INFS2200/INFS7903 Relational Database Systems Course Review

Vocabulary flashcards covering key concepts and terminology from the INFS2200/INFS7903 course on Relational Database Systems.

RDBMS

Relational Database Management System, a system for managing structured data.

ACID properties

Conditions that ensure database transactions are processed reliably: Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability.

Schema

The organization of data as a blueprint of how the database is constructed.

Data Redundancy

The unnecessary duplication of data within a database.

Functional Dependency

A relationship that exists when one attribute uniquely determines another attribute.

Indexing

A data structure technique that improves the speed of data retrieval operations.

SQL Views

Virtual tables derived from one or more tables, providing a way to simplify complex queries.

Transaction Management

The process of managing a sequence of operations to ensure database integrity.

Concurrency Control

The management of simultaneous operations on a database without conflicting.

Deadlock

A situation in which two or more transactions are unable to proceed because each is waiting for the other to release a resource.

Query Execution Plan (QEP)

The sequence of operations the database management system follows to execute a query, optimized for performance.

Cache Flushing

The process of writing cached data back to the hard disk to ensure data integrity.

Checkpoint

A saved state of the database to facilitate recovery in case of a failure.

Write-Ahead Logging (WAL)

A logging technique to ensure data integrity by recording changes before they are committed to the database.

Primary Index

A type of index that maintains the order of stored records based on primary key values.

B+-Tree

A balanced tree data structure that maintains sorted data and allows searches, sequential access, insertions, and deletions in logarithmic time.