1. Introduction to Databases
Karolina Muszyńska

2. Topics Why are databases important?
What does a Database Management System provide?
Key concepts and people
The relational model

3. Why are databases important?
Databases are incredibly prevalent - they underlie technology used by most people every day if not every hour.
Databases reside behind a huge fraction of websites; they're a crucial component of telecommunications systems, banking systems, video games, and just about any other software system or electronic device that maintains some amount of persistent information.
Database systems provide a number of other properties that make them exceptionally useful and convenient: reliability, efficiency, scalability, concurrency control, data abstractions, and high-level query languages.

4. What does a DBMS provide?
DBMS provides efficient, reliable, convenient, and safe multi-user storage of and access to massive amounts of persistent data.
Massive
Persistent
Safe
Multi-user
Convenient
Efficient
Reliable

5. Key concepts and people
Data model
Schema versus data
Data definition language
Data manipulation or query language
DBMS implementer
Database designer
Database application developer
Database administrator
Database user

6. The relational model - characteristics
Used by major commercial database systems
Very simple model
Query with high-level languages
Efficient implementations

7. Basic constructs in the relational model
Relation (table, entity)
Each table has a set of named attributes (columns)
Each tuple (row) has a value for each attribute
Each attribute has a type (domain)
Schema – structural description of relations in database (name of the table, of its columns and types)
Instance – actual contents at a given point of time
Null – special value for ”unknown” or ”undefined”
Key – attribute whose value is unique in each row or a set of attributes whose combined values are unique

8. Creating and querying relational databases - steps
Design schema – create using Data Definition Language – structure of the relations (tables) and attributes
Bulk load –initial data (populate the database)
Repeat: execute queries and modifications

9. Microsoft Access 2013 tutorial
Access basics:
Getting started with Access
Managing Databases and Objects
Working with data:
Working with tables
Working with forms
Sorting and filtering records