Practice A3 Databases with authentic IB Computer Science (First Exam 2027) exam questions for both SL and HL students. This question bank mirrors Paper 1, 2, 3 structure, covering key topics like programming concepts, algorithms, and data structures. Get instant solutions, detailed explanations, and build exam confidence with questions in the style of IB examiners.
A smart city initiative integrates multiple systems including traffic management, utility monitoring, and citizen services.
Compare the suitability of relational versus NoSQL databases for storing heterogeneous IoT sensor data from traffic lights, water meters, and air quality monitors.
An e-commerce platform manages product catalogs, customer orders, and inventory across multiple warehouses.
Explain the concept of database normalization and why it is important for reducing data redundancy. Provide specific examples of how unnormalized data could cause problems in an e-commerce system.
Describe the key components of the ACID properties and explain why they are critical for e-commerce transaction processing.
A library management system tracks books, authors, members, loans, and reservations.
Create an Entity-Relationship (ER) diagram analysis for the library system:
| Entity | Primary Key | Attributes | Relationships | Cardinality | Business Rules |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Book | BookID | — | — | — | — |
| Author | — | AuthorName, Biography | — | Many-to-Many | — |
| Member | MemberID | — | Borrows books | — | Max 5 books per member |
| Loan | — | — | — | — | — |
| Reservation | — | ReservationDate | — | One-to-Many | Max 3 reservations |
Analyze how normalization to Third Normal Form (3NF) would improve this library database design and identify potential denormalization decisions for performance optimization.
A healthcare analytics platform processes patient data from multiple hospitals for population health studies.
Explain how database federation enables querying across multiple hospital databases while maintaining data privacy and regulatory compliance.
A healthcare analytics platform processes patient data from multiple hospitals for population health studies.
Design stored procedures for anonymizing patient data while preserving statistical validity for research purposes.
A manufacturing company tracks products, suppliers, purchase orders, and inventory levels.
Compare different approaches to handling hierarchical data structures such as product categories and organizational departments, including adjacency lists, nested sets, and materialized paths.
Explain how database views can simplify complex queries and provide data security in a manufacturing environment.
A social media platform stores user profiles, posts, comments, and friendship relationships.
Evaluate different approaches to handling concurrent database access in a high-traffic social media environment, including locking mechanisms and transaction isolation levels.
Analyze how database replication and sharding strategies can improve performance and availability for a global user base.
A financial trading platform processes millions of transactions daily and requires high-performance database operations. Analyze different SQL optimization techniques for improving query performance:
Analyze different SQL optimization techniques for improving query performance:
| Optimization Technique | Implementation Method | Performance Impact | Use Case | Potential Drawbacks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Index Optimization | - | High | - | Storage overhead |
| Query Rewriting | Complex joins | - | - | - |
| Partitioning | Horizontal/Vertical split | - | Large tables | - |
| Materialized Views | - | Medium | - | Data consistency |
Explain how database connection pooling and prepared statements improve application performance in high-transaction environments.
A financial services company implements a database system for managing customer accounts, transactions, and regulatory compliance.
Design a data integrity strategy that includes constraint types, validation rules, and audit trail requirements for financial data:
| Constraint Type | Purpose | Implementation | Financial Example | Compliance Benefit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NOT NULL | Column definition | — | — | Data completeness |
| CHECK | Value validation | — | — | — |
| UNIQUE | Index creation | — | Account numbers | — |
| FOREIGN KEY | — | — | — | Referential integrity |
Explain how database backup and recovery strategies ensure business continuity in case of system failures, considering Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) requirements. [
A smart city initiative integrates multiple systems including traffic management, utility monitoring, and citizen services.
Analyze how a data lake architecture could integrate real-time sensor streams with historical city planning data for predictive analytics.