SQL Server Schema VS Database Schema

Question

I'm new to SQL Server, just some questions on schema. my uni database textbook says database schema is something like a database's structure described in a formal language.

But it seems like SQL Server Schema is more like ownership. Why one thing can have two concepts?

Answer 1

Yes. The word "schema" means two different things.

"schema" in English means "plan, or technical design, or model", and as applied to databases it means the design of all the tables, columns, foreign keys, etc in a database. This is common in database literature going way back.

So the short answer is that "schema" means "the design of a set of tables", but many database systems can manage multiple, independent designs, or schemas. So a the word "schema" came to mean also "the subdivision of a database containing a set of related tables".