The National University of

Lesotho

Department of Mathematics and Computer

Science
Distributed Database Systems.

C S 4 4 3 0
2016/17, Semester B.
A s s i g n m e n t 0 1 :
Relational and Non-Relational Databases

Due: February 21th 2017.

Compiled & submitted by:

Thekiso, J. T

RELATIONAL DATABASE
A relational database is a collection of data items organized as a set of formally-described
tables from which data can be accessed or reassembled in many different ways without
having to reorganize the database tables. The relational database was invented by E. F.
Codd at IBM in 1970.
A relational database is a set of tables containing data fitted into predefined categories.
Each table (which is sometimes called a relation) contains one or more data categories in
columns. Each row contains a unique instance of data for the categories defined by the
columns. For example, a typical business order entry database would include a table that
described a customer with columns for name, address, phone number, and so forth.
Another table would describe an order: product, customer, date, sales price, and so forth.
A user of the database could obtain a view of the database that fitted the user's needs. For
example, a branch office manager might like a view or report on all customers that had
bought products after a certain date. A financial services manager in the same company
could, from the same tables, obtain a report on accounts that needed to be paid.
DBMSs are generally classified according to how data is represented in the conceptual
schema (i.e. the conceptual data model). There are three main approaches:
 Relational
Network
hierarchical
Relational database technology is attractive both for its simplicity and for the fact that it
has a sound theoretical basis in mathematical relational theory. In a relational database,
data is viewed through two dimensional structures known as tables or relations. When
describing a DBMS as relational, we mean that it supports relations at the conceptual and
external levels; at the internal level there are no restrictions. Each table has a fixed
number of columns called attributes, and a variable number of rows called tuples.
Hierarchical and network DBMSs
Hierarchical and network systems were developed and commercialized almost a decade
before relational systems, and so their origins in traditional file processing systems are
naturally more evident. Unlike relational DBMSs which support set-oriented processing,
both hierarchical and network DBMSs are record-oriented, that is they process one record
at a time. Furthermore, while relationships in relational DBMSs are represented solely by
attributes drawn from a common domain, relationships in hierarchical and network
systems are explicitly and visibly (to the user) implemented by pointers. Hence while
relational systems adopt a declarative approach to database processing, hierarchical and
network systems adopt a navigational approach. This not only makes the actual writing of
programs more difficult but also requires the user to keep track of the current position in
the database. Although relational systems are
rapidly replacing all other DBMSs, it can be argued that hierarchical and network
systems offer considerable advantages in performance. However, as relational DBMSs
mature and disks and CPUs get faster, these disadvantages are being overcome, even for
large databases.

Advantages of using relational database:

1. Ease of use: The revision of any information as tables consisting of rows and columns
is much easier to understand.

2. Flexibility: Different tables from which information has to be linked and extracted can
be easily manipulated by operators such as project and join to give information in the
form in which it is desired.

3. Precision: The usage of relational algebra and relational calculus in the manipulation of
he relations between the tables ensures that there is no ambiguity, which may otherwise
arise in establishing the linkages in a complicated network type database.

4. Security: Security control and authorization can also be implemented more easily by
moving sensitive attributes in a given table into a separate relation with its own
authorization controls. If authorization requirement permits, a particular attribute could
be joined back with others to enable full information retrieval.

5. Data Independence: Data independence is achieved more easily with normalization

structure used in a relational database than in the more complicated tree or network
structure.

6. Data Manipulation Language: The possibility of responding to query by means of a

language based on relational algebra and relational calculus e.g SQL is easy in the
relational database approach. For data organized in other structure the query language
either becomes complex or extremely limited in its capabilities.

Disadvantages of using relational database :

1. Performance: A major constraint and therefore disadvantage in the use of relational

database system is machine performance. If the number of tables between which
relationships to be established are large and the tables themselves effect the performance
in responding to the sql queries.

2. Physical Storage Consumption: With an interactive system, for example an operation

like join would depend upon the physical storage also. It is, therefore common in
relational databases to tune the databases and in such a case the physical data layout
would be chosen so as to give good performance in the most frequently run operations. It
therefore would naturally result in the fact that the lays frequently run operations would
tend to become even more shared.

3. Slow extraction of meaning from data: if the data is naturally organized in a

hierarchical manner and stored as such, the hierarchical approach may give quick
meaning for that data.

NON-RELATIONAL DATABASES
Non-relational database is any database that does not follow the relational model
provided by traditional relational database management system. These categories
of databases are also referred as NoSQL databases.
Provide mechanism for storage and retrieval of data which is modeled in means
other than tabular relations used in relational databases.
Such databases have existed since the late 1960s, but did not obtain a NoSQL
moniker until a surge of popularity in the early 21st century, trigged by the needs
of Web 2.0 companies such as Facebook, Google and Amazon.com.
They have grown in popularity over the years because they were designed to
overcome limitations of relational databases in dealing with big data demands (i.e
data that is growing and moving too fast and it is too diverse in structure for
conversional technologies to handle).
These databases are typically more scalable and flexible than their relational
counterparts. And they have evolved from relational technology in these ways:
Data models: They offer flexible schema design that makes it easier to
update the database to handle changing application requirements unlike
relational databases that require predefined schema.
 Data structure: They are designed to handle unstructured data that doesnt
fit neatly into rows and columns. This matters as most of the data today is
unstructured.
Scaling: The system can be scaled horizontally by taking advantage of
cheap, commodity servers.
Development model: non-relational databases are typically open source
which means you dont have to pay any licensing fees upfront.
MongoDB is an example of most widely used non-relational database.
MongoDB represent data in collections of JSON documents.
The Mongo import utility JSON, CSV and TSV file formats.
Mongo query targets of data are technically represented as
BSON( binary JASON).
Further illustration of Data models:
Key-value stores
Key-value data stores sometimes considered to be the simplest form of data base. They
are usually schema-less. The data is stored in a form of a pair key->value, so key-value
data model resembles structure similar to strings, hashes, lists, sets sorted sets data
structure (also known as a map or dictionary). Keys are used as indexes to fetch the data
(value) and this makes those data stores much more efficient for data retrieval than
classical RDBMS. This is incredibly fast and can scale to large size. The key-value
model can be extended to an ordered model that maintains keys in lexicographic order.
Name of databases
Cassandra, Riak, Bigtale, Redis, memcahed
Document-based stores
They save data without it being structured in schema, wit buckets of key-value pairs
inside a self-contained object.In general these databases store their data in the form of
documents in which key is used as an ID of the document and the value is the document
itself, which can be retrieved by ID. Various formats can be used as a metadata for
document oriented DBs: XML, JSON and some others.
In contrast with the traditional RDBMS, where every row follows the schema, in
document-oriented DBs each document may have a different structure. And usually
document oriented stores provide additional indexing based on document contents. Thats
one of the main enhancements of document stores over the more basic key-value store
model. Both provide querying mechanism based on the primary key, but in document
store model one usually able to query data also by the value (document) contents.
Similarly to KV-stores, this type of DB systems is less efficient when application requires
multiple-key transactions.
Name of databases
CouchDB, MongoDB, OrientDB, SimpleDB, Terrastore
Graph Databases
They store data in flexible graph model that contains a node for each object. Basically it
means that data is stored in a form of nodes (vertices), while relations between data are
presented as edges that interconnect the vertices. These data stores considered to be
NoSQL data bases, because these systems dont offer SQL support and the data model is
not similar to relational. Nevertheless many of the Graph data bases, such as Neo4j , are
fully ACID-compliant.its more efficient for storing interconnected data and handling
relational querying. Thus naturally they are more suitable for dependency analysis
problem solving and some of the social networking scenarios.
Name of databases
AllegroGraph,DEX, Neo4j, FlockDB, Sones GraphDB
Column family stores
The term Column family means a pair that consists of key and value, where the key is
mapped to a value that is a set of columns. In analogy with relational databases, a column
family can be considered as a "table", while each key-value pair represent a "row".
However using this analogy we may illustrate one of the main differences between
traditional RDBMS model and Colum-family model, which is the fact that the same
table (column family) can contain different columns and different number of columns,
while the traditional relational model is absolutely strict about this. There is also a
similarity to the most basic key-value model, since the row key functions as a key,
while the set of columns resembles the value. Due to the data model specifics Column-
families usually do not handle complex relational logic. Hence as in case of the basic
Key-value stores, if complex relational querying functionality is required, then it has to
be implemented in the client side.
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