How It Works
Schema
The agreed shape of a set of data: which fields exist, what type each one is (text, number, date), and how tables relate to each other. AI and analytics pipelines break when incoming data doesn't match the schema they expect.
Origin · no single documented coiner
From the Greek for 'form' or 'plan'. In databases it was formalized in the 1970s — the ANSI/SPARC committee's 1975 three-level architecture describes external, conceptual and internal schemas. No single person coined the computing usage.
No single primary source link for this term.