DBMS Basics - Interview Questions and Answers

The phase that identifies an efficient execution plan for evaluating a query that has the least estimated cost is referred to as query optimization.

Once the DBMS informs the user that a transaction has successfully completed, its effects should persist even if the system crashes before all its changes are reflected on disk. This property is called durability.

1. Atomicity: Either all actions are carried out or none are. Users should not have to worry about the effect of incomplete transactions. DBMS ensures this by undoing the actions of incomplete transactions.
2. Aggregation: A concept which is used to model a relationship between a collection of entities and relationships. It is used when we need to express a relationship among relationships.

In distributed deadlock detection, the delay in propagating local information might cause the deadlock detection algorithms to identify deadlocks that do not really exist. Such situations are called phantom deadlocks and they lead to unnecessary aborts.

A Checkpoint is like a snapshot of the DBMS state. By taking checkpoints, the DBMS can reduce the amount of work to be done during restart in the event of subsequent crashes.

Different phases are
1.) Analysis phase,
2.) Redo Phase,
3.) Undo phase.