Preface
This book is intended to fill the role of a standard text for introductory courses on database theory. Typically, such a course might occur in the first or second year of a degree or HND course in computing and business information systems.
While the emphasis of the book is on established database design methods and relational database technology, we also give a broad overview of emerging object oriented approaches.
Having taught on introductory and final year undergraduate database courses, and looked at the syllabuses of other universities and colleges, we are confident that the contents of this book will provide students of database courses the material necessary to pass their introductory course and to act as a core of essential knowledge for more advanced courses.
Experience also shows that most of the queries introductory level and final year computing students have about databases involve database design and SQL. Consequently, we have laid emphasis on entity modelling, the relational view of data, normalization and SQL. It is our belief that the ability to produce a correct schema design and an adequate knowledge of SQL are key aims for an introductory course in modern databases. We also include a description of how the navigation paths that key processes that will access the database can be considered and documented at an early stage in the database design.
We cover relational algebra both as a precursor to SQL, and as a useful way of representing the sequence of operations a query optimizer may take in executing a query.
The standard 'descriptive' issues of physical data representation and indexing, security, recovery, concurrency, replication and database administration are covered.
We also include object orientation in a database context, and the impact this has had on DBMS architecture and database design.
John Carter
Sligo, 2001