◦ One of the main characteristics of the database approach is to support data abstraction so that
different users can perceive data at their preferred level of detail.
◦ Data abstraction generally refers to the suppression of details of data organization and storage, and
the highlighting of the essential features for an improved understanding of data.
◦ to achieve this abstraction: A data model (a collection of concepts that can be used to describe the
structure of a database )provides this achievement
◦ what we mean by structure of database?
we mean: the data types, relationships, and constraints that apply to the data.
◦ Most data models also include a set of basic operations for specifying retrievals and updates on the
database.
Type of data model :
1. High-level or conceptual data models
2. low-level or physical data models
3. representational or implementation data models
1. High-level or conceptual data models: provide concepts that are close to the way many users
perceive data, it use concepts such as
entities: represents a real-world object or concept, such as an employee or a project from the
miniworld that is described in the database.
attributes: represents some property of interest that further describes an entity, such as the
employee’s name or salary.
and relationships : A relationship among two or more entities represents an association among
the entities, for example, a works-on relationship between an employee and a project .
2. low-level or physical data models provide concepts that describe the details of how data is
stored on the computer storage media (magnetic disk), describe how data is stored as files in the
computer by representing information such as record formats, record orderings, and access paths.
An access path is a structure that makes the search for particular database records efficient. An
index is an example of an access path that allows direct access to data
using an index term or a keyword.
Concepts provided by low-level data models are generally meant for computer
specialists, not for end users.
3. representational (or implementation) data models, which provide concepts that
may be easily understood by end users but that are not too far removed from the
way data is organized in computer storage. Representational data models hide many
details of data storage on disk but can be implemented on a computer system
directly.
implementation data models are the models used most frequently in traditional
commercial DBMSs
it represent data by using record structures and hence are sometimes called record-based
data models.
Schemas, Instances, and Database State :
In any data model, it is important to distinguish between the description of the database and the
database itself
The description of a database is called the database schema, which is specified during database
design and is not expected to change frequently .Most data models have certain conventions for
displaying schemas as diagrams.
Schema diagram for the
database
The diagram displays the structure of each record type but not the actual instances of records. We
call each object in the schema—such as STUDENT or COURSE—a schema construct.
The data in the database at a particular moment in time is called a database
state or snapshot. It is also called the current set of occurrences or instances in the database.
The distinction between database schema and database state is very important.
When we define a new database, we specify its database schema only to the DBMS.
At this point, the corresponding database state is the empty state with no data. We
get the initial state of the database when the database is first populated or loaded
with the initial data. From then on, every time an update operation is applied to the
database, we get another database state. At any point in time, the database has a
current state.8 The DBMS is partly responsible for ensuring that every state of the
database is a valid state—that is, a state that satisfies the structure and constraints
specified in the schema.
