Question

topic:- Fundamentals of Databases

* no hand writing

*the answer must be unique not copied "plagiarized "

______________

Introduction to Data Base

Purpose

The purpose of this assignment is to help you learn more about databases in real life.

Brief Introduction

Databases are important in businesses and organizations because they provide a highly efficient method for handling data. Some of the data that are easily managed include: employee records, student information, payroll, accounting, project management and inventory, etc.. A database management system stores, organizes and manages a large amount of information.

Action Items

• You are requested to submit one example of application where databases are used and discuss one relation from this database. You need to illustrate attributes and keys.
• All students have to participate at least twice in the discussions.

Submission Instructions

Post your ideas and responses on the discussion board. At least 1 original posting and 2 responses are mandatory.

Answer 1

An example of an application where databases are used in real life:
One very good example of application where databases are used in real life is in finance sector, especially in banks for any and all money transfers, transfers, bank account details, account and personal profile, and other accounts updates, manipulation, operating on the data, processing, adding, deletion, storing data in them, later retrieving the same, querying for specific details, searching, sorting, and filtering the searched, indexed, and queried results. The applications of databases in the finance sector such as banks and other financial institutions is the most famous, most secured, critical, important, most happening, like blood flowing through nerves in a human's body, every minute and every second.
Here, banks use databases, which provide ACID properties- Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability.

The world consists of people, who live on food, for which they work to earn money, and the money changes hands, stored in each one of our bank accounts, continuously updating the incoming and outgoing money or finance transactions in facts, figures, and numbers represented in databases of each one of our bank accounts, be it individuals', governments', organizations', companies', or enterprises, banks', or other finance institutions.
One could simply login to his/her bank account to view the transaction statements, the details which would be stored in the databases of the bank the customer is banked with. He/she should be able to view the transaction statements in tables with rows and columns, with fields named with titles, details, and numbers. He/she should be able to sort the transactions, filter them, query for a particular transaction based on the desired keyword, search for the same. Any money transaction done by either the bank, the customer, or a different entity such as a merchant or the customer's employer (to credit salary to the customer's bank account), would simply update and change the values in the customer's bank account database.

Discussion about one relation from this database:
A 'relation' in databases is also called and represented as a 'table' of values, that must have unique name. A 'relation', which is made of tuples and attributes, where tuples being rows or records each one of them containing data or value, and attributes being columns. You could call a relation in databases as a 'data structure' and a collection of such relations make it a database. Hence, relation is sometimes referred to as 'table' in Relational Database Management Systems.

Also, a relationship could exist between two tables (relations), where one relation has a foreign key referencing the primary key of another relation (table).

In a bank’s database, say, there is CUSTOMER_DETAILS table (relation), which stores and retrieves customer data, which would have a primary key for example, unique CustomerID for each one the customers, and, say, there is one more table (relation) called ACCOUNTS_DETAILS, which stores data or information about different bank accounts the customers bank with. In order to link and create a relationship between these two tables (relations), i.e., to link or create relationship between each customer from the first table (relation) to his/her bank account mentioned in the second table (relation), a corresponding CustomerID column (Foreign key or attribute) is required in the ACCOUNTS_DETAILS table (relation), that references an already existing customer ID (Primary key) in the first CUSTOMER_DETAILS table or relation. Hence, the scenario and process refer to the relation between the two tables (relations).

Illustration of attributes and keys:
In the above example, CustomerID is the attribute term used. Other attributes in the CUSTOMER_DETAILS could be the customer's name, his or her age, location, date of birth, etc.
Attributes are the headings in the relation of a database.
A key could be a primary or foreign key. Here, in this case, CustomerID in the CUSTOMER_DETAILS table is the primary key, whereas CustomerID in the ACCOUNTS_DETAILS table is the foreign key. These are database keys which are a very important part of relational databases. These keys are used to create relationships among different database tables.