SIGCSE '97 CA,USA 126 WinRDBI A Windows-based Relational Database Educational Tool
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SIGCSE '97 CA,USA 126WinRDBI:A Windows-based Relational Database Educational Tool
Suzanne W. Dietrich, Eric Eckert and Kevin PiscatorArizona State UniversityDepartment of Computer Science and EngineeringTempe, AZ 85287-5406
dietrich@asu.edu
AbstractRDBI is an educational tool that provides students with thecapability to test their understanding of the formalrelational query languages (relational algebra, domainrelational calculus and tuple relational calculus) and theindustry standard query language SQL. Although RDBI isan integral part of the database management courses at anumber of universities, it is unavailable to those universitiesthat do not have a license for the software product in whichRDBI is implemented. WinRDBI, a version of RDBI forWindows, removes this limitation by increasing theavailability of the educational tool to a standard Windowsplatform. Another advantage of WinRDBI is its graphicaluser interface, providing the student with a more intuitiveinterface than the command line interface of RDBI. Thispaper describes the architecture and user interface ofWinRDBI. The features of WinRDBI are also illustratedusing nontrivial examples from a popular database text.Although formal relational query languages do not provideinherent support for aggregation, these examples illustratehow to write queries in the formal languages to support (alimited form of) counting and minimum/maximum queries.
IntroductionRelational databases are the focus of most introductorycourses on database management systems. The formalrelational query languages (relational algebra, domainrelational calculus and tuple relational calculus) aretherefore an important part of the curriculum. As a student,it is difficult to know whether your queries expressed onpaper in the formal languages are correct. As an instructor,it is often difficult to grade creative queries, especiallythose that have not been verified by an--------------------------------------------------------------------------Copyright Ó 1997 Association for Computing Machinery, Inc.
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educational tool. The goal of RDBI, the RelationalDataBase Interpreter, is to provide a mechanism by whichthe students can explore the formal relational querylanguages, getting immediate feedback by seeing theanswers to the posed query. Consequently, the gradingprocess is usually eased (somewhat) since the students cansubmit verified answers on homework assignments.
RDBI developed over a number of years as independentstudy projects by students exploring the connectionbetween databases and logic programming. RDBI is writtenin Quintus Prolog. The database and meta-data are stored asProlog facts. A query in each of the query languages,including the industry standard query language SQL, isparsed and converted into Prolog code, which is thenexecuted to evaluate the query. SQL was added to RDBI toincrease its usability as an educational tool by providing anSQL interpreter for those universities that don’t have theuse of a relational database product with SQL. It alsoprovides students with the capability to pose SQL queriesover the same database schema and instance that they usedfor exploring the formal query languages.
RDBI is an integral part of the introduction to databasemanagement course at Arizona State University. RDBI isused in a sequence of assignments. In the first assignment,students define the relational schema, populate thedatabase, and answer queries over the database in relationalalgebra. The subsequent assignments on relational calculus(both domain and tuple) and SQL reuse the databasecreated and populated in the first assignment. Some of thequeries change in the subsequent assignments, especiallyfor SQL where queries are included to reinforce theconcepts of aggregation and grouping in SQL.
The use of RDBI as an educational tool for relational querylanguages is described in [1]. Although RDBI is used at anumber of universities, it is unavailable to those universitiesthat do not have Quintus Prolog. WinRDBI, a version ofRDBI for Windows, removes this limitation by increasingthe availability of the educational tool to a