INFO-SHEET # 3 The Nature of Data

Nature of Data
Bulacan Date Developed:

BSIS / ACT January 2021
Polytechnic Page 1 of 13
Date Revised:
DBS - 213 College
Database System Developed by:
(Access) Document No. Minerva V. Magbitang Revision # 01
Rosemarie S. Guirre
Database Systems
List of Modules
No. MODULE
MODULE TITLE
CODE
1. Introduction to Database Management Systems DBS 213 - 1
2 The Use of DBMS and the Database DBS 213 -2
3 Nature of Data DBS 213 -3
4 Overview to MS Access DBS 213 -4
5 Applied associations of data DBS 213 -5
6 Data Models DBS 213 -6

Date Revised:
DBS - 213 College
Rosemarie S. Guirre
MODULE CONTENT
COURSE TITLE: Database Systems (Access)
MODULE TITLE: The Nature of Data
NOMINAL DURATION: __9___ HRS (NO. of Hours per topic)
SPECIFIC LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

At the end of this module, you MUST be able to:
 Discussed the fundamental concepts of database management systems.
TOPIC: (SUB TOPIC)

1. The three Level of Data Abstractions
2. Facts About Data Abstraction
3. Advantages and Disadvantages of Database Schema
ASSESSMENT METHOD/S:
Quiz, Oral Recitation, Peer Learning
REFERENCES:
Rungta, K. (2021, March 15). DBMS Schemas: Internal, Conceptual, External.

Guru99. https://www.guru99.com/dbms-schemas.html
GeeksforGeeks. (2018, February 14). Data Abstraction and Data Independence.

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/data-abstraction-and-data-independence/
w3computing.com. (2017, August 22). Reality, Data & Metadata (Data

Concepts). W3computing.
https://www.w3computing.com/systemsanalysis/reality-data-metadata/
Watt, A. (2014, October 24). Chapter 8 The Entity Relationship Data Model –
Database Design – 2nd Edition. Pressbooks.
https://opentextbc.ca/dbdesign01/chapter/chapter-8-entity-relationship-
model/
Schmidt, C. (2021, March 16). The subtle 6: Types of metadata you need to
know. Canto. https://www.canto.com/blog/types-of-metadata/

Date Revised:
DBS - 213 College
Rosemarie S. Guirre
Information Sheet
Learning Objectives:
After reading this INFORMATION SHEET, YOU MUST be able to:
1. Familiarized and discussed the concepts of the level of data, and how to
use it in creating a database.
DBMS Schemas: Internal, Conceptual, External
Database systems comprise of complex data structures. Thus, to make the

system efficient for retrieval of data and reduce the complexity in terms of
usability of users, developers use abstraction i.e., hide irrelevant details from
the users. This approach simplifies database design.
There are mainly three levels of data abstraction:

Internal Level: Actual PHYSICAL storage structure and access paths.
Conceptual or Logical Level: Structure and constraints for the entire
database
External or View level: Describes various user views.
Internal Level/Schema
The internal schema defines the physical storage structure of the database. The
internal schema is a very low-level representation of the entire database. It
contains multiple occurrences of multiple types of internal records. In the ANSI
term, it is also called "stored record'.
Usability, size of memory, and the number of times the records are factors that
we need to know while designing the database.
Suppose we need to store the details of an employee. Blocks of storage and the
amount of memory used for these purposes are kept hidden from the user.

Date Revised:
DBS - 213 College
Rosemarie S. Guirre
Facts about Internal schema:
 The internal schema is the lowest level of data abstraction
 It helps you to keeps information about the actual representation of
the entire database. Like the actual storage of the data on the disk
in the form of records
 The internal view tells us what data is stored in the database and
how
 It never deals with physical devices. Instead, internal schema views
a physical device as a collection of physical pages
Conceptual Schema/Level
The conceptual schema describes the Database structure of the whole database
for the community of users. This schema hides information about the physical
storage structures and focuses on describing data types, entities, relationships,
etc.
This level comprises the information that is actually stored in the database in
the form of tables. It also stores the relationship among the data entities in
relatively simple structures. At this level, the information available to the user
at the view level is unknown.
We can store the various attributes of an employee and relationships, e.g., with
the manager can also be stored.
This logical level comes between the user level and physical storage view.
However, there is only single conceptual view of a single database.
Facts about Conceptual schema:

 Defines all database entities, their attributes, and their relationships
 Security and integrity information
 At the conceptual level, the data available to a user must be contained in
or derivable from the physical level
External Schema/Level
An external schema describes the part of the database that a specific user is
interested in. It hides the unrelated details of the database from the user.
There may be an "n" number of external views for each database.
Each external view is defined using an external schema, which consists of

definitions of various types of external records of that specific view.
An external view is just the content of the database as it is seen by some

specific particular user. For example, a user from the sales department will see
only sales related data.
This is the highest level of abstraction. Only a part of the actual database is
viewed by the users. This level exists to ease the accessibility of the database
by an individual user. Users view data in the form of rows and columns. Tables

Date Revised:
DBS - 213 College
Rosemarie S. Guirre
and relations are used to store data. Multiple views of the same database may
exist. Users can just view the data and interact with the database, storage and
implementation details are hidden from them.
Facts about external schema:

 An external level is only related to the data which is viewed by specific
end users.
 This level includes some external schemas.
 External schema level is nearest to the user
 The external schema describes the segment of the database which is
needed for a certain user group and hides the remaining details from the
database from the specific user group
Goal of 3 levels/schema of Database

Here, are some Objectives of using Three schema Architecture:
 Every user should be able to access the same data but able to see a
customized view of the data.
 The user need not deal directly with physical database storage detail.
 The DBA should be able to change the database storage structure
without disturbing the user's views
 The internal structure of the database should remain unaffected when
changes are made to the physical aspects of storage.
Advantages Database Schema

 You can manage data independent of the physical storage
 Faster Migration to new graphical environments
 DBMS Architecture allows you to make changes on the presentation level
without affecting the other two layers
 As each tier is separate, it is possible to use different sets of developers
 It is more secure as the client doesn't have direct access to the database
business logic
 In case of the failure of the one-tier no data loss as you are always secure
by accessing the other tier
Disadvantages Database Schema

 Complete DB Schema is a complex structure that is difficult to
understand for every one
 Difficult to set up and maintain
 The physical separation of the tiers can affect the performance of the
Database

Date Revised:
DBS - 213 College
Rosemarie S. Guirre
The main purpose of data abstraction is to achieve data independence in order
to save time and cost required when the database is modified or altered.
We have namely two levels of data independence arising from these levels of
abstraction:
1. Physical level data independence: It refers to the characteristic of being

able to modify the physical schema without any alterations to the conceptual or
logical schema, done for optimization purposes, e.g., Conceptual structure of
the database would not be affected by any change in storage size of the
database system server. Changing from sequential to random access files is
one such example. These alterations or modifications to the physical structure
may include:
 Utilizing new storage devices.
 Modifying data structures used for storage.
 Altering indexes or using alternative file organization techniques etc.
2. Logical level data independence: It refers characteristic of being able to

modify the logical schema without affecting the external schema or application
program. The user view of the data would not be affected by any changes to the
conceptual view of the data. These changes may include insertion or deletion of
attributes, altering table structures entities or relationships to the logical
schema, etc.

Date Revised:
DBS - 213 College
Rosemarie S. Guirre
Summary
 There are mainly three levels of data abstraction: Internal Level,
Conceptual or Logical Level or External or View level
 The internal schema defines the physical storage structure of the
database
 The conceptual schema describes the Database structure of the whole
database for the community of users
 An external schema describes the part of the database which specific
user is interested in
 DBMS Architecture allows you to make changes on the presentation level
without affecting the other two layers
Data in Reality
The real world will be referred to as reality. Data collected about people, places,
or events, in reality, will eventually be stored in a file or database. To
understand the form and structure of the data, information about the data
itself is required. The information that describes data is referred to as
metadata.
ENTITIES
Any object or event about which someone chooses to collect data is an entity.
An entity may be a person, place, or thing (for example, a salesperson, a city,
or a product). Any entity can also be an event or unit of time such as a
machine breakdown, a sale, or a month or year.
An entity is an object in the real world with an independent existence that can
be differentiated from other objects. An entity might be
 An object with physical existence (e.g., a lecturer, a student, a car)
 An object with conceptual existence (e.g., a course, a job, a position)
Characteristic entities
Characteristic entities provide more information about another table. These
entities have the following characteristics:
 They represent multivalued attributes.
 They describe other entities.
 They typically have a one-to-many relationship.
 The foreign key is used to further identify the characterized table.
Options for a primary key are as follows:
1. Use a composite of foreign key plus a qualifying column
2. Create a new simple primary key. In the COMPANY database, these
might include:
 Employee (EID, Name, Address, Age, Salary) – EID is the simple primary
key.
 EmployeePhone (EID, Phone) – EID is part of a composite primary key.
Here, EID is also a foreign key.

Date Revised:
DBS - 213 College
Rosemarie S. Guirre
ATTRIBUTES
An attribute is some characteristic of an entity. There can be many attributes for
each entity. For example, a patient (entity) can have many attributes, such as
last name, first name, street address, city, state, and so on. The date of the
patient’s last visit as well as the prescription details are also attributes.
Each entity is described by a set of attributes (e.g., Employee = (Name, Address,
Birthdate (Age), Salary).
Types of Attributes
There are a few types of attributes you need to be familiar with. Some of these
are to be left as is, but some need to be adjusted to facilitate representation in
the relational model. This first section will discuss the types of attributes. Later
on, we will discuss fixing the attributes to fit correctly into the relational model.
1. Simple attributes
Simple attributes are those drawn from the atomic value domains; they are also
called single-valued attributes. In the COMPANY database, an example of this
would be: Name = {John} ; Age = {23}
2. Composite attributes
Composite attributes are those that consist of a hierarchy of attributes. Using
our database example, Address may consist of Number, Street and Suburb. So
this would be written as → Address = {59 + ‘Meek Street’ + ‘Kingsford’}
3. Multivalued attributes
Multivalued attributes are attributes that have a set of values for each entity. An
example of a multivalued attribute from the COMPANY database, as seen in
Figure 8.4, are the degrees of an employee: BSc, MIT, PhD.
4. Derived attributes
Derived attributes are attributes that contain values calculated from other
attributes. An example of is Age that can be derived from the attribute Birthdate.
In this situation, Birthdate is called a stored attribute, which is physically saved
to the database.
RECORDS
A record is a collection of data items that have something in common with the
entity described. The record for an order placed with a mail-order company. The
ORDER-#, LAST NAME, INITIAL, STREET ADDRESS, CITY, STATE, and CREDIT
CARD are all attributes. Most records are of fixed length, so there is no need to
determine the length of the record each time.
A record has a primary key and may have many attributes.

Date Revised:
DBS - 213 College
Rosemarie S. Guirre
A record has a primary key and may have many attributes.
Under certain circumstances (for instance, when space is at a premium),
variable-length records are used. A variable-length record is used as an
alternative to reserving a large amount of space for the longest possible record,
such as the maximum number of visits a patient has made to a physician. Each
visit would contain many data items that would be part of the patient’s full record
(or file folder in a manual system).
KEYS
A key is one of the data items in a record that is used to identify a record. When
a key uniquely identifies a record, it is called a primary key. For example,
ORDER-# can be a primary key because only one number is assigned to each
customer order. In this way, the primary key identifies the real-world entity
(customer order).
Special care must be taken when designing the primary key. Often it is a
sequential number or a sequential number with a self-checking number (called
a check digit) at the end of the digits. At times there is some meaning built into
the primary key, but defining a primary key based on an attribute is considered
a risk. If the attribute changes, the primary key will also change, creating a
dependency between the primary key and the data.
An example of a primary key based on data is using a state abbreviation for the
state name or an airline luggage code for an airport name. An attribute or a
collection of attributes that can serve as a primary key is called a candidate
key. A primary key should also be minimal and contain no extra attributes
than are necessary to identify a record.
A key is called a secondary key if it cannot uniquely identify a record.

Secondary keys either may be unique or may identify multiple records in a
database. Secondary keys can be used to select a group of records that belong
to a set (for example, orders from the state of Virginia).
When it is not possible to identify a record uniquely by using one of the data
items found in a record, a key can be constructed by choosing two or more
data items and combining them. This key is called a concatenated, or
composite, key. When a data item is used as a key in a record, the description
is underlined. Therefore, in the ORDER record (ORDER-#, LAST NAME,
INITIAL, STREET ADDRESS, CITY, STATE, CREDIT CARD), the key is ORDER-
#. If an attribute is a key in another file, it should be underlined with a dashed
line.

Date Revised:
DBS - 213 College
Rosemarie S. Guirre
METADATA
Metadata is a great way to sort and simplify important information, but there are
variations to consider. Most lists give three basic types of metadata.
A popular definition of metadata is “data that describes other data.” It’s a bit
more complicated than that, as metadata is used extensively to sort and
translate (so to speak) complex data into something more manageable and
understandable.
Descriptive metadata
Descriptive metadata is, in its most simplified version, the identification of
specific data. This often refers to elements like titles, dates, and keywords. When
a user downloads a video file, for example, the runtime of the film would be
descriptive metadata.
Structural metadata
Structural metadata gives information concerning a specific object or resource.
This often relates to a piece of digital media. Here’s an illustrative example: A
film in a DVD format has numerous sections. Each section has a certain length
of film running time, and those sections fit together into the format in a certain
order.
In a broader sense, structural metadata records information about how a
particular object or resource might be sorted.
Preservation metadata
Preservation metadata offers information that can strengthen the entire
procedure of maintaining a certain digital object/file. This information may
include vital details required for a system to communicate or interact with a
specific file.
Preservation metadata upholds the integrity of a digital object or file from its
start to finish, or until it’s no longer in use or necessary.
Administrative metadata
Administrative metadata informs users what types of instructions, rules, and
restrictions are placed on a file. This type of data helps administrators limit
access to files based on the user qualifications. Administrative metadata is
comprehensive – giving information about certain data as a whole from start to
finish. This gives users a chance to administer a wide variety of data files.
Administrative metadata is like a basic version of a piece of data. Even if a
particular data set is extremely complex, its metadata will be much more
detailed. Thus, administrative metadata is about control – controlling these
complex pieces and simplifying them for clarity.

Date Revised:
DBS - 213 College
Rosemarie S. Guirre
Metadata is simply data about data. It means it is a description and context of
the data. It helps to organize, find and understand data.
Here are a few real-world examples of metadata:

Typical metadata
Those are some typical metadata elements:
 Title and description,
 Tags and categories,
 Who created and when,
 Who last modified and when,
 Who can access or update?
A spreadsheet
Spreadsheets contain a few metadata fields:

 tab names,
 table names,
 column names,
 user comments.

Date Revised:
DBS - 213 College
Rosemarie S. Guirre
Relational database
Relational databases (the most common type of database) store and provide
access not only data but also metadata in a structure called a data dictionary
or system catalog. It holds information about:
 tables,
 columns,
 data types,
 constraints
 table relationships,

Date Revised:
DBS - 213 College
Rosemarie S. Guirre

INFO-SHEET # 3 The Nature of Data

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Nature of Data

Bulacan Date Developed:

1. Introduction to Database Management Systems DBS 213 - 1

2 The Use of DBMS and the Database DBS 213 -2

3 Nature of Data DBS 213 -3

4 Overview to MS Access DBS 213 -4

5 Applied associations of data DBS 213 -5

6 Data Models DBS 213 -6

Bulacan Date Developed:

COURSE TITLE: Database Systems (Access)

MODULE TITLE: The Nature of Data

NOMINAL DURATION: __9___ HRS (NO. of Hours per topic)

SPECIFIC LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

TOPIC: (SUB TOPIC)

Rungta, K. (2021, March 15). DBMS Schemas: Internal, Conceptual, External.

GeeksforGeeks. (2018, February 14). Data Abstraction and Data Independence.

w3computing.com. (2017, August 22). Reality, Data & Metadata (Data

Bulacan Date Developed:

DBMS Schemas: Internal, Conceptual, External

Database systems comprise of complex data structures. Thus, to make the

There are mainly three levels of data abstraction:

Bulacan Date Developed:

Facts about Conceptual schema:

Each external view is defined using an external schema, which consists of

An external view is just the content of the database as it is seen by some

Bulacan Date Developed:

Facts about external schema:

Goal of 3 levels/schema of Database

Advantages Database Schema

Disadvantages Database Schema

Bulacan Date Developed:

1. Physical level data independence: It refers to the characteristic of being

2. Logical level data independence: It refers characteristic of being able to

Bulacan Date Developed:

Bulacan Date Developed:

A record has a primary key and may have many attributes.

Bulacan Date Developed:

A key is called a secondary key if it cannot uniquely identify a record.

Bulacan Date Developed:

Bulacan Date Developed:

Here are a few real-world examples of metadata:

Spreadsheets contain a few metadata fields:

Bulacan Date Developed:

Bulacan Date Developed:

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NOMINAL DURATION: 9_ HRS (NO. of Hours per topic)