Organizing the description of a relational data base

The design and implementation of the data structures used within a software system such as a compiler, an operating system or a data base management system are fundamental to the development of that system. Unfortunately, there are very few standard techniques for designing such data structures and for structuring the software used to support them. This paper proposes that it is possible to use data base techniques to design and implement such data structures. For this reason, it describes a methodology which is used to design large relational data bases, and then demonstrates how the methodology was modified and used to design the internal data structures of a relational data base management system. This paper concludes that this approach produces data structures which are better understood and easier to modify than those resulting from an ad‐hoc approach.