Database Management System: Assignment 5

Total Marks : 20

August 14, 2023

Question 1
Identify the incorrect statement(s) about the 3-tier application architecture from the following.
Marks: 2 MCQ

a) The Controller Layer acts as the middle layer between the front and the database.

b) The Presentation Layer acts as the user interface between users and the database.

c) The Business Logic Layer acts as the middle layer between the front-end and the database.

d) The Data Access Layer acts as the backend of the application.

Answer: a)
Explanation: 3-tier Application Architecture consists of 3 sub-layers namely, Presentation
Layer, Business Logic Layer, and Data Access Layer.
Frontend or Presentation Layer: user interface
- Forms, graphical user interfaces
- Many interfaces are Web-based or Mobile App
Middle Layer or Application / Business Logic Layer
- Functionality of the Application – links front and backend
Backend or Data Access Layer
- Persistent data, large in volume, needs efficient access
Refer to Module 22 slide 6
Hence, option a) is incorrect.

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Question 2
Caching is used to improve web server performance. Which of the following sentences is not
true about caching?
Marks: 2 MCQ

a) Caching is used on the server side for JDBC connection pooling.

b) Caching is used to increase the amount of data that needs to be sent over the network.

c) Web proxy caching is used to store copies of frequently accessed Web objects.

d) Caching is used on the server side for generated HTML.

Answer: b)
Explanation: Caching techniques are used to reduce the cost of serving pages by exploiting
commonalities between requests
At the server site:
- Caching of JDBC connections between servlet requests
– a.k.a. connection pooling
Caching results of database queries
– Cached results must be updated if the underlying database changes
Caching of generated HTML
- At the client’s network
- Caching of pages by Web proxy
Refer to Module 22 slide 16
Hence, option b) is false.

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Question 3
A Redundant Arrays of Independent Disk (RAID) system has 8 disks and it uses block
level striping to improve reliability. If we have to store a 16 KB file in it and the size of a
disk block is 512 bytes. In which disk, the last file block will be stored?
Marks: 2 MCQ

a) Disk 8

b) Disk 7

c) Disk 1

d) Disk 0

Answer: a)
Explanation: In Block-level striping with n disks, block i of a file goes to disk (i % n)
+ 1, so that requests for different blocks can run in parallel if the blocks reside on different
disks.
In the above system no of disk = 8
Size of the file = 16 KB = 16 x 210 bytes
One block size = 512 bytes = 29
No of blocks required = 214 ÷ 29 = 25 = 32
File blocks are numbered 0, 1, 2, ..., 31.
So, the last block will be 31.
Required block = (31 % 8) + 1 = 8
Hence, option a) is correct.

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Question 4
Which of the two alternatives would you choose if you need to support real-time queries that
must be answered within a guaranteed short period of time?
Marks: 2 MSQ

a) Magnetic Hard Disk

b) Solid State Drive

c) Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks

d) Digital Video Disk

Answer: b), c)
Explanation: SSDs have much lower latency for data access, and higher data transfer
bandwidth than magnetic disks.
Magnetic disks are vulnerable to failure, which could result in loss of data stored on the disk.
We can reduce the likelihood of irretrievable data loss by retaining multiple copies of data.
Mirroring reduces the probability of data loss greatly. More sophisticated methods based on
redundant arrays of independent disks (RAID) offer further benefits.
By striping data across disks, these methods offer high throughput rates on large accesses; by
introducing redundancy across disks, they improve reliability greatly.
So, for real-time queries that must be answered within a guaranteed short period of time, SSD
or RAID can be preferred.
Hence, options b) and c) are correct.

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Question 5
If a system contains 1,000 disk drives, and each of them has a 6,00,000-hour MTBF (Mean
time between failure), how often a single drive failure will occur in that disk system?
Marks: 2 MCQ

a) 25000 hours

b) 14400 hours

c) 600 hours

d) 25 hours

Answer: c)
Explanation: MTBF (array) = MTBF (one disk) / Number of disks in the array
So, the answer is 600,000 / 1000 = 600 hrs
Hence, option c) is correct.

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Question 6
Suppose you have a 64-gigabyte disk pack with the following specifications: 32 double-sided
platters, 1024 tracks per surface, and 512 sectors per track. What is the data size of one sector?
Marks: 2 MCQ

a) 64 Kilobyte

b) 32 Kilobyte

c) 4 Kilobyte

d) 2 Kilobyte

Answer: d)
Explanation: Capacity of the disk (VD )= capacity of one surface (VS ) * number of platters
(NP ) * number of sides per platter
Capacity of each surface (VS ) = capacity of track (VT ) * number of tracks per surface(NT )
Capacity of a track (VT ) = data size of a sector (VSec )* number of sectors per track (NS )
VT =
Therefore, data size of a sector (VSec )= N VS
S N * N
T S
VD
= N * N * N * number
T S P of sides per platter
∗ 230
= 1024 *64512 26 ∗ 230 236
* 32* 2 = 210+9+5+1 = 225 = 2 Kilobyte

Hence, option d) is correct.

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Question 7
Consider the following string of reference:

33, 25, 81, 42, 33, 25, 50, 33, 25, 81, 42, 50

Find the number of replacements (where an existing value is replaced by a new value because
the buffer is full) incurred using the least recently used (LRU) buffer replacement algorithm
with 3 empty buffer frames. Marks: 2 MCQ

a) 7

b) 8

c) 10

d) 12

Answer: a)
Explanation:
Buffer Comments
33 33 is added to an empty buffer
33 25 25 is added to an empty buffer
33 25 81 81 is added to an empty buffer
42 25 81 33 is the least recently used. Hence, replaced by 42
42 33 81 25 is the least recently used. Hence, replaced by 33
42 33 25 81 is the least recently used. Hence, replaced by 25
50 33 25 42 is the least recently used. Hence, replaced by 50
50 33 25 No replacement, 33 present
50 33 25 No replacement, 25 present
81 33 25 50 is replaced, as 33, 25 are recently used
81 42 25 33 is replaced, as it is the least recently used element
81 42 50 25 is replaced
Hence, altogether 7 replacements have been done.
So, option a) is the answer.

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Question 8
Consider the following schema:
Movie(movie id, title, language, genre, director, year, production company,
reg company)

production company → movie id, title, language, genre, director, year

If you perform the schema refinement technique on Movie, which of the following statements
will be true?
Marks: 2 MCQ

a) Table Movie do not need any refinement.

b) It is better to decompose in -
Movie(movie id, title, language, genre, director, year)
Production(production company, reg company)

c) It is better to decompose in -
Movie(movie id, title, language, genre)
Direction(production company, director, year)
Production(production company, reg company)

d) It is better to decompose in -
Movie(movie id, title, language, genre, director, year, production company)
Production(production company, reg company)

Answer: d)
Explanation: There is redundancy in table Movie. So, it must be decomposed into BCNF.
In option d) both are in BCNF. Decomposition is lossless and dependency-preserving.
Hence, option d) is the answer.

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Question 9
Consider the file organization for the relation Customer

Customer
cust Name contact No Pointer
Smith 116642 1
Pitter 319981 3
Black 824045 NULL
Cherry 524327 4
Kiti 736686 2

contact No is the primary key field. The field Pointer in this file denotes the serial number
of the next record in the file. The serial number for the first record is 0 and the Pointer field
of the last record is set to NULL. After insertion of the record {"Thomas", 249137}, the file is
as follows.
Customer
cust Name contact No Pointer
Smith 116642 5
Pitter 319981 3
Black 824045 NULL
Cherry 524327 4
Kiti 736686 2
Thomas 249137 1

Which type of file organization is used to store the relation Customer? Marks: 2 MCQ

a) Heap File Organization

b) Sequential File Organization

c) Hash File Organization

d) Multitable Clustering File Organization

Answer: b)
Explanation: Records of Customer are stored in the sequential order of contact No, based
on the value of the search key of each record.
So, it is a Sequential File Organization.
Hence, option b) is correct.

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Question 10
Which of the following statement(s) is (are) correct? Marks: 2 MSQ

a) The disk controller acts as an interface between the computer system and the disk drive
hardware.

b) When a sector is found to be bad, the disk controller remaps the logical sector to a different
physical sector.

c) Mean time to failure (MTTF) is the maximum time, for which a disk can run continu-
ously without any failure.

d) When a huge number of disks are connected by a high-speed network to a number of servers,
it is called Network Area Storage.

Answer: a), b)
Explanation: The disk controller acts as an interface between the computer system and
the disk drive hardware. And when a sector is found to be bad, the disk controller remaps
the logical sector to a different physical sector.
So, these two statements are right.
Mean time to failure (MTTF) is the average time, when a disk may run continuously with-
out any failure.
When a huge number of disks are connected by a high-speed network to a number of servers,
is called Storage Area Networks.
Hence, the statements given in options a) and b) are correct.

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