Chapter 4 : Intermediate SQL

Database System Concepts, 7th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use
 Outline

▪ Join Expressions
▪ Views
▪ Transactions
▪ Integrity Constraints
▪ SQL Data Types and Schemas
▪ Index Definition in SQL
▪ Authorization

Database System Concepts - 7th 4.2 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Joined Relations

▪ Join operations take two relations and return as a result another

relation.
▪ A join operation is a Cartesian product which requires that tuples in the
two relations match (under some condition). It also specifies the
attributes that are present in the result of the join
▪ The join operations are typically used as subquery expressions in the
from clause
▪ Three types of joins:
• Natural join
• Inner join
• Outer join

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 Natural Join in SQL

▪ Natural join matches tuples with the same values for all common
attributes, and retains only one copy of each common column.
▪ List the names of instructors along with the course ID of the courses that
they taught
• select name, course_id
from students, takes
where student.ID = takes.ID;
▪ Same query in SQL with “natural join” construct
• select name, course_id
from student natural join takes;

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 Natural Join in SQL (Cont.)

▪ The from clause can have multiple relations combined using natural join:
select A1, A2, … An
from r1 natural join r2 natural join .. natural join rn
where P ;

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 Student Relation

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 Takes Relation

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 student natural join takes

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 Dangerous in Natural Join

▪ Beware of unrelated attributes with same name which get equated

incorrectly
▪ Example -- List the names of students instructors along with the titles of
courses that they have taken
• Correct version
select name, title
from student natural join takes, course
where takes.course_id = course.course_id;
• Incorrect version
select name, title
from student natural join takes natural join course;
▪ This query omits all (student name, course title) pairs where the
student takes a course in a department other than the student's
own department.
▪ The correct version (above), correctly outputs such pairs.

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 Natural Join with Using Clause

▪ To avoid the danger of equating attributes erroneously, we can use the

“using” construct that allows us to specify exactly which columns should
be equated.
▪ Query example
select name, title
from (student natural join takes) join course using (course_id)

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 Join Condition

▪ The on condition allows a general predicate over the relations being

joined
▪ This predicate is written like a where clause predicate except for the use
of the keyword on
▪ Query example
select *
from student join takes on student_ID = takes_ID
• The on condition above specifies that a tuple from student matches a
tuple from takes if their ID values are equal.
▪ Equivalent to:
select *
from student , takes
where student_ID = takes_ID

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 Join Condition (Cont.)

▪ The on condition allows a general predicate over the relations being

joined.
▪ This predicate is written like a where clause predicate except for the use
of the keyword on.
▪ Query example
select *
from student join takes on student_ID = takes_ID
• The on condition above specifies that a tuple from student matches a
tuple from takes if their ID values are equal.
▪ Equivalent to:
select *
from student , takes
where student_ID = takes_ID

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 Outer Join

▪ An extension of the join operation that avoids loss of information.

▪ Computes the join and then adds tuples form one relation that does not
match tuples in the other relation to the result of the join.
▪ Uses null values.
▪ Three forms of outer join:
• left outer join
• right outer join
• full outer join

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 Outer Join Examples

▪ Relation course

▪ Relation prereq

▪ Observe that
course information is missing CS-347
prereq information is missing CS-315

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 Left Outer Join

▪ course natural left outer join prereq

▪ In relational algebra: course ⟕ prereq

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 Right Outer Join

▪ course natural right outer join prereq

▪ In relational algebra: course ⟖ prereq

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 Full Outer Join

▪ course natural full outer join prereq

▪ In relational algebra: course ⟗ prereq

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 Joined Types and Conditions

▪ Join operations take two relations and return as a result another

relation.
▪ These additional operations are typically used as subquery expressions
in the from clause
▪ Join condition – defines which tuples in the two relations match.
▪ Join type – defines how tuples in each relation that do not match any
tuple in the other relation (based on the join condition) are treated.

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 Joined Relations – Examples

▪ course natural right outer join prereq

▪ course full outer join prereq using (course_id)

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 Joined Relations – Examples

▪ course inner join prereq on

course.course_id = prereq.course_id

▪ What is the difference between the above, and a natural join?

▪ course left outer join prereq on
course.course_id = prereq.course_id

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 Joined Relations – Examples

▪ course natural right outer join prereq

▪ course full outer join prereq using (course_id)

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 Views

▪ In some cases, it is not desirable for all users to see the entire logical
model (that is, all the actual relations stored in the database.)
▪ Consider a person who needs to know an instructors name and
department, but not the salary. This person should see a relation
described, in SQL, by

select ID, name, dept_name

from instructor

▪ A view provides a mechanism to hide certain data from the view of

certain users.
▪ Any relation that is not of the conceptual model but is made visible to a
user as a “virtual relation” is called a view.

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 View Definition

▪ A view is defined using the create view statement which has the form
create view v as < query expression >
where <query expression> is any legal SQL expression. The view name
is represented by v.
▪ Once a view is defined, the view name can be used to refer to the virtual
relation that the view generates.
▪ View definition is not the same as creating a new relation by evaluating
the query expression
• Rather, a view definition causes the saving of an expression; the
expression is substituted into queries using the view.

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 View Definition and Use

▪ A view of instructors without their salary

create view faculty as
select ID, name, dept_name
from instructor
▪ Find all instructors in the Biology department
select name
from faculty
where dept_name = 'Biology'
▪ Create a view of department salary totals
create view departments_total_salary(dept_name, total_salary) as
select dept_name, sum (salary)
from instructor
group by dept_name;

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 Views Defined Using Other Views

▪ One view may be used in the expression defining another view

▪ A view relation v1 is said to depend directly on a view relation v2 if v2 is
used in the expression defining v1
▪ A view relation v1 is said to depend on view relation v2 if either v1 depends
directly to v2 or there is a path of dependencies from v1 to v2
▪ A view relation v is said to be recursive if it depends on itself.

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 Views Defined Using Other Views

▪ create view physics_fall_2017 as

select course.course_id, sec_id, building, room_number
from course, section
where course.course_id = section.course_id
and course.dept_name = 'Physics'
and section.semester = 'Fall'
and section.year = '2017’;

▪ create view physics_fall_2017_watson as

select course_id, room_number
from physics_fall_2017
where building= 'Watson';

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 View Expansion

▪ Expand the view :

create view physics_fall_2017_watson as
select course_id, room_number
from physics_fall_2017
where building= 'Watson'
▪ To:
create view physics_fall_2017_watson as
select course_id, room_number
from (select course.course_id, building, room_number
from course, section
where course.course_id = section.course_id
and course.dept_name = 'Physics'
and section.semester = 'Fall'
and section.year = '2017')
where building= 'Watson';

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 View Expansion (Cont.)

▪ A way to define the meaning of views defined in terms of other views.

▪ Let view v1 be defined by an expression e1 that may itself contain uses of
view relations.
▪ View expansion of an expression repeats the following replacement step:
repeat
Find any view relation vi in e1
Replace the view relation vi by the expression defining vi
until no more view relations are present in e1
▪ As long as the view definitions are not recursive, this loop will terminate

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 Materialized Views

▪ Certain database systems allow view relations to be physically stored.

• Physical copy created when the view is defined.
• Such views are called Materialized view:
▪ If relations used in the query are updated, the materialized view result
becomes out of date
• Need to maintain the view, by updating the view whenever the
underlying relations are updated.

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 Update of a View

▪ Add a new tuple to faculty view which we defined earlier

insert into faculty
values ('30765', 'Green', 'Music');
▪ This insertion must be represented by the insertion into the instructor
relation
• Must have a value for salary.
▪ Two approaches
• Reject the insert
• Insert the tuple
('30765', 'Green', 'Music', null)
into the instructor relation

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 Some Updates Cannot be Translated Uniquely

▪ create view instructor_info as

select ID, name, building
from instructor, department
where instructor.dept_name = department.dept_name;
▪ insert into instructor_info
values ('69987', 'White', 'Taylor');
▪ Issues
• Which department, if multiple departments in Taylor?
• What if no department is in Taylor?

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 And Some Not at All

▪ create view history_instructors as

select *
from instructor
where dept_name= 'History';
▪ What happens if we insert
('25566', 'Brown', 'Biology', 100000)
into history_instructors?

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 View Updates in SQL

▪ Most SQL implementations allow updates only on simple views

• The from clause has only one database relation.
• The select clause contains only attribute names of the relation,
and does not have any expressions, aggregates, or distinct
specification.
• Any attribute not listed in the select clause can be set to null
• The query does not have a group by or having clause.

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 Transactions

▪ A transaction consists of a sequence of query and/or update

statements and is a “unit” of work
▪ The SQL standard specifies that a transaction begins implicitly when an
SQL statement is executed.
▪ The transaction must end with one of the following statements:
• Commit work. The updates performed by the transaction become
permanent in the database.
• Rollback work. All the updates performed by the SQL statements
in the transaction are undone.
▪ Atomic transaction
• either fully executed or rolled back as if it never occurred
▪ Isolation from concurrent transactions

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 Integrity Constraints

▪ Integrity constraints guard against accidental damage to the database,

by ensuring that authorized changes to the database do not result in a
loss of data consistency.
• A checking account must have a balance greater than $10,000.00
• A salary of a bank employee must be at least $4.00 an hour
• A customer must have a (non-null) phone number

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 Constraints on a Single Relation

▪ not null
▪ primary key
▪ unique
▪ check (P), where P is a predicate

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 Not Null Constraints

▪ not null
• Declare name and budget to be not null
name varchar(20) not null
budget numeric(12,2) not null

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 Unique Constraints

▪ unique ( A1, A2, …, Am)

• The unique specification states that the attributes A1, A2, …, Am
form a candidate key.
• Candidate keys are permitted to be null (in contrast to primary
keys).

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 The check clause

▪ The check (P) clause specifies a predicate P that must be satisfied by

every tuple in a relation.
▪ Example: ensure that semester is one of fall, winter, spring or summer

create table section

(course_id varchar (8),
sec_id varchar (8),
semester varchar (6),
year numeric (4,0),
building varchar (15),
room_number varchar (7),
time slot id varchar (4),
primary key (course_id, sec_id, semester, year),
check (semester in ('Fall', 'Winter', 'Spring', 'Summer')))

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 Referential Integrity

▪ Ensures that a value that appears in one relation for a given set of
attributes also appears for a certain set of attributes in another relation.
• Example: If “Biology” is a department name appearing in one of the
tuples in the instructor relation, then there exists a tuple in the
department relation for “Biology”.
▪ Let A be a set of attributes. Let R and S be two relations that contain
attributes A and where A is the primary key of S. A is said to be a
foreign key of R if for any values of A appearing in R these values also
appear in S.

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 Referential Integrity (Cont.)

▪ Foreign keys can be specified as part of the SQL create table

statement
foreign key (dept_name) references department
▪ By default, a foreign key references the primary-key attributes of the
referenced table.
▪ SQL allows a list of attributes of the referenced relation to be specified
explicitly.
foreign key (dept_name) references department (dept_name)

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 Cascading Actions in Referential Integrity

▪ When a referential-integrity constraint is violated, the normal procedure is

to reject the action that caused the violation.
▪ An alternative, in case of delete or update is to cascade
create table course (
(…
dept_name varchar(20),
foreign key (dept_name) references department
on delete cascade
on update cascade,
. . .)
▪ Instead of cascade we can use :
• set null,
• set default

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 Integrity Constraint Violation During Transactions

▪ Consider:
create table person (
ID char(10),
name char(40),
mother char(10),
father char(10),
primary key ID,
foreign key father references person,
foreign key mother references person)
▪ How to insert a tuple without causing constraint violation?
• Insert father and mother of a person before inserting person
• OR, set father and mother to null initially, update after inserting all
persons (not possible if father and mother attributes declared to be
not null)
• OR defer constraint checking

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 Complex Check Conditions

▪ The predicate in the check clause can be an arbitrary predicate that can
include a subquery.
check (time_slot_id in (select time_slot_id from time_slot))
The check condition states that the time_slot_id in each tuple in the
section relation is actually the identifier of a time slot in the time_slot
relation.
• The condition has to be checked not only when a tuple is inserted or
modified in section , but also when the relation time_slot changes

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 Assertions

▪ An assertion is a predicate expressing a condition that we wish the

database always to satisfy.
▪ The following constraints, can be expressed using assertions:
▪ For each tuple in the student relation, the value of the attribute tot_cred
must equal the sum of credits of courses that the student has completed
successfully.
▪ An instructor cannot teach in two different classrooms in a semester in
the same time slot
▪ An assertion in SQL takes the form:
create assertion <assertion-name> check (<predicate>);

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 Built-in Data Types in SQL

▪ date: Dates, containing a (4 digit) year, month and date

• Example: date '2005-7-27'
▪ time: Time of day, in hours, minutes and seconds.
• Example: time '09:00:30' time '09:00:30.75'
▪ timestamp: date plus time of day
• Example: timestamp '2005-7-27 09:00:30.75'
▪ interval: period of time
• Example: interval '1' day
• Subtracting a date/time/timestamp value from another gives an
interval value
• Interval values can be added to date/time/timestamp values

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 Large-Object Types

▪ Large objects (photos, videos, CAD files, etc.) are stored as a large
object:
• blob: binary large object -- object is a large collection of
uninterpreted binary data (whose interpretation is left to an
application outside of the database system)
• clob: character large object -- object is a large collection of character
data
▪ When a query returns a large object, a pointer is returned rather than the
large object itself.

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 User-Defined Types

▪ create type construct in SQL creates user-defined type

create type Dollars as numeric (12,2) final

▪ Example:
create table department
(dept_name varchar (20),
building varchar (15),
budget Dollars);

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 Domains
▪ create domain construct in SQL-92 creates user-defined domain
types

create domain person_name char(20) not null

▪ Types and domains are similar. Domains can have constraints,

such as not null, specified on them.
▪ Example:
create domain degree_level varchar(10)
constraint degree_level_test
check (value in ('Bachelors', 'Masters', 'Doctorate'));

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 Index Creation

▪ Many queries reference only a small proportion of the records in a table.

▪ It is inefficient for the system to read every record to find a record with
particular value
▪ An index on an attribute of a relation is a data structure that allows the
database system to find those tuples in the relation that have a specified
value for that attribute efficiently, without scanning through all the tuples
of the relation.
▪ We create an index with the create index command
create index <name> on <relation-name> (attribute);

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 Index Creation Example

▪ create table student

(ID varchar (5),
name varchar (20) not null,
dept_name varchar (20),
tot_cred numeric (3,0) default 0,
primary key (ID))
▪ create index studentID_index on student(ID)
▪ The query:
select *
from student
where ID = '12345'
can be executed by using the index to find the required record, without
looking at all records of student

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 Authorization

▪ We may assign a user several forms of authorizations on parts of the

database.
• Read - allows reading, but not modification of data.

• Insert - allows insertion of new data, but not modification of existing

data.
• Update - allows modification, but not deletion of data.
• Delete - allows deletion of data.
▪ Each of these types of authorizations is called a privilege. We may
authorize the user all, none, or a combination of these types of privileges
on specified parts of a database, such as a relation or a view.

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 Authorization (Cont.)

▪ Forms of authorization to modify the database schema

• Index - allows creation and deletion of indices.
• Resources - allows creation of new relations.
• Alteration - allows addition or deletion of attributes in a relation.
• Drop - allows deletion of relations.

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 Authorization Specification in SQL

▪ The grant statement is used to confer authorization

grant <privilege list> on <relation or view > to <user list>
▪ <user list> is:
• a user-id
• public, which allows all valid users the privilege granted
• A role (more on this later)
▪ Example:
• grant select on department to Amit, Satoshi
▪ Granting a privilege on a view does not imply granting any privileges on
the underlying relations.
▪ The grantor of the privilege must already hold the privilege on the
specified item (or be the database administrator).

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 Privileges in SQL

▪ select: allows read access to relation, or the ability to query using the
view
• Example: grant users U1, U2, and U3 select authorization on the
instructor relation:
grant select on instructor to U1, U2, U3
▪ insert: the ability to insert tuples
▪ update: the ability to update using the SQL update statement
▪ delete: the ability to delete tuples.
▪ all privileges: used as a short form for all the allowable privileges

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 Revoking Authorization in SQL

▪ The revoke statement is used to revoke authorization.

revoke <privilege list> on <relation or view> from <user list>
▪ Example:
revoke select on student from U1, U2, U3
▪ <privilege-list> may be all to revoke all privileges the revokee may hold.
▪ If <revokee-list> includes public, all users lose the privilege except those
granted it explicitly.
▪ If the same privilege was granted twice to the same user by different
grantees, the user may retain the privilege after the revocation.
▪ All privileges that depend on the privilege being revoked are also
revoked.

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 Roles

▪ A role is a way to distinguish among various users as far as what these

users can access/update in the database.
▪ To create a role we use:
create a role <name>
▪ Example:
• create role instructor
▪ Once a role is created we can assign “users” to the role using:
• grant <role> to <users>

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 Roles Example

▪ create role instructor;

▪ grant instructor to Amit;
▪ Privileges can be granted to roles:
• grant select on takes to instructor;
▪ Roles can be granted to users, as well as to other roles
• create role teaching_assistant
• grant teaching_assistant to instructor;
▪ Instructor inherits all privileges of teaching_assistant
▪ Chain of roles
• create role dean;
• grant instructor to dean;
• grant dean to Satoshi;

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 Authorization on Views

▪ create view geo_instructor as

(select *
from instructor
where dept_name = 'Geology');
▪ grant select on geo_instructor to geo_staff
▪ Suppose that a geo_staff member issues
• select *
from geo_instructor;
▪ What if
• geo_staff does not have permissions on instructor?
• Creator of view did not have some permissions on instructor?

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 Other Authorization Features

▪ references privilege to create foreign key

• grant reference (dept_name) on department to Mariano;
• Why is this required?
▪ transfer of privileges
• grant select on department to Amit with grant option;
• revoke select on department from Amit, Satoshi cascade;
• revoke select on department from Amit, Satoshi restrict;
• And more!

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 End of Chapter 4

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