Fundamentals of Database Systems - by_Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe - 3rd_ed

Preface (Fundamentals of Database Systems, Third Edition) This book introduces the fundamental concepts necessary for designing, using, and implementing database systems and applications. Our presentation stresses the fundamentals of database modeling and design, the languages and facilities provided by database management systems, and system implementation techniques. The book is meant to be used as a textbook for a one- or two-semester course in database systems at the junior, senior, or graduate level, and as a reference book. We assume that readers are familiar with elementary programming and data-structuring concepts and that they have had some exposure to basic computer organization.
We start in Part 1 with an introduction and a presentation of the basic concepts from both ends of the database spectrum—conceptual modeling principles and physical file storage techniques. We conclude the book in Part 6 with an introduction to influential new database models, such as active, temporal, and deductive models, along with an overview of emerging technologies and applications, such as data mining, data warehousing, and Web databases. Along the way—in Part 2 through Part 5—we provide an indepth treatment of the most important aspects of database fundamentals.

The following key features are included in the third edition:

• The entire book has a self-contained, flexible organization that can be tailored to individual needs.
• Complete and updated coverage is provided on the relational model—including new material on Oracle and Microsoft Access as examples of relational systems—in Part 2.
• A comprehensive new introduction is provided on object databases and object-relational systems in Part 3, including the ODMG object model and the OQL query language, as well as an overview of object-relational features of SQL3, INFORMIX, and ORACLE 8.
• Updated coverage of EER conceptual modeling has been moved to Chapter 4 to follow the basic ER modeling in Chapter 3, and includes a new section on notation for UML class diagrams.
• Two examples running throughout the book—called COMPANY and UNIVERSITY—allow the reader to compare different approaches that use the same application.
• Coverage has been updated on database design, including conceptual design, normalization techniques, physical design, and database tuning.