UNIVERSITY OF LAGOS

SCHOOL OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCES
MIT DEGREE EXAMINATIONS APRIL 2013
FIRST SEMESTER 2012/2013 SESSION
MIT802: INTRODUCTION TO DATABASE
Instruction: Answer any four Questions Time Allowed: 2 hour 30 minutes

1(a) Using an illustrative example discuss the characteristic features of a file

management system?
(b) Discuss four significant limitations of a file management approach?
(c) Consider the employee table below and write SQL statement to:
(i) Show all staff earning salary not below N40,000 and those whose benefits are
below N12,000
(ii) Show first name and surname appearing as ‘full name’, of all employees that
were employed after 1975.
(i) Show each column in the employee table in alphabetical order by position,
then by salary.
Employee First Surname Date of Salary Benefits Position
Id – No. Name Employment
100 Manny Emeka 23/10/72 75,000 15,000 Sales Mgr
105 Racheal Smith 21/11/70 60,000 12,000 Sales Clerk
244 Emily Okanlawon 23/6/85 50,000 12,000 HR Mgr
400 Tina Nwoke 12/12/98 30,000 7,500 IT Mgr
441 Demola Akinlabi 23/10/99 28,000 7,500 Accountant
300 Tunde Abolore 19/10/89 45,000 10,000 Front Desk
152 Afolabi Adegoke 22/10/79 60,000 12,500 Store Keeper
335 Olawale James 29/12/90 40,000 10,000 IT Officer
215 Emmanuel Akpan 9/1/85 60,000 12,500 Admin Mgr

2(a). Use illustrative example(s) to discuss the following concepts

(i) Functional dependency (FD)
(ii) Boyce-Codd Normal form (BCNF)
(iii) Foreign key
(b). What are the major features of a database approach to data management?
(c). Examine the following ORDERS and CUSTOMERS tables

ORDERS
Id – No. Ord-date Cust-id Ord-total
100 1/12/10 15 10,000
101 14/2/10 40 8,000
102 15/2/10 34 5,000
103 15/2/10 28 10,000
104 15/2/10 15 7,700
105 15/2/10 27 7,500
107 17/2/10 39 9,200
CUSTOMERS
Cust-Id Cust–name Cust–City
15 Jonathan G. Akwa-Ibom
22 Adesola P Lagos
27 Adetoun M. Ogun
28 Mohammed I. Kano
34 Nkem O. Abia
39 Raji Rasaki Lagos

Write SQL statement to retrieve the order ID, customer ID, and order total for the orders
that are placed on the same day that Adetoun placed his orders.
3(a) Discuss the ANSI/SPAC database architecture.
(b) What are the functions of a DMBS?

Shipment Relation

Shipment Origin Destination Distance

409 Lagos Kano 900km
618 Enugu Jos 750km
723 Ibadan Marduguri 1,000km
824 Kano P/Harcourt 800km
629 Lagos Kano 900km
(c) Table above shows a portion of a shipment for a large manufacturing company. Each
shipment (identified by shipment #) uniquely identities the shipment origin,
Destination and Distance. The shipment Origin and Destination pair also uniquely
identifies the Distance.
(i) Determine the FDs in this relation
(ii) In what normal form is in the relation? Why?
(iii) Convert the relation to 3NF if necessary.
4(a) Using an illustrative example discuss the concept of ‘Closure’ of FDs
(b) State Armstrong’s Axioms and using the Axioms show the correctness of the
following
(i) If A -> B and C -> D then AC -> BD
(ii) If A -> B, BC -> D and B-> C then B-> D
(c) Discuss the characteristic features of a distributed database system.
5(a) In the context of a multi-user database explain the following concept.
(i) Concurrent execution of transactions
(ii) Serializable schedule
(iii) Conflict serializable schedule
(b) Discuss two concurrency control methods. Which one is more effective? Discuss.
6(a) What is a ‘data model’?
(b) Differentiate between the relational and the hierarchical data models
(c) With specific reference to your group assignment discuss how you went about the
design of the conceptual schema.