Database

By Muhammad Ashar Javed

 Data models
 A database model shows the logical structure of a database, including
the relationships and constraints that determine how data can be stored
and accessed.

 Individual database models are designed based on the rules and

concepts of whichever broader data model the designers adopt. Most
data models can be represented by an accompanying database diagram

 Data Model gives us an idea that how the final system will look
like after its complete implementation.
 defines the data elements and the relationships between the data
elements.
 Data Models are used stored,
to show how data is
connected, accessed and updated in the
database management system.
 Though there are many data models being used nowadays but the
Relational model is the most widely used model. Apart from the
Relational model, there are many other types of data models
Data models
 Some of the Data Models in DBMS are:

1.Hierarchical Model
2.Network Model
3.Entity-Relationship Model
4.Relational Model
5.Object-Oriented Data Model
6.Object-Relational Data Model
7.Flat Data Model
8.Semi-Structured Data Model
9.Associative Data Model
10.Context Data Model
Hierarchical Model
 Hierarchical Model was the first DBMS model. This
model organises the data in the hierarchical tree
structure. The hierarchy starts from the root which
has root data and then it expands in the form of a
tree adding child node to the parent node.
 This model easily represents some of the real-world
relationships like food recipes, sitemap of a website
etc. Example: We can represent the relationship
between the shoes present on a shopping website in
the following way:
Features of a Hierarchical
Model
One-to-many relationship:
The data here is organised in a tree-like structure where the one-to-
many relationship is between the datatypes.
Also, there can be only one path from parent to any node. Example: In
the above example, if we want to go to the node sneakers we only have
one path to reach there i.e through men's shoes node.

Parent-Child Relationship:
Each child node has a parent node but a parent node can have more
than one child node. Multiple parents are not allowed.

Deletion Problem:
If a parent node is deleted then the child node is automatically deleted.

Pointers
are used to link the parent node with the child node and are used to
navigate between the stored data. Example: In the above example the
' shoes ' node points to the two other nodes ' women shoes ' node and
' men's shoes ' node.
 Advantages of Hierarchical Model

• t is very simple and fast to traverse through a tree-like

structure.
• Any change in the parent node is automatically reflected in the
child node so, the integrity of data is maintained.

• Disadvantages of Hierarchical Mode

• Complex relationships are not supported.

• As it does not support more than one parent of the child node
so if we have some complex relationship where a child node
needs to have two parent node then that can't be represented
using this model.
• If a parent node is deleted then the child node is automatically
deleted.
Network Model

 This model is an extension of the hierarchical model.

 It was the most popular model before the relational
model.
 This model is the same as the hierarchical model, the
only difference is that a record can have more than
one parent. It replaces the hierarchical tree with a
graph.
 Example: In the example below we can see that
node student has two parents i.e. CSE Department
and Library. This was earlier not possible in the
hierarchical model.
Features of a Network
Model
1.Ability to Merge more Relationships: In this
model, as there are more relationships so data is
more related. This model has the ability to manage
one-to-one relationships as well as many-to-many
relationships.
2.Many paths: As there are more relationships so
there can be more than one path to the same record.
This makes data access fast and simple.
3.Circular Linked List: The operations on the
network model are done with the help of the circular
linked list. The current position is maintained with the
help of a program and this position navigates through
the records according to the relationship.
 Advantages of Network Model

• The data can be accessed faster as compared to the

hierarchical model. This is because the data is more
related in the network model and there can be more
than one path to reach a particular node. So the data
can be accessed in many ways.
• As there is a parent-child relationship so data integrity
is present. Any change in parent record is reflected in
the child record.

 Disadvantages of Network Model

• As more and more relationships need to be handled the

system might get complex. So, a user must be having
detailed knowledge of the model to work with the
model.
• Any change like updation, deletion, insertion is very
complex.
Entity-Relationship Model
 Entity-Relationship Model or simply ER Model is a high-
level data model diagram. In this model, we represent
the real-world problem in the pictorial form to make it
easy for the stakeholders to understand. It is also very
easy for the developers to understand the system by
just looking at the ER diagram. We use the ER diagram
as a visual tool to represent an ER Model. ER diagram
has the following three components:
• Entities: Entity is a real-world thing. It can be a person,
place, or even a concept. Example: Teachers, Students,
Course, Building, Department, etc are some of the
entities of a School Management System.
• Attributes: An entity contains a real-world property
called attribute. This is the characteristics of that
attribute. Example: The entity teacher has the property
like teacher id, salary, age, etc.
• Relationship: Relationship tells how two attributes are
related. Example: Teacher works for a department.
Features of ER Model
• Graphical Representation for Better
Understanding: It is very easy and simple to
understand so it can be used by the developers to
communicate with the stakeholders.
• ER Diagram: ER diagram is used as a visual tool for
representing the model.
• Database Design: This model helps the database
designers to build the database and is widely used in
database design.
Advantages of ER Model
• Simple: Conceptually ER Model is very easy to build.
If we know the relationship between the attributes
and the entities we can easily build the ER Diagram
for the model.
• Effective Communication Tool : This model is used
widely by the database designers for communicating
their ideas.
• Easy Conversion to any Model : This model maps
well to the relational model and can be easily
converted relational model by converting the ER
model to the table. This model can also be converted
to any other model like network model, hierarchical
model etc.
Disadvatages of ER Model
• No industry standard for notation: There is no
industry standard for developing an ER model. So one
developer might use notations which are not
understood by other developers.
• Hidden information: Some information might be
lost or hidden in the ER model. As it is a high-level
view so there are chances that some details of
information might be hidden.
Relational Model
 The relational model was developed in 1970 by
EF Codd as a way to model data in a table
format, rather than as a diagram.
 Instead of focusing on the relationships and
instances between entities, tables in the relational
model show relevant data, how each table is related

 ER model and relational model are similar in that they

both convey information in a database, but how data
is shown is quite different.
Relational Model
 Relational Model is the most widely used model. In
this model, the data is maintained in the form of a
two-dimensional table.
 All the information is stored in the form of row and
columns. The basic structure of a relational model is
tables. So, the tables are also called relations in the
relational model. Example: In this example, we have
an Employee table.
ER Model vs Relational model
Features of Relational
Model
• Tuples : Each row in the table is called tuple. A row
contains all the information about any instance of the
object. In the above example, each row has all the
information about any specific individual like the first
row has information about John.
• Attribute or field: Attributes are the property which
defines the table or relation. The values of the
attribute should be from the same domain. In the
above example, we have different attributes of
the employee like Salary, Mobile_no, etc.
Advantages of Relational
Model
• Simple: This model is more simple as compared to
the network and hierarchical model.
• Scalable: This model can be easily scaled as we can
add as many rows and columns we want.
• Structural Independence: We can make changes
in database structure without changing the way to
access the data. When we can make changes to the
database structure without affecting the capability to
DBMS to access the data we can say that structural
independence has been achieved.
Disadvantages of Relatinal
Model
• Hardware Overheads: For hiding the complexities
and making things easier for the user this model
requires more powerful hardware computers and data
storage devices.
• Bad Design: As the relational model is very easy to
design and use. So the users don't need to know how
the data is stored in order to access it. This ease of
design can lead to the development of a poor
database which would slow down if the database
grows.
Object-Oriented Data Model
 The real-world problems are more closely
represented through the object-oriented data model.

 In this model, both the data and relationship are

present in a single structure known as an object.

 We can store audio, video, images, etc in the

database which was not possible in the relational
model(although you can store audio and video in
relational database, it is adviced not to store in the
relational database).

 In this model, two are more objects are connected

through links. We use this link to relate one object to
other objects. This can be understood by the example
given below.
 In the above example, we have two objects Employee
and Department. All the data and relationships of
each object are contained as a single unit. The
attributes like Name, Job_title of the employee and
the methods which will be performed by that object
are stored as a single object. The two objects are
connected through a common attribute i.e the
Department_id and the communication between
these two will be done with the help of this common
id.
 Advantages of Object Oriented Data Model :
• Codes can be reused due to inheritance.
• Easily understandable.
• Cost of maintenance can reduced due to reusability
of attributes and functions because of inheritance
• disadvantages
• It has complex navigational data access.
• There is a steep learning curve here.
• The transactions might be slow here.
Object-Relational Model

 As the name suggests it is a combination of both the

relational model and the object-oriented model. This
model was built to fill the gap between object-
oriented model and the relational model.
 An Object relational model is a combination of a
Object oriented database model and a Relational
database model. So, it supports objects, classes,
inheritance etc. just like Object Oriented models and
has support for data types, tabular structures etc. like
Relational data model.
 Advantages of Object Relational model
 The advantages of the Object Relational model are −
 Inheritance
 The Object Relational data model allows its users to inherit
objects, tables etc. so that they can extend their functionality.
Inherited objects contains new attributes as well as the attributes
that were inherited.
 Complex Data Types
 Complex data types can be formed using existing data types.
This is useful in Object relational data model as complex data
types allow better manipulation of the data.
 Extensibility
 The functionality of the system can be extended in Object
relational data model. This can be achieved using complex data
types as well as advanced concepts of object oriented model
such as inheritance.
 Disadvantages of Object Relational model
 The object relational data model can get quite complicated and
difficult to handle at times as it is a combination of the Object
oriented data model and Relational data model and utilizes the
functionalities of both of them.
Flat Data Model
 The flat data model is a simple and straightforward approach to
database management. In this model, the entire database is
represented as a single table with rows and columns. This
means that the computer has to read the entire table to access
any piece of data, which can make the process slow and
inefficient

 In a flat database model, every data element is represented by

a single two-dimensional array. Columns hold similar types of
values while components in a row hold relational values

 Due to their limitations, flat databases are unsuitable for most

software applications that require the representation and
storage of complex business interactions. Despite this, some
application developers still use flat files to save costs and time
when integrating a relational database.
An Illustrative Example

 For instance, consider a database for an online

bookstore. It has two columns titled "Book Title" and
"Author". Each row is used to record different books
and their respective authors. In the flat model, no two
entries are the same. The database is stored in a
table format in the flat model. However, this model
faces a challenge when it comes to storing large
amounts of data in the 2D array, as it can be difficult
to manage such a vast collection of entries.
Semi-Structured Model

 Semi-structured model is an evolved form of the

relational model. We cannot differentiate between
data and schema in this model.
 Example: Web-Based data sources which we can't
differentiate between the schema and data of the
website. In this model, some entities may have
missing attributes while others may have an extra
attribute.

 This model gives flexibility in storing the data. It also

gives flexibility to the attributes. Example: If we are
storing any value in any attribute then that value can
be either atomic value or a collection of values
 Associative Data Model
 Associative Data Model is a model in which the data is
divided into two parts. Everything which has independent
existence is called as an entity and the relationship among
these entities are called association . The data divided into
two parts are called items and links.
• Item : Items contain the name and the identifier(some
numeric value).
• Links: Links contain the identifier, source, verb and subject.
 Example : Let us say we have a statement "The world cup
is being hosted by London from 30 May 2020". In this data
two links need to be stored:
1.The world cup is being hosted by London. The source here is
'the world cup', the verb 'is being' and the target is 'London'.
2....from 30 May 2020. The source here is the previous link,
the verb is 'from' and the target is '30 May 2020'.
 This is represented using the table as follows:
Context Data Model

 Context Data Model is a collection of several models.

This consists of models like network model, relational
models etc. Using this model we can do various types
of tasks which are not possible using any model
alone.