GATE CS 2026 Set 2 Q.15: ER Model and Relational Schema Design

In the context of DBMS, consider the two sets T and S given below.

T	S
I: Logical schema	L: Views
II: Physical schema	M: File organization and indexes
III: External schema	N: Relations

Which one of the following is the correct match from T to S?

I - L, II - M, III - N

I - M, II - L, III - N

I - N, II - M, III - L

I - N, II - L, III - M

Official answer and solution

Solution

Match the three levels of the ANSI/SPARC DBMS architecture with their respective database constructs.

In the three-schema DBMS architecture:

Logical (conceptual) schema (I) describes the structure of the database in terms of tables/relations (N).
Physical (internal) schema (II) describes how data is stored on disk using file organization and indexes (M).
External (view) schema (III) defines user-specific database views (L).

Thus the correct match is I - N, II - M, III - L.

Final answer

Option (C)

The answer is the one in the official GATE answer key. The solution is this site's own explanation.

Paper: GATE 2026 Computer Science and Information Technology - Session 2 (CS2)
Question: 15 of 65
Section: Computer Science and Information Technology

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