Progress
Database Design
Guide


The Progress Database and the Relational Model

The Progress database is a relational database management system (RDBMS).You can add, change, manipulate, or delete the data and data structures in your database as your requirements change.

Database Schema and Metaschema

The physical structure of the Progress database consists of the elements of a relational database that you just read about: tables, columns, and indexes. The description of the database’s structure—the files it contains, the columns within the files, views, etc.—is called the database schema or the data definitions.

The underlying structure of a database that makes it possible to store and retrieve data is called the metaschema. That is, the metaschema defines that there can be database files and columns and the structural characteristics of those database parts. All metaschema table names begin with an underscore ( _ ). The metaschema is called the metaschema because it is data about the data.

NOTE: The metaschema is a set of tables that includes itself. Therefore, you can do ordinary queries on the metaschema to examine all table and index definitions, including the definitions of the metaschema itself.

The sports Database

The sports database is one of several sample databases provided with the product; it is frequently used in the documentation to illustrate database concepts and programming techniques. Table 1–1 describes the contents of the sports database.

Table 1–1: The Sports Database 
Table
Description
Customer
Name, address, telephone, credit, and sales information for a specific customer
Invoice
Financial information by invoice for the receivables subsystem
Item
Stocking, pricing, and descriptive information about items in inventory
Local-Default
Format and label information for various countries
Order
Sales and shipping information for orders
Order-Line
Identification of and pricing information for a specific item ordered on a specific order
Ref-Call
Call history for a customer.
Salesrep
Names, regions, and quotas for the sales people
State
U.S. state names and their abbreviations

This database holds the information necessary to track customers, take and process orders, bill customers, and track inventory.


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