Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Review Questions
1. What is a DBA? Why is this position necessary?
2. What are the DBA's responsibilities regarding access privileges?
3. What are the DBA's responsibilities regarding security?
4. What is a disaster recovery plan?
5. What are data archives? What purpose do they serve? What is the relationship between a database and its
data archives?
6. Name five categories that you usually find on a DBMS evaluation and selection checklist.
7. What is a shared lock? What is an exclusive lock?
8. What is a LAN?
9. What is context-sensitive help?
10. What is an intranet?
11. After a DBMS has been selected, what is the DBA's role in DBMS maintenance?
12. What are the DBA's responsibilities with regard to the data dictionary?
13. Who trains computer users in an organization? What is the DBA's role in this training?
14. What are the DBA's database design responsibilities?
15. What is the difference between production and test systems?
16. What is meant by “tuning a design?”
17. How can splitting a table improve performance?
18. What is denormalization?
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Premiere Products Exercises
For the following exercises, you do not use the Premiere Products database.
1. The DBA asks for your help in planning the data archive for the following Premiere Products database:
Rep (RepNum, LastName, FirstName, Street, City, State,
Zip, Commission, Rate)
Customer (CustomerNum, CustomerName, Street, City,
State, Zip, Balance, CreditLimit, RepNum)
Orders (OrderNum, OrderDate, CustomerNum)
OrderLine (OrderNum, PartNum, NumOrdered, QuotedPrice)
Part (PartNum, Description, OnHand, Class, Warehouse, Price)
Determine which data from the database to archive; that is, for each table, specify whether data needs to be
archived. If it does, specify which data, when it should be archived, and whether it should be archived with data
from another table.
2. The DBA denormalized some of the data in the Premiere Products database to improve performance, and one
of the resulting tables is the following:
Customer (CustomerNum, CustomerName, Street, City,
State, Zip, Balance, CreditLimit, RepNum, RepName)
Whichfieldorfieldscausethetabletonolongerbeinthird normal form? In which normal form is the denormalized
table?
3. Does your school have a formal disaster recovery plan? If it does, describe the general steps in the plan. If it
does not, describe the informal steps that would be taken if a disaster occurred.
