UNIVERSITY EXAMINATIONS: 2017/2018
EXAMINATION FOR DEGREE OF BACHELOR SCIENCE IN INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY/APPLIED COMPUTING
BIT 2104: DATABASE DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT
MODE: FULL TIME/PART TIME/DISTANCE LEARNING
ORDINARY EXAMINATIONS
DATE: JULY, 2018 DURATION: 2 HOURS
INSTRUCTIONS: Answer Question ONE and any other TWO questions
QUESTION ONE [30 MARKS]
a) Define index as used in databases and give one limitation of indexes.
2 Marks
b) Define the term view and explain THREE uses of database views.
3 Marks
c) Discuss any FOUR components of a database management system (DBMS).
8 Marks
d) Compare and contrast between hierarchical and network database models.
4 Marks
e) State and explain THREE ways of classifying relationships in a database
3 Marks
f) Discuss any FOUR concurrency control problems typical in two or more concurrently executing
transactions.
4 Marks
g) Describe THREE advantages of object oriented database.
3 Marks
h) Briefly explain any three advantages of a stored procedure.
3 Marks
QUESTION TWO [20 MARKS]
a) You are given the following two tables from a student management. Study the tables carefully and
write appropriate SQL statements to answer the questions that follow:
i. Display all students who take law or business.
2 Marks
ii. Display students who are not pursuing medicine
2 Marks
iii. Display the average fee paid in arts, law and medicine
2 Marks
iv. Display the total fee paid by the students grouped by programmes.
3 Marks
v. Insert a new column in programmes table named Duration whose data type is varchar and the
length is 100.
3 Marks
b) Normalize the following database to third normal form and draw the logical data model.
8 Marks
QUESTION THREE [20 MARKS]
Database concurrency controls ensure that transactions occur in an ordered fashion. The main function of
these controls is to protect transactions issued by different users and/or applications from the effects of
each other. They must preserve the four characteristics of database transactions: atomicity, isolation,
consistency and durability. In this regard:
a) State and explain any four problems that may occur if concurrent transactions with interleaving
operations are allowed in an uncontrolled manner.
8 Marks
b) Discuss any four ways that can be used to control the concurrency control problems you
explained in (a)
8 Marks
c) State and explain four major goals of concurrency control techniques discussed in (b).
4 Marks
QUESTION FOUR [20 MARKS]
A database program is the heart of a business information system and provides file creation, data entry,
update, query and reporting functions. Database programming therefore can be defined as the process of
developing a database application to manage data and information structured as fields, records and files.
In this respect:
a) State and discuss any six activities involved in database programming.
6 Marks
b) State and explain four database connection technologies.
8 Marks
c) Discuss any four best practices that must be adhered to by programmers in database programming.
4 Marks
d) Differentiate between a console and graphical user interface applications.
2 Marks
QUESTION FIVE [20 MARKS]
a) One of the key responsibilities of a database administrator (DBA) is database tuning. Database
tuning can be a daunting task, particularly when working with large-scale data where even the most
minor change can have a dramatic (positive or negative) impact on performance. In this respect:
i. Discuss the activities involved in database tuning
4 Marks
ii. Explain any four factors that may motivate the database administrator to perform
database tuning.
8 Marks
b) A distributed database is a single logical database that is spread physically across computers in
multiple locations that are connected by a data communications network:
i. Discuss four business conditions that encourage the use of distributed databases.
4 Marks
ii. Distinguish between heterogeneous and homogenous distributed database environments.
c) Differentiate between relational algebra and SQL.
2 Marks
d) Describe any four types of backups that can be used in a database
2 Marks
e) Differentiate between casual end users and parametric end users of a database application.
2 Marks
