Four Levels of Data from Ricardo’s Database Illuminated Real world Enterprise in its environment Mini-world, or Universe of Discourse – part of the world that is represented in the database Conceptual Model Entities, entity sets, attributes, relationships Logical model of database Metadata, data about data Record types, data item types, data aggregates Stored in data dictionary Data occurrences Database itself Data instances files
Data Dictionary – from Wikipedia The term may have one of several closely related meanings pertaining to databases and database management systems (DBMS): a document describing a database or collection of databases an integral component of a DBMS that is required to determine its structure a piece of middleware that extends or supplants the native data dictionary of a DBMS