Advanced Database Techniques combines advanced techniques with practical advice and many new ideas, methods, and examples for database management students, system specialists, and programmers. It provides a wealth of technical information on database methods and an encyclopedic coverage of advanced techniques that other current books on database lack. An overview covers important definitions in the area of database management and describes such classical notions as file structures, conceptual, physical and external schemas, and relational, network, hierarchical, and entity-relationship models. Remaining chapters offer advanced techniques, methods, and practical advice for functional specification and system design of a database-oriented interactive application; database architecture with qualitative and quantitative optimizations; the prediction of loads and response times; data representation, packing, and protection; selection of data elements and structures in a database; practical extensions of the relational theory to include dynamic relations and schemas, existence and processing constraints and coroutines; software architectures (functional interface and decision machine); and open databases for robotics, image processing, CAD, and artificial intelligence. Extended definitions are provided for conceptual schema, view, soft constraints and selection, relation, and dynamic schema. And an entire chapter is devoted to MSD, a new relational approach to specification and design. New software architectures for database applications are also covered. Advanced Database Techniques describes the 15 functions of a database management system and its internal mechanisms and provides a complete product review of the DBMS ORACLE as well as advice on DBMS purchasing and database administration. Daniel Martin is an independent consultant living in France. He designed and installed the largest distributed database in Europe. Advanced Database Techniques is included in the Information series, edited by Michael Lesk.