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CSE 512 Midterm Study Guide
Centralized System - answer✔Shared by all users at one time
Single component
Single point of control
Single point of failure
Distributed System - answer✔- Collection of independent computers
- Appear to the users as a single computer even though it's not
- Multiple processors, memory systems and storage systems
- Multiple points of failure
- Multiple points of control
Why Distribution? - answer✔More of:
-Availability
-Reliability
-Fault Tolerance
Scalability
(ACRONYM)
Fatima Always Slaps Ryan
Availability - answer✔If one component dies, another component can perform the same task
Scalability - answer✔Be able to accomodate
-more users
-larger volumes of data
-respond faster
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Reliability/Fault Tolerance - answer✔HARDWARE & SOFTWARE CAN FAIL!
Achieved by:
-Recovery Strategy
-Redundancy/Replication
Transparency - answer✔- Users and application programmers shouldn't care about the
components, it should be VIEWED AS ONE WHOLE SYSTEM
-Separation of the higher level semantics of a system from the lower level implementation
issues
- Fundamental issue is to provide data independence in the distributed environment.
Centralized Database System - answer✔-Single front-end
-One place to keep locks
-If a processor fails, the system fails
What is a Database? - answer✔Large, integrated collection of data.
-Contains entities (eg. students, courses)
-Relationships(eg. Mike is taking CSE512)
What is a Database Management System? (DBMS) - answer✔Software artifact designed to
store, manage and retrieve data from databases.
Data Model - answer✔Data model is a collection of concepts for describing data
Schema - answer✔Description of a particular collection of data, using given data model
Relational Model of Data - answer✔The most widely used model today.
-Relation: Table w/ rows and columns
-Every relation has a schema, which described the columns or fields
Levels of Abstraction - answer✔Views
Conceptual (logical schema)
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