Overview of DBMS Three Level Architecture - DotNet Brother

An early proposal for a standard terminology and general architecture database a system was produced in 1971 by the DBTG (Data Base Task Group) appointed by the Conference on data Systems and Languages. The DBTG recognized the need for a two level approach with a system view called the schema and user view called subschema. The American National Standard Institute terminology and architecture in 1975.ANSI-SPARC recognized the need for a three level approach with a system catalog.

There are following three levels or layers of DBMS architecture:

1. Extenal Level

2. Conceptual Level

3. Internal Level

1. External Level: - External Level is described by a schema i.e. it consists of definition of logical records and relationship in the external view. It also contains the method of deriving the objects in the external view from the objects in the conceptual view.

2. Conceptual Level: - Conceptual Level represents the entire database. Conceptual schema describes the records and relationship included in the Conceptual view. It also contains the method of deriving the objects in the conceptual view from the objects in the internal view.

3. Internal Level: - Internal level indicates hoe the data will be stored and described the data structures and access method to be used by the database. It contains the definition of stored record and method of representing the data fields and access aid used.

A mapping between external and conceptual views gives the correspondence among the records and relation ship of the conceptual and external view. The external view is the abstraction of conceptual view which in turns is the abstraction of internal view. It describes the contents of the database as perceived by the user or application program of that view. A mapping between conceptual records from the physical database.