1.2: Database Environments
Read this article on the types of databases and their functions. The article introduces a data model, which is the conceptual design for a database from a development perspective.
Read chapters 4 and 5, which discuss the types of data models, their properties, and their levels of abstraction: external, conceptual, internal, and physical. We will later refer to these levels of abstraction as 'schema levels'.
Read chapter 2, which continues the top-down discussion on DBMSes. It describes the elements of a DBMS, functional requirements and necessary characteristics (which corresponds to the external view of the 3-level schema architecture perspective), design (which corresponds to the conceptual model view), and implementation (which corresponds to the internal/physical model view). It also gives an overview of database and DBMS processes, including planning, development techniques and methods, roles and responsibilities, stakeholders, and database and DBMS maintenance and configuration control (which is how to control changes to the database or DBMS).