Roll No: - 1324 Class: - SYMCA

Advanced DataBases w.r.to

1. Distributed Databases
The ordinary database is typically held on a central server and people log in to the
system to query or update the database.
However, a distributed database requires multiple instances of a database
management system (or several DBMSs), running at each remote site. The degree
to which these different DBMS instances cooperate, or work in partnership, and
whether there is a master site that coordinates requests involving data from multiple
sites distinguish different types of distributed database environments.
This database is similar to decentralized databases but a decentralized database is
also stored on the computers that are not interconnected by network and database
software that make the data appear to be in one logical database. Thus, users at the
various sites cannot share data. A decentralized database is best regarded as a
collection of independent databases, rather than having the geographical distribution
of a single database.
Each site has a database management system (DBMS) that allows queries and
updates to be made locally. But each site also has a distributed database component
(DDBMS) that allows each site to make global queries of the whole system.

Many organisations have branches and offices located across the country or even
the world.
It may be that each branch only needs to access their own data 90% of the time and
only occasionally have a need to access remote information. On the other hand the
central office needs to have an up to date version of all the data as well. With a
single central database, all queries and updates have to travel across a network.
This may cause a heavy load on the system. It also means if the central database
breaks or the network goes down, the entire organisation is affected. A distributed
database solves some of these issues.
With a distributed database, the central database is updated over night as a batch
operation, but day-to-day work in the branches is carried out using the local portion
of the database. If the network fails, then they can carry on as normal until it is fixed.

Advantages of Distributed Databases:
Resilient. A problem in one part of the organisation will not stop other
branches from working
Security. Staff access can be limited to only their portion of the database
Network traffic is reduced so reducing bandwidth costs
Local database still works even if the company network is temporarily broken
Scaling: If a new store or branch is opened then it is straight forward to add an
extra node to the distributed database
High performance: Queries and updates are largely local so the there is no
network bottleneck
Easier to keep errors local rather than the entire organisation being affected

Disadvantages of Distributed Databases:-
Complexity. A distributed database is more complicated to set up and maintain
compared to a central database
Security. There are many remote entry points to the system compared to a central
database
Data integrity. More complex to make sure data and indexes are not corrupted
Data needs to be carefully partitioned to make the system as efficient as possible
Not so efficient if there is heavy interaction between branches, in which case a
central database is the better option.

2. Heterogeneous Database
Distributed database has to be constructed by linking multiple already-existing
database systems together, each with its own schema and possibly running different
database management software. Such systems are called heterogeneous distributed
database systems.
In a heterogeneous distributed database system, sites may run different DBMS
products that need not be based on the same underlying data model, and thus, the
system may be composed of relational, network, hierarchical, and object-oriented
DBMSs.
Different types of capabilities can be provided by heterogeneous distributed
database systems. They include schema integration, distributed query processing,
distributed transaction management, administrative functions, and coping with
different types of heterogeneity.
Schema integration has to do with the way in which users can logically view the
distributed data. Distributed query management deals with the analysis, optimization,
and execution of queries that reference distributed data. Distributed transaction
management deals with the atomicity, isolation, and durability of transactions in a
distributed system. Administrative functions include such things as authentication
and authorization, defining and enforcing semantic constraints on the data, and
management of data dictionaries and directories. Heterogeneity can include
differences in hardware, operating systems, communications links, database
management system vendors, and/or data models. These are all important aspects
of distributed data management.

3. DB + AI
The integration of AI and DBMS technologies promises to play a significant role in
shaping the future of computing.
AI and DB integration is crucial not only for next generation computing but also for
the continued development of DBMS technology. Both DBMS and AI systems
represent well established technologies, research and development in the area of
AI/DB integration is comparatively new.
The motivations driving the integration of these two technologies include the need
for
(a) Access to large amounts of shared data for knowledge processing.
(b) Efficient management of data as well as knowledge, and
(c) Intelligent processing of data. In addition to these motivations, the design of
intelligent database interface (IDI) was also motivated by the desire to preserve the
substantial investment represented by most existing databases.
The IDI is one of the key components of the intelligent System Server (ISS) and
provides a combined logic based and frame-based knowledge representation system
and supports forward chaining, backward chaining and truth maintenance.
The IDI has been used to implement a query server supporting a database used for
an Air Travel Information System which is accessed by a spoken language system.
Accessing schema information is handled automatically by the IDI ie. the application
is not required to maintain up to date schema information for the IDI. This
significantly reduces the potential for errors introduced by stale schema information
or by hand entered data.
The IDI can be viewed as a standalone DBMS interface which accepts queries in the
form of Intelligent Database Interface Language (IDIL) clauses and returns the result
relation as a set of tuples.



4. Knowledge Based Systems
Knowledge based database (KBDB) systems are a class of database systems that
use database concepts and models to store and retrieve knowledge. Knowledge
based database systems help in what is called Knowledge Management (KM). Most
often, the knowledge refers to a particular domain. Different teams of designers of
knowledge based database systems use particular terms and concepts in order to
build the frameworks for the information representation. Different database scan use
the same terms but with different meanings. Alternatively, the same meaning can be
expressed via different terms.
Knowledge based database systems typically can help link and integrate all available
knowledge sources, including explicit knowledge (various kinds of databases stored
in existing information systems) and inexplicit knowledge (practical experience, skills,
thought and thinking method in the brain of the experts / people) to form knowledge
databases of various kinds. Through further refining, the systems provide a platform
to let people to find out the knowledge they need from disordered information. In
other words, the objective of a knowledge based database system is to make
available the most optimal knowledge to the most optimal people in the most optimal
time to enable them to make the most appropriate decision making. This can lead to
effective improvement of innovative capacity, response capacity, production
efficiency and technical skills of people. In many situations, these databases can
help solve complicated problems with relative ease. On the flip side, a knowledge
based database should not be expected to be an exhaustive source of knowledge
capable of offering help in solving any problem.

5. Object-oriented Databases
Object oriented databases are also called Object Database Management Systems
(ODBMS). Object databases store objects rather than data such as integers, strings
or real numbers. Objects are used in object oriented languages such as C++, Java,
etc.
Objects basically consist of the following:-
Attributes - Attributes are data which defines the characteristics of an object.
This data may be simple such as integers, strings, and real numbers or it may
be a reference to a complex object.
Methods - Methods define the behaviour of an object and are what was
formally called procedures or functions.
Therefore objects contain both executable code and data. There are other
characteristics of objects such as whether methods or data can be accessed from
outside the object.
One other term worth mentioning is classes. Classes are used in object oriented
programming to define the data and methods the object will contain. The class is like
a template to the object. The class does not itself contain data or methods but
defines the data and methods contained in the object. The class is used to create
(instantiate) the object. Classes may be used in object databases to recreate parts of
the object that may not actually be stored in the database. Methods may not be
stored in the database and may be recreated by using a class.
Comparison to Relational Databases:-
Relational databases store data in tables that are two dimensional. The tables have
rows and columns. Relational database tables are "normalized" so data is not
repeated more often than necessary. All table columns depend on a primary key (a
unique value in the column) to identify the column. Once the specific column is
identified, data from one or more rows associated with that column may be obtained
or changed.

6. Fuzzy Databases:-
If a regular or classical database is a structured collection of information (records or
data) stored in a computer, a fuzzy database is a database which is able to deal with
uncertain or incomplete information using fuzzy logic. There are many forms of
adding flexibility in fuzzy databases. The simplest technique is to add a fuzzy
membership degree to each record, that is, an attribute in the range [0, 1]. However,
there are other kinds of databases allowing fuzzy values to be stored in fuzzy
attributes using fuzzy sets, possibility distributions, or fuzzy degrees associated to
some attributes and with different meanings (membership degree, importance
degree, fulfilment degree, etc.). Of course, fuzzy databases should allow fuzzy
queries using fuzzy or non-fuzzy data and there are some languages that allow this
kind of queries, like FSQL or SQLf. In synthesis, the research in fuzzy databases
includes the following areas: flexible querying in classical or fuzzy databases,
extending classical data models in order to achieve fuzzy databases (fuzzy relational
databases, fuzzy object-oriented databases, etc.), fuzzy conceptual modelling, fuzzy
data mining techniques, and applications of these advances in real databases
A database able to store and handle imperfect information, which is modelled by
taking advantage of fuzzy set theory.
In a regular database, only crisp (perfectly described) data are stored. However, due
to imprecision, vagueness, uncertainty, incompleteness, or ambiguities, a lot of data
are in the real world available in an imperfect form only. Fuzzy databases intend to
grasp imperfect information about a modelled part of the world and represent it
directly, as accurate as possible, in a database. The two leading approaches to the
representation of imperfect information in databases are the possibilistic approach
and the similarity relation based approach.