Schema elements

Similar to other development environments, ODABA supports hierarchical schema elements containing data type definitions:

• Project - Each project is defined by a schema. A project is the technical reflection of the view of a subject, which refers to a number of extents as basic concepts of the project. A database may support several projects. Projects may form hierarchies defined by sub-schemata. A project is a module.
• Module - A module defines a larger conceptual area within a project. Each module may consist of a number of sub-modules. Usually each module represents one or more executable unit. A module is a namespace.
• Namespace - A namespace defines a conceptual area that contains data type and global property definitions. Names as data type names, property names, method names and others are unique. A namespace may contain a number of subordinated namespaces.
• Data type - A data type defines the way data is structured. Basically, the schema definition consists of data type definitions as complex data types (structures, views), enumerations and property definitions (extents).
• Property - Properties are defined in the context of a namespace, i.e. there are properties defined as member of a complex data type, but also properties defining namespace global extents.