RDBMS components

Sublanguages— Relational DBMS (RDBMS) include Data Definition Language (DDL) for defining the structure of the database, Data Control Language (DCL) for defining security/access controls, and Data Manipulation Language (DML) for querying and updating data.

Interface drivers—These drivers are code libraries that provide methods to prepare statements, execute statements, fetch results, etc. Examples include ODBC, JDBC, MySQL/PHP, FireBird/Python.

SQL engine—This component interprets and executes the DDL, DCL, and DML statements. It includes three major components (compiler, optimizer, and executor).

Transaction engine—Ensures that multiple SQL statements either succeed or fail as a group, according to application dictates.

Relational engine—Relational objects such as Table, Index, and Referential integrity constraints are implemented in this component.

Storage engine—This component stores and retrieves data from secondary storage, as well as managing transaction commit and rollback, backup and recovery, etc.