Anatomy of an educational network database system
James L. Johnson · Software Practice and Experience · 1984
Abstract The construction of the systems software necessary to support arbitrary network databases is described. The software consists of two packages. First, there is a data description language compiler, which accepts a conceptual description of an arbitrary network and reduces it to a set of specialized data structures. The second component is a set of data manipulation language access routines, which are callable from an application program to store and retrieve data from the structures. The software is essentially an implementation of the CODASYL proposal, although the treatment of sets has been simplified. The main thrust of the discussion is the representation of nodes and sets of an arbitrary network by certain data structures. The software was written to provide a system on which students could practice database design problems and to illustrate systems programming techniques common in database software.