INSY 3304 Exam 1

A table is in BCNF if every determinant in the table is a foreign key.

False

A weak relationship exists if the primary key of the related entity contains at least one primary key component of the parent entity.

False

Business rules apply to businesses and government groups, but not to other types of organizations such as religious groups or research labs.

False

Character data can contain any character or symbol intended for mathematical manipulation.

False

Corporations use only structured data.

False

Database designers determine the data and information that yield the required understanding of the entire business.

False

Database programming languages receive all application requests and translate them into the complex operations required to a fulfill those requests.

False

In specialization hierarchies with multiple levels of supertype and subtypes, a lower-level subtype can inherit only a few of the attributes and relationships from its upper-level supertypes.

False

Relationships between entities always operate in one directions.

False

The external model is the representation of the database as "seen" by the DBMS

False

The conceptual model can handle ______ relationships and multivalued attributes.

M:N

________, a.k.a. RESTRICT, yields values for all rows found in a table that satisfy a given condition.

SELECT

A table is in fourth normal form if it is in third normal form and has no independent multivalued dependencies.

True

M:N relationships are not appropriate in a relational model.

True

The completeness constraint can be partial or total.

True

A partial completeness constraint is represented by a ___________________.

a single horizonal line under a circle.

A table that displays data redundancies yields

anomalies

BCNF can be violated only if the table contains more than one _____ key.

candidate

An atomic attribute

cannot be further subdivided

A _________ is the set of possible values for a given attribute.

domain

A noun in a business rules translates to an ______ in the data model.

entity

The default comparison condition for the subtype discriminator attribute is the ____ comparison.

equality

A ____ is a collection of related records.

file

In organizations that generate large number of transactions, ________ are often a top priority in database designs.

high processing speeds

A(n) ___________ only returns matched records from the tables that are being joined.

inner join

A ________ is bidirectional.

relationship

The Crow's foot symbol with two vertical parallel lines indicates ________ cardinality.

(1,1)

In the entity relationship diagram (ERD), cardinality is indicated using the ________ notation, where max is the maximum number of associated entities and min represents the minimum number of associated entities.

(min, max)

At the implementation level, the supertype and its subtype(s) depicted in a specialization hierarchy maintain a(n) __ relationship.

1:1

From a structural point of view, 2NF is better than ____.

1NF

For most business transactional databases, we should normalize relations into ____.

3NF

To generate a surrogate key, Microsoft Access uses a(n) ____ data type.

AutoNumber

__________ expresses the minimum and maximum number of entity occurrences associated with one occurrence of the related entity.

Cardinality

Of the following normal forms, _____ is mostly of theoretical interest.

DKNF

____________ databases reflect the ever-growing demand for greater scope and depth in the data on which decision support systems increasingly rely.

Data warehouse

An operational database is sometimes referred to as an enterprise database.

False

Atomic attribute are attributes that can be further subdivided.

False

Attributes should clearly define participation, connectivity, and document cardinality.

False

Data is the results of processing raw facts to reveal its meaning.

False

Generalization is based on grouping unique characteristics and relationships of the subtypes.

False

Implementing nonoverlapping subtypes requires the use of one discriminator attribute for each subtype

False

In an SQL-based relational database, each table is dependent on every other table.

False

The function of the primary key is to describe an entity.

False

_________ is the bottom-up process of identifying a higher-level, more generic entity supertype from lower-level entity subtypes.

Generalization

Composite primary keys are particularly useful as identifiers of composite entities, where each primary key combination is allowed only once in the ____ relationship.

M:N

_________ provide a description of the data characteristics and the set of relationships that link the data found within the database.

Metadata

___________ are especially useful when you are trying to determine what values in related tables cause referential integrity problems.

Outer joins

___________ relates to the activities that make the database execute transactions more efficiently in terms of storage and access speed.

Performance tuning

__________ data refer to data whose values change over time and for which one must keep a history of the data changes.

Time-variant

A data warehouse can store data derived from many sources.

True

An entity is the entity relationship model corresponds to a table in the relational environment.

True

As rare as 1:1 relationships should be, certain conditions absolutely require their use.

True

At the implementation level, the supertype and its subtype(s) depicted in the specialization hierarchy maintain a 1:1 relationship.

True

Data processing can be as simple as organization data to reveal patterns.

True

Depending on the sophistication of the application development software, nulls can create problems when functions such as COUNT, AVERAGE, and SUM are used.

True

Each row in the relational table is known as an entity instance or entity occurrence in the ER model.

True

In order to meet performance requirements, portions of the database design may need to be occasionally denormalized.

True

In the entity relationship model, a table row corresponds to an entity instance.

True

Repeating groups must be eliminated by making sure that each row defines a single entity.

True

Some designs use redundant relationships as a way to simplify the design.

True

Specialization is the top-down process of identifying lower-level, more specific entity subtypes from a higher-level entity supertype.

True

The DIVIDE operation uses one single-column table (e.g., column "a") as the divisor and one two-column table (e.g., columns "a" and "b") as the dividend

True

The combination of normalization and ER modeling yields a useful ERD, whose entities may now be translated into appropriate relationship structures.

True

The objective of normalization is to ensure that each table conforms to the concept of well-formed relations.

True

The relationships depicted within the specialization hierarchy are sometimes described in terms of "is-a" relationships.

True

Within the database environment, a data model represents data structures with the purpose of supporting a specific problem domain.

True

________ data exist in a format that does not lend itself to processing that yields information.

Unstructured

An entity cluster is formed by combining multiple interrelated entities into ____.

a single abstract entity object

An _________ is the equivalent of a field in a file system.

attribute

The database structure in a DBMS is stores as a

collection of files.

The first step in building an entity-relationship diagram (ERD) is

creating a detailed narrative of the organization's descriptions of operations

An _______ database is used by an organization and supports many users across many departments.

enterprise

A _______ is anything about which data are to be collected and stored.

entity

The CUSTOMER table's primary key is CUS_CODE. The CUSTOMER primary key column had no null entries, and all entries are unique. This is an example of ______ integrity.

entity

A(n) _______ is an orderly arrangement used to logically access rows in a table.

indext

In the relational model, ____ are important because they are used to ensure that each row in a table is uniquely identifiable.

keys

When designing a database, you should

make sure that entities are in normal form before table structures are created

A specialization hierarchy can have ____ level(s) of supertype/subtype relationships

many

A workgroup database is a ________ database.

multiuser

A(n) _________ join links tables by selecting only the rows with common values in their common attribute(s).

natural

When selecting a foreign key placement for a 1:1 relationship, place the PK of the entity on the mandatory side in the entity on the optional side as a FK, and make the FK mandatory when

one side is mandatory and the other side is optional.

Dependencies based on only a part of a composite primary key are known as ____ dependencies.

partial

If a table has multiple candidate keys and one of those candidate keys is a composite key, the table can have ____ based on this composite candidate key, even when the primary key chosen is a single attribute.

partial dependencies

If an employee within an EMPLOYEE entity has a relationship with itself, that relationship is known as a _____ relationship.

recursive

A ______________ derives its name from the fact that a collection of multiple entries of the same type can exist for any single key attribute occurrence.

repeating group

The __________ characteristic of a primary key states that the selected primary key must not be composted of any attribute(s) that might be considered a violation.

security-compliant

A desktop database is a ________ database.

single-user

When two or more tables share the same number of columns, and when their corresponding columns share the same or compatible domains, they are said to be _________

union-compatiable

When you define a table's primary key, the DBMS automatically creates a(n) __________ index on the primary key column(s) you declared.

unique

The __________ characteristic of a primary key states that the primary key must uniquely identify each entity instance, must be able to guarantee unique values, and must not contain nulls.

unique values