The data dictionary facilities of NDB
G. C. H. Sharman, Norman Winterbottom · Very Large Data Bases · 1978
The ANSI/SPAN architecture for data base management systems has proposed that a data dictionary be an integral part of an overall DBMS architecture. In this paper, we develop this approach and describe its use in a prototype data base management system known as NDB. The essential feature of the NDB approach is a data dictionary which uses the same architecture as the data base itself, and is physically integrated with the data base. This constitutes a single source of meta-data [organised in all respects as a general purpose data base], which both controls DBMS operations on and provides documentation to the user. The dictionary is described in terms of entities and named binary relationships, comprising information-oriented description of the meta-data. We show how it may be used in the implementation of intelligent end user facilities, and how these end user facilities may in turn be used to access the data dictionary. As a result it is possible to access and modify both the data dictionary and the database using the same interface and during the same terminal session.