Three-Schema Architecture

The goal of the three-schema architecture,  is to separate the user applications and the physical database. In this architecture, schemas can be defined at the following three levels:

1. The internal level has an internal schema, which describes the physical storage structure of the database. The internal schema uses a physical data model and describes the complete details of data storage and access paths for the database.

2. The conceptual level has a conceptual schema, which describes the structure of the whole database for a community of users. The conceptual schema hides the details of physical storage structures and concentrates on describing entities, data types, relationships, user operations, and constraints. A high-level data model or an implementation data model can be used at this level.

3. The external or view level includes a number of external schemas or user views. Each external schema describes the part of the database that a particular user group is interested in and hides the rest of the database from that user group. A high-level data model or an implementation data model can be used at this level.

Data Independence

The three-schema architecture can be used to explain the concept of data independence, which can be defined as the capacity to change the schema at one level of a database system without having to change the schema at the next higher level. We can define two types of data independence:

1. Logical data independence is the capacity to change the conceptual schema without having to change external schemas or application programs.

2. Physical data independence is the capacity to change the internal schema without having to change the conceptual (or external) schemas.