International Baccalaureate IB Computer Science

Explain the features, benefits and limitations of a relational database.
- Features: composite keys, foreign keys, primary keys, relationships, tables
- Benefits: community support, concurrency control, data consistency, data integrity, data retrieval, reduced data duplication, reduced redundancy, reliable transaction processing, scalability, security features
- Limitations: “big data” scalability issues, design complexity, hierarchical data handling, rigid schema, object‑relational impedance mismatch, unstructured data handling.

- Conceptual schema, logical schema, physical schema
- Abstract definitions of the data structure and organization of the data at different levels.

Outline the different types of databases as approaches to storing data.
- Databases models: NoSQL, cloud, spatial, in-memory
- Examples of the use of the database model in real-world scenarios may include e-commerce platforms, geographic information systems (GIS), managed services, real-time analytics, social media platforms, SaaS.

Explain the primary objectives of data warehouses in data management and business intelligence.
- The roles of append-only data, subject-oriented data, integrated data, time-variant data, non-volatile data and data optimized for query performance, to ensure efficient data storage and analysis

Explain the role of online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining for business intelligence.
- Data mining techniques must include classification, clustering, regression, association rule discovery, sequential pattern discovery, anomaly detection (note: links to A4 Machine learning).
- The uses of the techniques in extracting meaningful information from large data sets.