TheANSI-SPARC Architecture, where ANSI-

SPARC stands forAmerican National Standards

Institute, Standards Planning And Requirements
Committee, is an abstract design standard for a
Database Management System(DBMS), first
proposed in 1975.[1]
The ANSI-SPARC model however never became a
formal standard. No mainstream DBMS systems are
fully based on it (they tend not to exhibit full
physical independence or to prevent direct user
access to the conceptual level), but the idea of
logical data independence is widely adopted.
 The internal structure of the database should be unaffected by
changes to the physical aspects of the storage: For example, a
changeover to a new disk.
Three level are:
External level
Conceptual level
Internal level
The Three Level Architecture has the aim of enabling users to
access the same data but with a personalised view of it. The
distancing of the internal level from the external level means
that users do not need to know how the data is physically
stored in the database. This level separation also allows the
Database Administrator (DBA) to change the database storage
structures without affecting the users' views.
 In this architecture, the overall database
description can be defined at three levels,
namely, internal, conceptual, and external
levels and thus, namedthree-level
DBMS architecture
Three schemas (internal, conceptual and
external) show how the database is
internally and externally structured, and so
this type of database architecture is also
known as the three-schema architecture.
 External level

External Level (User Views): A user's

view of the database describes a part of
the database that is relevant to a
particular user. It excludes irrelevant
data as well as data which the user is not
authorised to access.
Theexternal schemasdescribe the
different external views of the data and
there may be many external schemas for
a given database.
 External level

The users view of the database.

Consists of a number of different external views of
the DB.
Describes part of the DB for particular group of users.
Provides a powerful and flexible security
mechanism by hiding parts of the DB from
certain users. The user is not aware of the
existence of any attributes that are missing from
the view.
It permits users to access data in a way that is
customized to their needs, so that the same data can
 The External or View Level:
The external or view level is the highest level of
abstraction of database. It provides a window on the
conceptual view, which allows the user to see only the
data of interest to them. The user can be either an
application program or an end user. There can be many
external views as any number of external schema can
be defined and they can overlap each other. It consist of
the definition of logical records and relationships in the
external view. It also contains the method of deriving
the objects such as entities, attributes and relationships
in the external view from the conceptual view.
 The External Level (User Representation of
Data)
This is the uppermostlevel in the database. It
implements the concept of abstraction as much
as possible. This level is also known as the view
level because it deals with how a user views your
database. The external level is what allows a user
to access a customized version of the data in
your database. Multiple users can work on a
database on the same time because of it.
 The external level also hides the
working of the database from your
users. It maintains the security of the
database by giving users access only
to the data which they need at a
particular time. Any data that is not
needed will not be displayed.
.