DATABASE USERS

Database administrator (DBA) responsible for:

•Authorizing access to the database
•Coordinating and monitoring its use
•Acquiring software and hardware resources
•Tuning the DBMS for best performance
Database designer responsible for:
•Identifying the data to be stored
•Choosing appropriate structures to represent and store this data

End users
•Those whose jobs require access to the database
•Naive or parametric end users
•canned queries and updates
•Casual end users
•occasional, special-purpose access
•Sophisticated end users
•deep knowledge of database design and DBMS facilities
•Standalone users
•users of personal databases
System analysts
•Determine requirements of end users
Application programmers
•Implement complex specifications (business logic) as programs

WORKERS BEHIND THE SCENE

DBMS system designers and implementers
•Design and implement the DBMS modules and interfaces as a software package
Tool developers
•Design and implement tools
Operators and maintenance personnel
•Responsible for running and maintenance of hardware and software environment for database system
Concepts of Database Architecture

What Is Database Architecture?

A Database Management system is not always directly available for users and applications to access and store
data in it. A Database Management system can be centralized (all the data stored at one location),
decentralized (multiple copies of database at different locations) or hierarchical, depending upon its
architecture.

Database architecture focuses on the design, development, implementation and maintenance of computer
programs that store and organize information for businesses, agencies and institutions. A database architect
develops and implements software to meet the needs of users.

-The design of a DBMS depends on its architecture. It can be centralized or decentralized or hierarchical. The
architecture of a DBMS can be seen as either single tier or multi-tier. The tiers are classified as follows:

1. 1-tier architecture
2. 2-tier architecture
3. 3-tier architecture
4. n-tier architecture

1-tier architecture:

One-tier architecture involves putting all of the required components for a software application or technology
on a single server or platform.
1-tier architecture

Basically, a one-tier architecture keeps all of the elements of an application, including the interface, Middleware
and back-end data, in one place. Developers see these types of systems as the simplest and most direct way.

2-tier architecture:

The two-tier is based on Client Server architecture. The two-tier architecture is like client server application.
The direct communication takes place between client and server. There is no intermediate between client and
server.

2-tier architecture

3-tier architecture:

A 3-tier architecture separates its tiers from each other based on the complexity of the users and how they use
the data present in the database. It is the most widely used architecture to design a DBMS.
3-tier architecture

This architecture has different usages with different applications. It can be used in web applications and
distributed applications. The strength in particular is when using this architecture over distributed systems.

 Database (Data) Tier − at this tier, the database resides along with its query processing languages. We
also have the relations that define the data and their constraints at this level.
 Application (Middle) Tier − at this tier reside the application server and the programs that access the
database. For a user, this application tier presents an abstracted view of the database. End-users are
unaware of any existence of the database beyond the application. At the other end, the database tier is
not aware of any other user beyond the application tier. Hence, the application layer sits in the middle
and acts as a mediator between the end-user and the database.
 User (Presentation) Tier − End-users operate on this tier and they know nothing about any existence of
the database beyond this layer. At this layer, multiple views of the database can be provided by the
application. All views are generated by applications that reside in the application tier.

N-tier architecture:

N-tier architecture would involve dividing an application into three different tiers. These would be the

1. logic tier,
2. the presentation tier, and
3. The data tier.
N-tier architecture

It is the physical separation of the different parts of the application as opposed to the usually conceptual or
logical separation of the elements in the model-view-controller (MVC) framework. Another difference from the
MVC framework is that n-tier layers are connected linearly, meaning all communication must go through the
middle layer, which is the logic tier. In MVC, there is no actual middle layer because the interaction is
triangular; the control layer has access to both the view and model layers and the model also accesses the view;
the controller also creates a model based on the requirements and pushes this to the view. However, they are not
mutually exclusive, as the MVC framework can be used in conjunction with the n-tier architecture, with the n-
tier being the overall architecture used and MVC used as the framework for the presentation tier.

DBMS Database Models

A Database model defines the logical design and structure of a database and defines how data will be stored,
accessed and updated in a database management system. While the Relational Model is the most widely used
database model, there are other models too:

 Hierarchical Model
 Network Model
 Entity-relationship Model
 Relational Model

Hierarchical Model

This database model organizes data into a tree-like-structure, with a single root, to which all the other data is
linked. The hierarchy starts from the Root data, and expands like a tree, adding child nodes to the parent nodes.

In this model, a child node will only have a single parent node.

This model efficiently describes many real-world relationships like index of a book, recipes etc.
In hierarchical model, data is organized into tree-like structure with one one-to-many relationship between two
different types of data, for example, one department can have many courses, many professors and of-course
many students.

Network Model

This is an extension of the Hierarchical model. In this model data is organized more like a graph, and are
allowed to have more than one parent node.

In this database model data is more related as more relationships are established in this database model. Also, as
the data is more related, hence accessing the data is also easier and fast. This database model was used to map
many-to-many data relationships.

This was the most widely used database model, before Relational Model was introduced.
Entity-relationship Model

In this database model, relationships are created by dividing object of interest into entity and its characteristics
into attributes.

Different entities are related using relationships.

E-R Models are defined to represent the relationships into pictorial form to make it easier for different
stakeholders to understand.

This model is good to design a database, which can then be turned into tables in relational model(explained
below).

Let's take an example, If we have to design a School Database, then Student will be an entity with attributes
name, age, address etc. As Address is generally complex, it can be another entity with attributes street name,
pincode, city etc, and there will be a relationship between them.

Relationships can also be of different types.

Relational Model

In this model, data is organised in two-dimensional tables and the relationship is maintained by storing a
common field.

This model was introduced by E.F Codd in 1970, and since then it has been the most widely used database
model, infact, we can say the only database model used around the world.

The basic structure of data in the relational model is tables. All the information related to a particular type is
stored in rows of that table.

Hence, tables are also known as relations in relational model.

In the coming tutorials we will learn how to design tables, normalize them to reduce data redundancy and how
to use Structured Query language to access data from tables.

Basic Concepts of ER Model in DBMS

As we described in the tutorial Database models, Entity-relationship model is a model used for design and
representation of relationships between data.

The main data objects are termed as Entities, with their details defined as attributes, some of these attributes are
important and are used to identity the entity, and different entities are related using relationships.

In short, to understand about the ER Model, we must understand about:

 Entity and Entity Set

 What are Attributes? And Types of Attributes.
 Keys
 Relationships

Let's take an example to explain everything. For a School Management Software, we will have to store
Student information, Teacher information, Classes, Subjects taught in each class etc.

ER Model: Entity and Entity Set

Considering the above example, Student is an entity, Teacher is an entity, similarly, Class, Subject etc are
also entities.
An Entity is generally a real-world object which has characteristics and holds relationships in a DBMS.

If a Student is an Entity, then the complete dataset of all the students will be the Entity Set

ER Model: Attributes

If a Student is an Entity, then student's roll no., student's name, student's age, student's gender etc will be its
attributes.

An attribute can be of many types, here are different types of attributes defined in ER database model:

1. Simple attribute: The attributes with values that are atomic and cannot be broken down further are simple
attributes. For example, student's age.
2. Composite attribute: A composite attribute is made up of more than one simple attribute. For example,
student's address will contain, house no., street name, pincode etc.
3. Derived attribute: These are the attributes which are not present in the whole database management system,
but are derived using other attributes. For example, average age of students in a class.
4. Single-valued attribute: As the name suggests, they have a single value.
5. Multi-valued attribute: And, they can have multiple values.

ER Model: Keys

If the attribute roll no. can uniquely identify a student entity, amongst all the students, then the attribute roll no.
will be said to be a key.

Following are the types of Keys:

1. Super Key
2. Candidate Key

ER Model: Relationships

When an Entity is related to another Entity, they are said to have a relationship. For example, A Class Entity is
related to Student entity, becasue students study in classes, hence this is a relationship.

Depending upon the number of entities involved, a degree is assigned to relationships.

For example, if 2 entities are involved, it is said to be Binary relationship, if 3 entities are involved, it is said to
be Ternary relationship, and so on.