After you have read this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Distinguish between the physical and logical view of data.

2. Describe how data is organized: characters, fields, records, files, and databases.

3. Describe databases, database issues, and database management systems (DBMS).

4. Describe five data models: hierarchical, network, relational, multidimensional, and object-oriented.

5. Distinguish among individual, company, distributed, proprietary, and Web databases.

6. Recognize strategic database uses and security concerns.