Database Design Process - Short Questions and Answers

Database Design Process - Short Questions and Answers. Find the most important and most conceptual short questions with answers of Computer subject for exams. This post about Chapter No.3: Database Design Process, ICS Part 2 on the database management system (DBMS) for the interview and final examinations for all boards of Pakistan and entry test for admission in universities.

 

Chapter No.3: 

Database Design Process

Short Questions & Answers

Q.1: What is meant by requirements' analysis?

Answer:

The requirements are gathered i.e., the possible inputs for the database and the required functionality out of it. The users precisely narrate their needs of the database and the possible domain and restrictions are also chalked out.

 

Q.2: What is project planning?

Answer:

A proper schedule is laid down to accomplish this activity. All the cost factors are taken into consideration i.e., the salaries of team members, their logistics involved, other trivial expenses and hardware cost.

 

Q.3: What is data analysis?

Answer:

This is an important analysis aspect while designing a database. It involves the following activities:

• Data Flow Diagram (DFD)
• Decision Tables
• Decision Trees

 

Q.4: What is data modeling?

Answer:

Data modeling is the process of identifying the data objects and the relationships between them.

 

Q.5: Write the ingredients of data modeling?

Answer:

Following are the ingredients of data modeling:

• Entities
• Attributes
• Relationships
• Cardinality
• Modality

 

Q.6: What is an entity?

Answer:

An entity or object is anything that is participating in the system. It is always properly identifiable i.e., STUDENT, TEACHER and EMPLOYEE etc.

 

Q.7: What is relationship?

Answer:

The relationship indicates how the entities are connected or related to each other. Any association between two entity types is called a relationship. Entities take part in the relationship. It is represented by a diamond shape. Following are the types of relationships:

• One-to-One Relationship
• One-to-Many Relationship
• Many-to-Many Relationship
• Recursive Relationship

 

Q.8: What is One-to-One relationship?

Answer:

A relationship exists when each record of one table is related to only one record of the other table.

 

Example:

Relationship between HEAD_OF_DEPARTMENT and DEPARTMENT is One-to-One.

 

Q.9: What is One-to-Many relationship?

Answer:

A relationship exists when each record of one table can be related to one or more than one record of the other table. This relationship is found the most common relationship. Sometimes, it is known as many-to-one relationship.

 

Example:

Relationship between TEACHER and STUDENT is One-to-Many.

 

Q.10: What is Many-to-Many relationship?

Answer:

A relationship exists when each record of the first table can be related to one or more than one record of the second table and a single record of the second table can be related to one or more than one record of the first table. 

 

Example:

Relationship between CUSTOMER and PRODUCT is Many-to-Many.

 

Q.11: What is Recursive relationship?

Answer:

A relationship exists between an entity and itself.

 

Example:

The entity PERSON, a recursive relationship could be used to show a PERSON and his SIBLING.

Q.12: What is meant by cardinality of relation?

Answer:

Cardinality of relation means the number of records in a relation is known as cardinality of the relation.

 

Q.13: What is meant by degree of relation?

Answer:

Degree of relation means the number of attributes in a relation is called degree of relation. For example, a relations STUDENT has 5 attributes, the degree of STUDENT relation is 5.

 

Q.14: What is modality?

Answer:

Modality provides information of the nature of relationship. It defies whether the participation of an entity in a relationship is mandatory or optional.

 

Q.15: What is ERD?

Answer:

ERD (Entity Relationship Diagram) is to represent entities/objects and their relationships / association. A set of primary components are identified for ERD i.e., entities, attributes, relationships, cardinality and modality.

 

Q.16: What is database design?

Answer:

The database design is to map the conceptual data model to an implementation model that a particular DBMS can process with performance that is acceptable to all users throughout the organization.

 

Q.17: What is conceptual OR logical database design?

Answer:

The process of mapping the conceptual data models to structures that are specific to the target DBMS. If the target environment is a relational DBMS, then the conceptual data models are mapped to normalized relations.

 

Q.18: What is “Merge Relations”?

Answer:

In some cases, there may be redundant relations. They must be merged to remove the redundancy. This process is also known as view integration.

 

Q.19: What is meant by Normalize the Relations?

Answer:

The relations may have unnecessary redundancy and may be subject to anomalies (errors) when they are updated. Normalization is the process that refines the relations to avoid these anomalies.

 

Q.20: What is physical database design?

Answer:

Physical database design is to implement the database as a set of stored records, files, indexes and other data structures that will provide adequate performance and ensure database integrity, security and recoverability.

 

Q.21: Which are the major three inputs to physical database design?

Answer:

Following are the major three inputs to physical database design:

• Logical database structures
• User processing requirements
• Characteristics

 

Q.22: Write the components of physical database design?

Answer:

Following are the components of physical database design:

• Data volume and usage analysis
• Data distribution strategy
• File organization
• Indexes
• Integrity constraints

 

Q.23: What data distribution strategy?

Answer:

Many organizations have distributed computing networks. For these organizations, a significant problem in physical database design Is deciding at which nodes (or site) in the network to physically locate the data i.e., centralized, partitioned, replicated, and hybrid.

 

Q.24: What is centralized strategy and also write its disadvantages?

Answer:

All data are located at a single site. It is fairly easy to do, but it has some disadvantages:

• Data are not readily accessible at remote sites.
• Data communication costs may be high
• The database system fails totally when the central system fails

 

Q.25: What is partitioned?

Answer:

The database is divided into partitions (fragments). Each partition is assigned to a particular site. An Advantage if this strategy is that data is moved closer to locale users and so is more accessible.

 

Q.26: What is replicated strategy?

Answer:

A full copy of database is assigned to more than one site in the network. This approach maximizes local access but creates update problems, since each database change must be reliably processed and synchronized at all the sites.

 

Q.27: What is hybrid strategy OR differentiate between critical and non-critical fragments?

Answer:

In this strategy, the database is portioned in critical and non-critical fragments. Non-critical fragments are stored at only one site, while critical fragments are stored in multiple sites.

 

Q.28: What is “File Organization”?

Answer:

A technique for physically arranging the records of a file on secondary storage devices is known as file organization.

 

Q.29: What is index?

Answer:

An index is a table that is used to determine the location of rows in a table that satisfy some condition. They must be created on primary key, secondary key, foreign key etc.

 

Q.30: What is meant by integrity constraints?

Answer:

Database integrity refers to the correctness and consistency of data. It is another form of database protection. It is related to security and precision; it has some broader implications.

 

Q.31: Differentiate between security and integrity?

Answer:

Security involves protecting the data from unauthorized operations, while integrity is concerned with the quality of data itself. Integrity is usually expressed in terms of certain constraints which are the consistency rules that the database is not permitted to violate.

 

Q.32: What is database implementation?

Answer:

In database implementation phase, the DBA requires a server computer which will be linked with hundreds and thousands of computer users who would want to share and interact with the server. The users are given the authorizations so that they can perform the authorized tasks while using the database facilities.

 

➤ Database Design Process- MCQs
➤ Basic Concepts & Terminology of Databases
➤ Data Basics
➤ Database Design Process
➤ Getting Started with C
➤ Elements of C
➤ Input/Output
➤ Decision Constructs
➤ Loop Constructs
➤ Functions in C
➤ File Handling