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UNIT I - DATABASE DESIGN
VIEWS OF DATA
View of data in DBMS describes the abstraction of data at three-level i.e. physical level, logical level,
view level. The physical level of abstraction defines how data is stored in the storage and also reveals its access
path.
Abstraction at the logical level describes what data would be stored in the database? what would be the
relation between the data? and the constraints applied to the data.
The view level or external level of abstraction describes the application which the users use to retrieve the
information from the database.
● Data independence explains the extent to which data at a certain level can be modified without disturbing
the data next higher levels.
● An instance is the retrieval of information from the database at a certain point of time. An instance in a
database keeps on changing with time.
● Schema is the overall design of the entire database. Schema of the database is not changed frequently.
Data abstraction has three levels of abstractions
• Physical level (internal level)
• Logical level (conceptual level)
• View level (external level)
Physical level:-
❖ The physical or the internal level schema describes how the data is stored in the hardware.
❖ It also describes how the data can be accessed. The physical level shows the data abstraction at the
lowest level and it has complex data structures.
❖ Only the database administrator operates at this level.
Logical level:-
❖ The next level of abstraction describes what data is stored in the database and what relationship
existed among those of data.
❖ Here, the data is stored in the form of the entity set, entities, their data types, the relationship
among the entity sets, user operations performed to retrieve or modify the data and certain
constraints on the data.
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❖ Well adding constraints to the view of data adds the security. As users are restricted to access some
particular parts of the database.
❖ It is the developer and database administrator who operates at the logical or the conceptual level.
View level:-
❖ In this level user only interact with database and the complexity remain unviewed. user see data and there
may be many views of one data like chart and graph.
❖ It is the highest level of data abstraction and exhibits only a part of the whole database.
❖ It exhibits the data in which the user is interested.
❖ The view level can describe many views of the same data. Here, the user retrieves the information using
different applications from the database.
Data Independence:
Data independence defines the extent to which the data schema can be changed at one level without
modifying the data schema at the next level. Data independence can be classified as shown below:
Logical Data Independence:
Logical data independence describes the degree up to which the logical or conceptual schema can be
changed without modifying the external schema.
Physical Data Independence:
Physical data independence defines the extent up to which the data schema can be changed at the physical
or internal level without modifying the data schema at logical and view level.
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In the figure, you can clearly distinguish between the three levels of abstraction. To understand it more clearly let
us take an example: College Database
Now, what entity sets would be involved? Student, Lecturer, Department, Course and so on… Now, the
entity sets Student, Lecturer, Department, and Course will be stored in the storage as the consecutive blocks of
the memory location. This is the physical or internal level and is hidden from the programmers but the
database administrator is aware of it.
At the logical level, the programmers define the entity sets and relationship among these entity sets using
a programming language like SQL. So, the programmers work at the logical level and even the database
administrator also operates at this level.
At the view level, the users have the set of applications which they use to retrieve the data they are
interested in.
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Important two marks related to the topic:
1. What are the three levels of abstraction?
a. Physical level
b. Logical level
c.View level
2. What is physical, logical and view level data abstraction.
a. The lowest level of abstraction that describes how the data is stored is physical level data abstraction.
b. The next higher level of abstraction that describes what data is stored in the database and the
relationship among those data is logical level data abstraction.
c. The highest level of abstraction describes only part of the entire database as view level.
3. What do you mean by instances and schemas?
The collection of information stored in the database at a particular moment is called instance.
The overall design of the database is called the database schema.
4. What are the two levels of independence?
a. Physical data independence
b. Logical data independence
