Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996
Objectives At the completion of this subject students should understand the aims and objectives of database technology; understand how to use a data sub-language and data access control facilities of database systems; and be able to use database technology to solve business problems.
Synopsis Data processing and databases. Project planning. Three schema architecture. Data as a resource. User requirements. Database logical design. Data, information and semantics. Data relationships. Introduction to data modelling: the E-R diagram. The extended E-R diagram. Process modelling. Logical access paths. Business rules. The database specification. Introduction to the relational model. Normalisation. Mapping to relational model. Data manipulation. Relational algebra. SQL. The system files. Database catalogues. Integrity constraints. Relationship levels. The Parser. Physical storage devices. File spaces. Directories. File Manager. Disk Manager. Physical design. Hardware and software selection. Programming applications. Transaction processing. Selection of suitable data structures. System tuning. Data takeup. Testing. System maintenance. Extracting, sorting, merging, updating data. Data archiving. Addressability. Denormalisation. Simple indexing. Access requirements: serial, sequential, random processing. Data structures. Heap structure. Sorting, physical clustering, dense and non-dense indexing. Index sequential, B-tree structures. Hash files, data compression. Database administration. Database operations. Other types of databases: text, object-oriented, rule-based, multimedia.
Assessment Examination (2 hours): 50% + Practical work: 50%