the way. (f)What is virtual record? (g)What is the basic difference between Generalization and Specialization? Generalization and specialization are important relationships that exist between a higher level entity set and one or more lower level entity sets. 1. Generalization is the result of taking the union of two or more lower level entity sets to produce a higher level entity sets. Specialization is the results of taking subsets of a higher level entity set to form a lower level entity sets. 2. In generalization, each higher level entity must also be a lower level entity. In specialization, some higher level entities may not have lower-level entity sets at all. Example:
1. A 'specialized table' approach, in which I create a table for each of the possible entity. In the computer component example, I would have a Computer table and a Component table, with the ComputerID as FK in the Component table referencing back to Computer.ComputerID. or 2. A 'generalized table approach, in which I have one table table called Component, with ComponentID as PK, and a ParentComponentID as FK referencing to its parent's ComponentID. 3.

(h)What are the activities of the database manager?

Naveen Purohit