Two important pieces of RDBMS architecture are the kernel, which is the software, and the data dictionary, which consists of the system-level data structures used by the kernel to manage the database.
You might think of an RDBMS as an operating system (or set of subsystems), designed specifically for controlling data access; its primary functions are storing, retrieving, and securing data. Like an operating system, Oracle7 manages and controls access to a given set of resources for concurrent database users. The subsystems of an RDBMS closely resemble those of a host operating system and tightly integrate with the host’s services for machine-level access to resources such as memory, CPU, devices, and file structures. An RDBMS such as Oracle7 maintains its own list of authorized users and their associated privileges; manages memory caches and paging; controls locking for concurrent resource usage; dispatches and schedules user requests; and manages space usage within its table space structures.
A fundamental difference between an RDBMS and other database and file systems is in the way that they access data. A RDBMS enables you to reference physical data in a more abstract, logical fashion, providing ease and flexibility in developing application code. Programs using an RDBMS access data through a database engine, creating independence from the actual data source and insulating applications from the details of the underlying physical data structures. Rather than accessing a customer number as bytes 1 through 10 of the customer record, an application simply refers to the attribute Customer Number. The RDBMS takes care of where the field is stored in the database. Consider the amount of programming modifications that you must make if you change a record structure in a file system-based application. For example, if you move the customer number from bytes 1 through 10 to bytes 11 through 20 to accommodate an additional field, all the programs that use the customer number would require modification. However, using an RDBMS, the application code would continue to reference the attribute by name rather than by record position, alleviating the need for any modifications.
This data independence is possible because of the RDBMS’s data dictionary. The data dictionary stores meta-data (data about data) for all the objects that reside in the database. Oracle7’s data dictionary is a set of tables and database objects that is stored in a special area of the database and maintained exclusively by the Oracle7 kernel. The information in the data dictionary validates the existence of the objects, provides access to them, and maps the actual physical storage location.
Not only does the RDBMS take care of locating data, it also determines an optimal access path to store or retrieve the data. Oracle7 uses sophisticated algorithms that enable you to retrieve information either for the best response for the first set of rows, or for total throughput of all rows to be retrieved.
Nonprocedural Data Access (SQL)
An RDBMS differentiates itself with its capability to process a set of data; other file systems and database models process data in a record-by-record fashion. You communicate with an RDBMS using Structured Query Language (SQL, pronounced sequel). SQL is a nonprocedural language that is designed specifically for data access operations on normalized relational database structures. The primary difference between SQL and other conventional programming languages is that SQL statements specify what data operations should be performed rather than how to perform them. For example, consider a procedure to give a salary increase to a particular department for each employee who had not received a raise within the past six months. The code segments illustrate the solution to the problem using both procedural and nonprocedural methods.
Consider a more complex application and the amount of programming that is alleviated by using SQL for data access. By reducing the amount of programming required for data access, the costs to develop and maintain the data access portions of an application are also reduced.
This chapter describes two aspects of a relational database management system: the relational database model and the database management system. The relational model defines relations, which are the underlying database structures; constraints, which are the rules that govern their relationships to one another; and the relational algebra operations that you can perform on relations. Relational database management systems work on sets of data and employ many of the concepts of basic set theory.
A full-featured management system for a relational database is a sophisticated, complex piece of software that functions very much like an operating system. One of the reasons that Oracle has been so successful and widely used is that it has been able to implement the same “logical” database operating system on a variety of host operating systems. User access to objects in the database is controlled by the RDBMS kernel and the meta-data stored in the data dictionary. Applications never access the data in the actual operating system data files directly; instead, all access is provided through the RDBMS.
