The Levels of Database Architecture

As part of a database model, the idea of database architecture refers to the dissemination of information through different levels of the system. An example of this would be different parts of a company that work together to form the whole and the information needed to perform each individual job within the company. A human resources employee will need information about other employees, but not necessarily the payment data as this falls under the field of accounting. Making sure that each function of the company has the right information is the task of the database administrator that handles the IT database structure.

There are terms to describe the different levels of information in a database model. The external level is the specification of how and what information is sent to a person. Using the previous example, a human resources employee would have an external level limitation of only receiving information that is relevant to an employee. A person in a research department may have access to experiment data that cannot be seen at the external level by those employed in the company administration.

The opposite of the external level would be the internal level. In the internal level, there is no restriction of the information that can be seen. Rather, this part of the database architecture deals with the performance of the database model as a whole, including the efficiency of data return as well as how the information is stored. Most of the work of a database administrator will be with the internal level. The last primary level is the conceptual level, which links all of the external level restrictions to form a complete picture of the company’s total information resources, similar to a road map of permissions. With all of these levels, a full database architecture can be developed.