Grade 1350 periodsHigh-yield unit
Database Management
Designs and develops database systems to manage data efficiently and effectively
Exam objectives
- Distinguish data from information, and structured from unstructured data
- Define a database and compare flat-file, hierarchical, network, relational and object-relational models
Important areas to cover
- Comparing database models is a quick, reliable short-structured question
Lesson content not added yet.
Exam objectives
- Define relations/tables, attributes/columns, tuples/rows and relationships
- Explain NOT NULL, unique, primary key, foreign key and check constraints
Important areas to cover
- Constraint definitions form a common MCQ set
Lesson content not added yet.
Exam objectives
- Write DDL to create, alter and drop tables and databases, including adding/removing keys
- Write DML — INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE and SELECT — including single- and multi-table SELECTs using an inner join
Important areas to cover
- SQL query writing, especially SELECT with joins and WHERE conditions, is one of the highest-value, most reliably examined practical skills in the whole syllabus
- CREATE TABLE with correct data types, PRIMARY KEY and FOREIGN KEY syntax is asked almost every year
Lesson content not added yet.
Exam objectives
- Identify entities, attributes, entity identifiers and relationships from a worded scenario
- Draw an ER diagram with correct cardinality notation
- Explain the Extended ER (EER) concept at a basic level
Important areas to cover
- Drawing a full ER diagram with correct cardinality from a scenario is one of the most heavily weighted essay questions across the whole exam — practise many different scenarios
Lesson content not added yet.
Exam objectives
- Define logical schema and relation instances
- Distinguish candidate key, primary key, alternate key, foreign key and domain
Important areas to cover
- Key-type definitions (candidate vs primary vs alternate) are a recurring short-answer trio
Lesson content not added yet.
Exam objectives
- Transform entities, attributes and relationships from an ER diagram into a relational logical schema
Important areas to cover
- Commonly paired with the 8.4 ER-diagram question into one longer essay
Lesson content not added yet.
Exam objectives
- Identify insert, update and delete anomalies caused by redundancy
- Define full, partial and transitive functional dependency
- Normalize a given unnormalized table through 1NF, 2NF and 3NF, showing the working at each step
Important areas to cover
- Normalizing a given table to 3NF with all intermediate steps shown is one of the most consistently examined essay questions in the Database unit
Lesson content not added yet.