There are number of characteristics that distinguish the database approach from the much older approach of programming with files. Show
For example, one user, the grade reporting office, may keep files on students and their grades. Programs to print a student’s transcript and to enter new grades are implemented as part of the application. A second user, the accounting office, may keep track of students’ fees and their payments. Although both users are interested in data about students, each user maintains separate files— and programs to manipulate these files—because each requires some data not available from the other user’s files. This redundancy in defining and storing data results in wasted storage space and in redundant efforts to maintain common up-to-date data.
The main characteristics of the database approach (feature of database approach) And how it differs from the traditional file system i.e file-processing approach :
We have described each of these characteristics in a separate section. 1. Self-Describing Nature of a Database System
For example, an application program written in C++ may have struct or class declarations, and a COBOL program has data division statements to define its files. Whereas file-processing software can access only specific databases, DBMS software can access diverse databases by extracting the database definitions from the catalog and using these definitions. The DBMS catalog will store the definitions of all the files shown. Figure 1.3 shows some sample entries in a database catalog. These definitions are specified by the database designer prior to creating the actual database and are stored in the catalog. Whenever a request is made to access, say, the Name of a STUDENT record, the DBMS software refers to the catalog to determine the structure of the STUDENT file and the position and size of the Name data item within a STUDENT record. By contrast, in a typical file-processing application, the file structure and, in the extreme case, the exact location of Name within a STUDENT record are already coded within each program that accesses this data item. 2. Insulation between Programs and Data, and Data Abstraction
3. Support of Multiple Views of the DataA database typically has many users, each of whom may require a different perspective or view of the database. A view may be a subset of the database or it may contain virtual data that is derived from the database files but is not explicitly stored. Some users may not need to be aware of whether the data they refer to is stored or derived. A multiuser DBMS whose users have a variety of distinct applications must provide facilities for defining multiple views. For example, one user of the database may be interested only in accessing and printing the transcript of each student; the view for this user is shown in Figure 1.5(a). A second user, who is interested only in checking that students have taken all the prerequisites of each course
4. Sharing of Data and Multiuser Transaction Processing
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