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Midterm Part I: Response Sheet
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MIDTERM PART I
1. A(n) ____ enables a database administrator to define schema components.
A) extensible markup language (XML)
B) query language
C) data definition language (DDL)
D) unified modeling language (UML)
2. ____ provide(s) a description of the data characteristics and the set of relationships that link the data found within the database.
A) Queries
B) Metadata
C) End-user data
D) Information
3. Which of the following is a characteristic of databases?
A) Many users can use the same database at the same time
B) Different database entities can be connected to provide more information
C) Relevant business data are stored in a database
D) All of the above
Use the following to answer questions 4 - 5:
A database table consists of the following columns: employee's name, SS#, job-title, hiring-date, years-in-job, base-salary. A bonus calculation program, a personnel promotion application program, and a payroll application program all use this table. To implement a policy change in personnel promotion, the following column is added to the table: highest-college-degree. This new column is not used by the payroll program or by the bonus calculation program.
4. The following application program will be modified to accommodate the change to the database table:
A) The bonus calculation program
B) The personnel promotion application program
C) The payroll application program
D) All of the above
5. The ability to add the new column without requiring changes to all of the application programs strongly relates to the following feature of modern database systems:
A) Nonprocedural programming
B) Transaction processing
C) Data independence
D) Data sharing
6. Entity Relationship Diagrams are input to the following phase of Database Development:
A) Logical Database Design
B) Conceptual Data Modeling
C) Physical Database Design
D) Distributed Database Design
7. Which of the following is independent of the choice of a DBMS?
A) Entity Relationship Diagrams
B) Distribution Schema
C) Internal Schema
D) Index files
Use the following to answer questions 8 - 10:
In the table Employee, each row contains data about an employee. The primary key is Empno. The attribute Empdeptno is a foreign key referring to the department number (Deptno. of the table Department.
The combination of columns Prstno, Prstempno is a candidate key. There could be other candidate keys. Prstempno is the Empno in table Employee of the employee working on project number Prstno, which refers to Projno in the table Project. The meaning of Prstasgtno is left undefined.
8. Which of the following columns of the table Department is a foreign key?
A) Deptno
B) Deptname
C) Deptcity
D) Deptmgr
9. Which of the following columns is not a foreign key?
A) Projno in table Project
B) Projmgr in table Project
C) Prstno in table Projstaff
D) Prstempno in table Projstaff
10. If the combination Prstno, Prstempno is chosen as the primary key for table Projstaff, setting Prstno to null in some row would be:
A) A violation of the entity integrity rule
B) A violation of the referential integrity rule
C) A violation of the entity integrity rule and of the referential integrity rule
D) None of the above
Use the following to answer questions 11 - 13 (Disjoint and Partial completeness):
11. Which of the following statements is true?
A) An md may be an administrator
B) An RN may be an administrator
C) An md may not be an administrator
D) An md may be an RN
12. Which of the following statements is true?
A) A staff may exist that is neither an RN, nor an administrator, nor an md
B) Every staff is either an RN, an administrator, or an md
C) A staff may exist that is an RN and an administrator
D) A staff may exist that is an administrator and an md
13. The number of administrators is:
A) Always the same as the number of departments
B) Always smaller than the number of departments
C) Smaller than or equal to the number of departments
D) Larger than or equal to the number of departments
14. In reviewing an ERD for consistency, the property of uniqueness applies to:
A) Entity type names
B) Attribute names within entity types and relationships
C) Attribute names in a subtype
D) All of the above
15. In the relational model, ____ are important because they are used to ensure that each row in a table is uniquely identifiable.
A) Relations
B) Indexes
C) Keys
D) Logical structures
16. When constructing an ERD from a problem narrative:
A) You can derive relationships but not cardinalities from the narrative
B) You can derive cardinalities but not relationships from the narrative
C) You can usually derive both relationships and cardinalities from the narrative, but sometimes they are incomplete
D) None of the above
17. Redundant relationships in a database design:
A) Can be derived from other relationships
B) Cannot be identified by reviewing the ERD
C) Should always be removed from the database design
D) None of the above
18. The ____ relationship should be rare in any relational database design.
A) M:N
B) 1:M
C) M:1
D) 1:1
19. Primary keys for entity types:
A) Can be automatically generated by a DBMS
B) Should be single purpose
C) Are sometimes determined by industry or organizational practice
D) All of the above
20. Design documentation:
A) Should explain subtle design decisions
B) Should describe incompleteness and inconsistency in specification requirements
C) Should communicate the database design to other interested parties throughout the lifetime of the database
D) All of the above
21. A ____ occurs when you have one entity in two 1:M relationships to other entities, thus producing an association among the other entities that is not expressed in the model.
A) Surrogate primary keys
B) time-variant data
C) Design trap
D) Fan trap
22. Attributes may share a ____.
A) Domain
B) Name
C) Location
D) Column
23. When designing a database, you should ____.
A) Make sure entities are in normal form before table structures are created
B) Create table structures then normalize the database
C) Only normalize the database when performance problems occur
D) Consider more important issues such as performance before normalizing
24. The following step occurs first in the process of building an ERD: ____.
A) Develop the initial ERD.
B) Identify the business rules based on the description of operations.
C) Identify the attributes and primary keys that adequately describe the entities.
D) Create a detailed narrative of the organization's description of operations.
25. When the PK of one entity does not contain the PK of a related entity, the relationship is ____.
A) Weak
B) Strong
C) Neutral
D) Missing