Deck 13: Designing Databases

Question 1

Which is an advantage of the database approach?

A) All of the data are stored in one place.
B) Data are more vulnerable to catastrophes.
C) It comes about when attempting to keep the cost of storing the data to a reasonable amount.
D) It allows users their own view of the data.

Answer 1

D

Question 2

Which is not related to conventional files?

A) Files will remain a practical way to store data for some applications.
B) A file can be designed and built quite rapidly.
C) Files are a central source of data meant to be shared by many users for a variety of applications.
D) The concerns for data availability and security are minimized.

Answer 2

C

Question 3

What is a collection of data items that have something in common with the entity?

A) a record
B) an attribute
C) a data item
D) an entity

Answer 3

A

Question 4

Which order is correct for the analyst to normalize a data structure?
I) Remove all repeating groups and identify the primary key.
II) Remove any transitive dependencies.
III) All partial dependencies are removed and placed in another relation.

A) III - II - I
B) I - II - III
C) III - I - II
D) II - I - III
E) I - III - II

Question 5

Which is incorrect about reality, data, and metadata?

A) Within the realm of reality, there are entities and attributes.
B) There are record occurrences within the realm of actual data.
C) Within the realm of metadata, there are record definitions and data item definitions.
D) There are data item occurrences within the realm of files.

Question 6

Which of the following is true when implementing a one-to-many relationship?

A) The file on the one end has a foreign key consisting of the primary key of the many end.
B) The file on the one end has a concatenated key of its primary key and the many end key.
C) The file on the many end has a foreign key consisting of the primary key on the one end.
D) The file on the many end has a concatenated key of its primary key and the one end key.

Question 7

What can be constructed by choosing two or more data items and combining them?

A) a primary key
B) an attribute
C) a secondary key
D) an entity
E) a concatenated key

Question 8

Which word is used interchangeably with the term data item?

A) attribute
B) record
C) key
D) tuple

Question 9

What type of entity is used to represent repeating groups?

A) fundamental entity
B) associative entity
C) attributive entity
D) iterative entity

Question 10

Which type of file contains all the attributes for an entity as well as a primary key and several secondary keys?

A) a transaction file
B) a relational file
C) a master file
D) a keyed index file

Question 11

Which doesn't DBMS allow?

A) creation of database
B) classification of database
C) modification of database
D) updating the database
E) retrieval of data

Question 12

Which is not an effectiveness objective of the database?

A) ensuring that data can be shared among users for a variety of applications
B) ensuring all data required for current and future applications will be readily available
C) allowing the database to evolve and the needs of the users to grow
D) allowing users to construct their personal view of the data without concern for the way the data are physically stored
E) maintaining data that are both accurate and inconsistent

Question 13

The integrity constraint that ensures that every many record in a one-to-many relationship has a matching record in the one file is called:

A) entity integrity.
B) referential integrity.
C) domain integrity.
D) ordinal integrity.
E) cardinal integrity.

Question 14

Which file is used when it is necessary to run a program, but no printer is available?

A) a master file
B) a table file
C) a report file
D) a work file
E) a transaction file

Question 15

What is defined as any data item in a record that is used to identify the record?

A) an attribute
B) a key
C) a primary key
D) an entity

Question 16

When an entity has a relationship connecting it to itself, it is called a(n):

A) unitary relationship.
B) inverse relationship.
C) extensible join.
D) self-join.

Question 17

Transaction files:

A) are large files, containing all main information about an entity.
B) are used to update master files and produce reports.
C) cannot contain several record types.
D) are always stored using indexed-sequential organization.

Question 18

Which of the following is not one of the four anomalies that may occur when creating database tables?

A) data redundancy
B) update anomaly
C) primary anomaly
D) insert anomaly
E) deletion anomaly

Question 19

Each master table should have programs to:

A) add new records.
B) update master file records.
C) delete master file records.
D) read and process records from the master file.
E) All of the above.

Question 20

The symbol used to represent additional attributes of another entity that may not be present on every record of the first entity is called an:

A) associative entity.
B) attributive entity.
C) entity subtype.
D) self-join.
E) ordinal entity.

Question 21

A ________ is a central source of data meant to be shared by many users for a variety of applications.

A) database
B) data dictionary
C) data warehouse
D) data model

Question 22

An attribute is some characteristic of a(n):

A) entity.
B) relationship.
C) reality.
D) record definition.

Question 23

The information that describes data is referred to as :

A) metadata.
B) gammadata.
C) moredata.
D) alphadata.

Question 24

Within the realm of metadata, there are record definitions and data item definitions.

Question 25

The sharing of the data means that data need to be stored only once.

Question 26

Any object or event about which someone chooses to collect data is an attribute.

Question 27

A process of applying algorithms for extracting patterns from data stored in data warehouses that are typically not apparent to human decision makers is called:

A) data mining.
B) data warehousing.
C) data denormalization.
D) databasing.

Question 28

________ is the transformation of complex user views and data stores to a set of smaller, stable
Data structures.

A) Categorization
B) Capitalization
C) Alphabetization
D) Normalization

Question 29

An entity subtype is an entity that is used to represent a many-to-many relationship.

Question 30

A well-designed ________ can be more flexible than separate files.

A) data dictionary
B) data warehouse
C) data model
D) database

Question 31

A(n) ________ represents additional attributes of an entity that may not be present on every record of the entity.

A) entity subtype
B) entity type
C) primary entity
D) secondary entity

Question 32

An alternative to building conventional files is building a:

A) data dictionary.
B) data warehouse.
C) database.
D) data model.

Question 33

The process of taking a logical data model and transforming it into a physical model that is efficient for the most often used tasks is called:

A) referential integrity.
B) normalization.
C) denormalization.
D) data warehousing.
E) online analytic processing.

Question 34

Within the realm of ________, there are entities and attributes.

A) reality
B) metadata
C) relationships
D) databases

Question 35

A ________ represents more than one of the other entity.

A) crow's foot
B) single line
C) double line
D) dotted line

Question 36

Which order is correct in the retrieval and presentation of data?
I) Select rows from the relation.
II) Derive new attributes.
III) Join two relations together.
IV) Present data.
V) Choose a relation from the database.
VI) Project columns from the relation.
VII) Calculate totals and performance measures.
VIII. Index or sort rows.

A) V - III - II - I - VIII - IV - VI - VII
B) V - III - VI - I - II - VIII - VII - IV
C) III - V - VI - I - II - VIII - VII - IV
D) V - III - II - I - VI - IV - VII - VIII
E) III - V - II - I - VI - VII - VIII - IV

Question 37

Which of the following is not a difference between a data warehouse and a traditional database?

A) Data in a data warehouse are organized around major subjects rather than transactions.
B) Data in a data warehouse cover a much longer time frame that transaction data.
C) Data in a data warehouse are organized for rapid updating.
D) Data in a data warehouse are organized for fast queries.
E) Data in a data warehouse usually include data from outside sources.

Question 38

________ are associations between entities.

A) Relationships
B) Subtypes
C) Types
D) Entities

Question 39

________ is a process to eliminate repeating groups found in variable-length records.

A) Alpha row selection
B) First row selection
C) Normalization
D) Denormalization

Question 40

Data have a better chance of being available in a conventional file system than in a database.

Question 41

A many-to-many relationship may be implemented using three tables.

Question 42

REMOVE is the logical ordering of rows in a relation according to some key.

Question 43

An associative entity is used for repeating groups.

Question 44

An update anomaly occurs when the same data are stored in more than one place in the database.

Question 45

Presentation of the data abstracted from the database must take one of two forms: graphs and tabular forms.

Question 46

An object identifier is a unique key for each record in the database, not just in a table.

Question 47

A deletion anomaly occurs when the entire primary key is not known and the database cannot delete a record.

Question 48

Each distinct data entity may be stored on several master database tables.

Question 49

Metadata describes the name given and the length assigned each record.

Question 50

Referential integrity means that all foreign keys in the many table must have a matching record in the parent table.

Question 51

Many data items can be packed into a field; the field can be read and converted to a number of data items.

Question 52

Transaction files contain information necessary to produce reports but are not able to update master files.

Question 53

Master files are large and contain all the information about an entity.

Question 54

Secondary keys can be used to select a group of records that belong to a set.

Question 55

Table files are used to update master files.

Question 56

Data mining is used to verify or validate patterns that humans are able to make themselves.

Question 57

One of the primary advantages of the relational structure is that ad hoc queries are efficiently handled.

Question 58

A one-to-many relationship may be implemented using a drop-down list.

Question 59

An object identifier (OID) is a unique key for each record in the database, not just in a table.

Question 60

A primary key is one of the data items in a record that uniquely identifies a record.

Question 61

Give two examples of primary keys that can be used to identify a person or thing.

Question 62

An update anomaly occurs when the entire primary key is not known and the database cannot insert a new record.

Question 63

A master file contains information used to update master files and produce reports.

Question 64

Entity integrity constraints are rules that govern the composition of primary keys.

Question 65

What is the difference between a primary key and a secondary key?

Question 66

Master files contain all the information about a data entity.

Question 67

In database literature, the views are referred to as schema.

Question 68

Each separate data entity should create its own master database table.

Question 69

In relational structures, a file is called a relation, a record is usually referred to as a tuple, and the attribute value set is called a domain.

Question 70

List and describe the four anomalies that may occur when creating database tables.

Question 71

What is denormalization?

Question 72

A many-to-many relationship may be implemented using three tables.

Question 73

An insert anomaly results when a change to one attribute value either causes the database to contain inconsistent data or causes multiple records to need changing.

Question 74

What is normalization?

Question 75

Referential integrity governs the nature of records in a one-to-many relationship.