title: Aztecs

text: An especially prized art form among the Aztecs was featherwork - the creation of intricate and colorful mosaics of feathers, and their use in garments as well as decoration on weaponry, war banners, and warrior suits. The class of highly skilled and honored craftsmen who created feather objects was called the "amanteca", named after the "Amantla" neighborhood in Tenochtitlan where they lived and worked. They did not pay taxes nor were required to perform public service. The Florentine Codex gives information about how feather works were created. The amanteca had two ways of creating their works. One was to secure the feathers in place using agave cord for three-dimensional objects such as fly whisks, fans, bracelets, headgear and other objects. The second and more difficult was a mosaic type technique, which the Spanish also called "feather painting". These were done principally on feather shields and cloaks for idols. Feather mosaics were arrangements of minute fragments of feathers from a wide variety of birds, generally worked on a paper base, made from cotton and paste, then itself backed with amate paper, but bases of other types of paper and directly on amate were done as well. These works were done in layers with "common" feathers, dyed feathers and precious feathers. First a model was made with lower quality feathers and the precious feathers found only on the top layer. The adhesive for the feathers in the Mesoamerican period was made from orchid bulbs. Feathers from local and faraway sources were used, especially in the Aztec Empire. The feathers were obtained from wild birds as well as from domesticated turkeys and ducks, with the finest quetzal feathers coming from Chiapas, Guatemala and Honduras. These feathers were obtained through trade and taxes. Due to the difficulty of conserving feathers, fewer than ten pieces of original Aztec featherwork exist today.


title: Aztecs

text: Mexico City was built on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, gradually replacing and covering the lake, the island and the architecture of Aztec Tenochtitlan. After the fall of Tenochtitlan, Aztec warriors were enlisted as auxiliary troops alongside the Spanish Tlaxcalteca allies, and Aztec forces participated in all of the subsequent campaigns of conquest in northern and southern Mesoamerica. This meant that aspects of Aztec culture and the Nahuatl language continued to expand during the early colonial period as Aztec auxiliary forces made permanent settlements in many of the areas that were put under the Spanish crown.


title: Aztecs

text: The Aztec ruling dynasty continued to govern the indigenous polity of San Juan Tenochtitlan, a division of the Spanish capital of Mexico City, but the subsequent indigenous rulers were mostly puppets installed by the Spanish. One was Andrés de Tapia Motelchiuh, who was appointed by the Spanish. Other former Aztec city states likewise were established as colonial indigenous towns, governed by a local indigenous "gobernador". This office was often initially held by the hereditary indigenous ruling line, with the "gobernador" being the tlatoani, but the two positions in many Nahua towns became separated over time. Indigenous governors were in charge of the colonial political organization of the Indians. In particular they enabled the continued functioning of the tax and obligatory labor of commoner Indians to benefit the Spanish holders of "encomiendas". "Encomiendas" were private grants of labor and taxes from particular indigenous communities to particular Spaniards, replacing the Aztec overlords with Spanish. In the early colonial period some indigenous governors became quite rich and influential and were able to maintain positions of power comparable to that of Spanish encomenderos.


title: Aztecs

text: After the arrival of the Europeans in Mexico and the conquest, indigenous populations declined significantly. This was largely the result of the epidemics of viruses brought to the continent against which the natives had no immunity. In 1520–1521, an outbreak of smallpox swept through the population of Tenochtitlan and was decisive in the fall of the city; further significant epidemics struck in 1545 and 1576.


title: Aztecs

text: There has been no general consensus about the population size of Mexico at the time of European arrival. Early estimates gave very small population figures for the Valley of Mexico, in 1942 Kubler estimated a figure 200,000. In 1963 Borah and Cook used preconquest tax lists to calculate the number of residents in central Mexico, estimating over 18–30 million. Their very high figure has been highly criticized for relying on unwarranted assumptions. Archeologist William Sanders based an estimate on archeological evidence of dwellings, arriving at an estimate of 1–1.2 million inhabitants in the Valley of Mexico. Whitmore used a computer simulation model based on colonial censuses to arrive at an estimate of 1.5 million for the Basin in 1519, and an estimate of 16 million for all of Mexico. Depending on the estimations of the population in 1519 the scale of the decline in the 16th century, range from around 50 percent to around 90 percent – with Sanders's and Whitmore's estimates being around 90 percent.


title: Aztecs

text: Although the Aztec empire fell, some of its highest elites continued to hold elite status in the colonial era. The principal heirs of Moctezuma II and their descendants retained high status. His son Pedro Moctezuma produced a son, who married into Spanish aristocracy and a further generation saw the creation of the title, Count of Moctezuma. From 1696 to 1701, the Viceroy of Mexico was held the title of count of Moctezuma. In 1766, the holder of the title became a Grandee of Spain. In 1865, (during the Second Mexican Empire) the title, which was held by Antonio María Moctezuma-Marcilla de Teruel y Navarro, 14th Count of Moctezuma de Tultengo, was elevated to that of a Duke, thus becoming Duke of Moctezuma, with "de Tultengo" again added in 1992 by Juan Carlos I. Two of Moctezuma's daughters, Doña Isabel Moctezuma and her younger sister, Doña Leonor Moctezuma, were granted extensive "encomiendas" in perpetuity by Hernán Cortes. Doña Leonor Moctezuma married in succession two Spaniards, and left her "encomiendas" to her daughter by her second husband.


title: Aztecs

text: The different Nahua peoples, just as other Mesoamerican indigenous peoples in colonial New Spain, were able to maintain many aspects of their social and political structure under the colonial rule. The basic division the Spanish made was between the indigenous populations, organized under the "República de indios", which was separate from the Hispanic sphere, the "República de españoles". The "República de españoles" included not just Europeans, but also Africans and mixed-race castas. The Spanish recognized the indigenous elites as nobles in the Spanish colonial system, maintaining the status distinction of the preconquest era, and used these noblemen as intermediaries between the Spanish colonial government and their communities. This was contingent on their conversion to Christianity and continuing loyalty to the Spanish crown. Colonial Nahua polities had considerable autonomy to regulate their local affairs. The Spanish rulers did not entirely understand the indigenous political organization, but they recognized the importance of the existing system and their elite rulers. They reshaped the political system utilizing "altepetl" or city-states as the basic unit of governance. In the colonial era, "altepetl" were renamed "cabeceras" or "head towns" (although they often retained the term "altepetl" in local-level, Nahuatl-language documentation), with outlying settlements governed by the "cabeceras" named "sujetos", subject communities. In "cabeceras", the Spanish created Iberian-style town councils, or "cabildos", which usually continued to function as the elite ruling group had in the preconquest era. Population decline due to epidemic disease resulted in many population shifts in settlement patterns, and the formation of new population centers. These were often forced resettlements under the Spanish policy of "congregación". Indigenous populations living in sparsely populated areas were resettled to form new communities, making it easier for them to brought within range of evangelization efforts, and easier for the colonial state to exploit their labor.


title: Aztecs

text: Today the legacy of the Aztecs lives on in Mexico in many forms. Archeological sites are excavated and opened to the public and their artifacts are prominently displayed in museums. Place names and loanwords from the Aztec language Nahuatl permeate the Mexican landscape and vocabulary, and Aztec symbols and mythology have been promoted by the Mexican government and integrated into contemporary Mexican nationalism as emblems of the country.


title: Aztecs

text: During the 19th century, the image of the Aztecs as uncivilized barbarians was replaced with romanticized visions of the Aztecs as original sons of the soil, with a highly developed culture rivaling the ancient European civilizations. When Mexico became independent from Spain, a romanticized version of the Aztecs became a source of images that could be used to ground the new nation as a unique blend of European and American.


title: Aztecs

text: Aztec culture and history has been central to the formation of a Mexican national identity after Mexican independence in 1821. In 17th and 18th century Europe, the Aztecs were generally described as barbaric, gruesome and culturally inferior. Even before Mexico achieved its independence, American-born Spaniards ("criollos") drew on Aztec history to ground their own search for symbols of local pride, separate from that of Spain. Intellectuals used Aztec writings, such as those collected by Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, and writings of Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, and Chimalpahin to understand Mexico's indigenous past in texts by indigenous writers. This search became the basis for what historian D.A. Brading calls "creole patriotism". Seventeenth-century cleric and scientist, Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora acquired the manuscript collection of Texcocan nobleman Alva Ixtlilxochitl. Creole Jesuit Francisco Javier Clavijero published "La Historia Antigua de México" (1780–1781) in his Italian exile following the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, in which he traces the history of the Aztecs from their migration to the last Aztec ruler, Cuauhtemoc. He wrote it expressly to defend Mexico's indigenous past against the slanders of contemporary writers, such as Pauw, Buffon, Raynal, and William Robertson. Archeological excavations in 1790 in the capital's main square uncovered two massive stone sculptures, buried immediately after the fall of Tenochtitlan in the conquest. Unearthed were the famous calendar stone, as well as a statue of Coatlicue. Antonio de León y Gama's 1792 "Descripción histórico y cronológico de las dos piedras" examines the two stone monoliths. A decade later, German scientist Alexander von Humboldt spent a year in Mexico, during his four-year expedition to Spanish America. One of his early publications from that period was "Views of the Cordilleras and Monuments of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas". Humboldt was important in disseminating images of the Aztecs to scientists and general readers in the Western world.


title: Aztecs

text: In the realm of religion, late colonial paintings of the Virgin of Guadalupe have examples of her depicted floating above the iconic nopal cactus of the Aztecs. Juan Diego, the Nahua to whom the apparition was said to appear, links the dark Virgin to Mexico's Aztec past.


title: Aztecs

text: When New Spain achieved independence in 1821 and became a monarchy, the First Mexican Empire, its flag had the traditional Aztec eagle on a nopal cactus. The eagle had a crown, symbolizing the new Mexican monarchy. When Mexico became a republic after the overthrow of the first monarch Agustín de Iturbide in 1822, the flag was revised showing the eagle with no crown. In the 1860s, when the French established the Second Mexican Empire under Maximilian of Habsburg, the Mexican flag retained the emblematic eagle and cactus, with elaborate symbols of monarchy. After the defeat of the French and their Mexican collaborators, the Mexican Republic was re-established, and the flag returned to its republican simplicity. This emblem has also been adopted as Mexico's national Coat of Arms, and is emblazoned on official buildings, seals, and signs.


title: Aztecs

text: Tensions within post-independence Mexico pitted those rejecting the ancient civilizations of Mexico as source of national pride, the "Hispanistas", mostly politically conservative Mexican elites, and those who saw them as a source of pride, the "Indigenistas", who were mostly liberal Mexican elites. Although the flag of the Mexican Republic had the symbol of the Aztecs as its central element, conservative elites were generally hostile to the current indigenous populations of Mexico or crediting them with a glorious pre-Hispanic history. Under Mexican President Antonio López de Santa Anna, pro-indigenist Mexican intellectuals did not find a wide audience. With Santa Anna's overthrow in 1854, Mexican liberals and scholars interested in the indigenous past became more active. Liberals were more favorably inclined to the indigenous populations and their history, but considered a pressing matter being the "Indian Problem". Liberals' commitment to equality before the law meant that for upwardly mobile indigenous, such as Zapotec Benito Juárez, who rose in the ranks of the liberals to become Mexico's first president of indigenous origins, and Nahua intellectual and politician Ignacio Altamirano, a disciple of Ignacio Ramírez, a defender of the rights of the indigenous, liberalism presented a way forward in that era. For investigations of Mexico's indigenous past, however, the role of moderate liberal José Fernando Ramírez is important, serving as director of the National Museum and doing research utilizing codices, while staying out of the fierce conflicts between liberals and conservatives that led to a decade of civil war. Mexican scholars who pursued research on the Aztecs in the late 19th century were , , Manuel Orozco y Berra, Joaquín García Icazbalceta, and Francisco del Paso y Troncoso contributing significantly to the 19th-century development of Mexican scholarship on the Aztecs.


title: Aztecs

text: The late 19th century in Mexico was a period in which Aztec civilization became a point of national pride. The era was dominated by liberal military hero, Porfirio Díaz, a mestizo from Oaxaca who was president of Mexico from 1876 to 1911. His policies opening Mexico to foreign investors and modernizing the country under a firm hand controlling unrest, "Order and Progress", undermined Mexico's indigenous populations and their communities. However, for investigations of Mexico's ancient civilizations, his was a benevolent regime, with funds supporting archeological research and for protecting monuments. "Scholars found it more profitable to confine their attention to Indians who had been dead for a number of centuries." His benevolence saw the placement of a monument to Cuauhtemoc in a major traffic roundabout ("glorieta") of the wide Paseo de la Reforma, which he inaugurated in 1887. In world's fairs of the late 19th century, Mexico's pavilions included a major focus on its indigenous past, especially the Aztecs. Mexican scholars such as Alfredo Chavero helped shape the cultural image of Mexico at these exhibitions.


title: Aztecs

text: The Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) and significant participation of indigenous people in the struggle in many regions, ignited a broad government-sponsored political and cultural movement of "indigenismo", with symbols of Mexico's Aztec past becoming ubiquitous, most especially in Mexican muralism of Diego Rivera.


title: Aztecs

text: In their works, Mexican authors such as Octavio Paz and Agustin Fuentes have analyzed the use of Aztec symbols by the modern Mexican state, critiquing the way it adopts and adapts indigenous culture to political ends, yet they have also in their works made use of the symbolic idiom themselves. Paz for example critiqued the architectural layout of the National Museum of Anthropology, which constructs a view of Mexican history as culminating with the Aztecs, as an expression of a nationalist appropriation of Aztec culture.


title: Aztecs

text: Scholars in Europe and the United States increasingly wanted investigations into Mexico's ancient civilizations, starting in the nineteenth century. Humboldt had been extremely important bringing ancient Mexico into broader scholarly discussions of ancient civilizations. French Americanist Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg (1814–1874) asserted that "science in our own time has at last effectively studied and rehabilitated America and the Americans from the [previous] viewpoint of history and archeology. It was Humboldt [...] who woke us from our sleep." Frenchman Jean-Frédéric Waldeck published "Voyage pittoresque et archéologique dans la province d'Yucatan pendant les années 1834 et 1836" in 1838. Although not directly connected with the Aztecs, it contributed to the increased interest in ancient Mexican studies in Europe. English aristocrat Lord Kingsborough spent considerable energy in their pursuit of understanding of ancient Mexico. Kingsborough answered Humboldt's call for the publication of all known Mexican codices, publishing nine volumes of "Antiquities of Mexico" (1831–1846) that were richly illustrated, bankrupting him. He was not directly interested in the Aztecs, but rather in proving that Mexico had been colonized by Jews. However, his publication of these valuable primary sources gave others access to them.


title: Aztecs

text: In the United States in the early 19th century, interest in ancient Mexico propelled John Lloyd Stephens to travel to Mexico and then publish well-illustrated accounts in the early 1840s. But the research of a half-blind Bostonian, William Hickling Prescott, into the Spanish conquest of Mexico resulted in his highly popular and deeply researched "The Conquest of Mexico" (1843). Although not formally trained as a historian, Prescott drew on the obvious Spanish sources, but also Ixtlilxochitl and Sahagún's history of the conquest. His resulting work was a mixture of pro- and anti-Aztec attitudes. It was not only a bestseller in English, it also influenced Mexican intellectuals, including the leading conservative politician, Lucas Alamán. Alamán pushed back against his characterization of the Aztecs. In the assessment of Benjamin Keen, Prescott's history "has survived attacks from every quarter, and still dominates the conceptions of the laymen, if not the specialist, concerning Aztec civilization". In the later 19th century, businessman and historian Hubert Howe Bancroft oversaw a huge project, employing writers and researchers, to write the history the "Native Races" of North America, including Mexico, California, and Central America. One entire work was devoted to ancient Mexico, half of which concerned the Aztecs. It was a work of synthesis drawing on Ixtlilxochitl and Brasseur de Bourbourg, among others.


title: Aztecs

text: When the International Congress of Americanists was formed in Nancy, France in 1875, Mexican scholars became active participants, and Mexico City has hosted the biennial multidisciplinary meeting six times, starting in 1895. Mexico's ancient civilizations have continued to be the focus of major scholarly investigations by Mexican and international scholars.


title: Aztecs

text: The Nahuatl language is today spoken by 1.5 million people, mostly in mountainous areas in the states of central Mexico. Mexican Spanish today incorporates hundreds of loans from Nahuatl, and many of these words have passed into general Spanish use, and further into other world languages.


title: Aztecs

text: In Mexico, Aztec place names are ubiquitous, particularly in central Mexico where the Aztec empire was centered, but also in other regions where many towns, cities and regions were established under their Nahuatl names, as Aztec auxiliary troops accompanied the Spanish colonizers on the early expeditions that mapped New Spain. In this way even towns, that were not originally Nahuatl speaking came to be known by their Nahuatl names. In Mexico City there are commemorations of Aztec rulers, including on the Mexico City Metro, line 1, with stations named for Moctezuma II and Cuauhtemoc.


title: Aztecs

text: Mexican cuisine continues to be based on staple elements of Mesoamerican cooking and, particularly, of Aztec cuisine: corn, chili, beans, squash, tomato, avocado. Many of these staple products continue to be known by their Nahuatl names, carrying in this way ties to the Aztec people who introduced these foods to the Spaniards and to the world. Through spread of ancient Mesoamerican food elements, particularly plants, Nahuatl loan words ("chocolate", "tomato", "chili", "avocado", "tamale", "taco", "pupusa", "chipotle", "pozole", "atole") have been borrowed through Spanish into other languages around the world. Through the spread and popularity of Mexican cuisine, the culinary legacy of the Aztecs can be said to have a global reach. Today, Aztec images and Nahuatl words are often used to lend an air of authenticity or exoticism in the marketing of Mexican cuisine.


title: Aztecs

text: The idea of the Aztecs has captivated the imaginations of Europeans since the first encounters, and has provided many iconic symbols to Western popular culture. In his book "The Aztec Image in Western Thought", Benjamin Keen argued that Western thinkers have usually viewed Aztec culture through a filter of their own cultural interests.


title: Aztecs

text: The Aztecs and figures from Aztec mythology feature in Western culture. The name of Quetzalcoatl, a feathered serpent god, has been used for a genus of pterosaurs, "Quetzalcoatlus", a large flying reptile with a wingspan of as much as . Quetzalcoatl has appeared as a character in many books, films and video games. D.H. Lawrence gave the name "Quetzalcoatl" to an early draft of his novel "The Plumed Serpent", but his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, insisted on a change of title. American author Gary Jennings wrote two acclaimed historical novels set in Aztec-period Mexico, "Aztec" (1980) and "Aztec Autumn" (1997). The novels were so popular that four more novels in the Aztec series were written after his death.


title: Aztecs

text: Aztec society has also been depicted in cinema. The Mexican feature film "The Other Conquest" (Spanish: "La Otra Conquista") from 2000 was directed by Salvador Carrasco, and illustrated the colonial aftermath of the 1520s Spanish Conquest of Mexico. It adopted the perspective of an Aztec scribe, Topiltzin, who survived the attack on the temple of Tenochtitlan. The 1989 film "Retorno a Aztlán" by Juan Mora Catlett is a work of historical fiction set during the rule of Motecuzoma I, filmed in Nahuatl and with the alternative Nahuatl title "Necuepaliztli in Aztlan". In Mexican exploitation B movies of the 1970s, a recurring figure was the "Aztec mummy" as well as Aztec ghosts and sorcerers.


title: Legion (TV series)

text: Legion is an American superhero television series created by Noah Hawley for FX, based on the Marvel Comics character David Haller / Legion. Set in an alternate timeline of the "X-Men" film series, it was produced by FX Productions in association with Marvel Television, and ran for three seasons from 2017 to 2019, with Hawley serving as showrunner.


title: Legion (TV series)

text: Dan Stevens starred as David Haller, a "mutant" diagnosed with schizophrenia at a young age. Rachel Keller, Aubrey Plaza, Bill Irwin, Jeremie Harris, Amber Midthunder, and Jean Smart also starred, along with Katie Aselton during the first season; Navid Negahban, Jemaine Clement, and Hamish Linklater joined the cast for the second season; Lauren Tsai joined for the third season.


title: Legion (TV series)

text: The series follows Haller as he tries to control his mutant powers and the sinister forces trying to control them while evading a government agency. FX and Marvel Television announced a new collaboration to create a television series based on the Marvel Comics character Legion in October 2015, with Hawley signed on to write and direct the pilot. He wanted to show Haller as an "unreliable narrator", including mixing 1960s design with modern-day elements, and filming the series through the title character's distorted view of reality.


title: Legion (TV series)

text: The eight-episode first season of "Legion" aired from February to March 2017. An eleven-episode second season aired from April to June 2018. The eight-episode third and final season premiered on June 24, 2019. A total of 27 episodes aired over three seasons. All three seasons received critical acclaim for their distinct narrative structure and visual style, as a unique approach to the superhero genre.


title: Legion (TV series)

text: David Haller was diagnosed with schizophrenia at a young age and has been a patient in various psychiatric hospitals since the diagnosis. He was committed to the latest facility by his adoptive sister, Amy Haller. After Haller has an encounter with a fellow psychiatric patient, he is confronted with the possibility that there may be more to him than mental illness where an incident led to the death of his friend Lenore "Lenny" Busker. Hunted by the government agency Division 3 in the first season, Haller is saved by a group of mutants at a facility called Summerland, who explain that he is also a mutant. Haller eventually discovers that his mind is infected by the parasitic mutant Amahl Farouk / Shadow King and is able to force the villain from his mind.


title: Legion (TV series)

text: In the second season, Haller returns after a year spent trapped in a mysterious orb. In his absence, his Summerland allies have joined forces with Division 3 to stop Farouk's plan to find his real body and amass world-ending power. Farouk even uses Oliver Bird and a device stolen from Division 3 to enable Lenny to be reborn in Amy's body.


title: Legion (TV series)

text: Due to Shadow King's evidence, David flees from Division 3 with Lenny where they set up a place for his cult as David gets a time-traveling mutant named Switch on his side. He plans to improve Switch's powers in order to protect the world. David kidnaps Cary Loudermilk to help him amplify Switch's powers. David then uses Switch to go back to when he was a child and witnesses various parts of his parents' past including his father Charles Xavier going to war and meeting his mother Gabrielle Haller at a mental facility, his father locating and meeting Farouk, and how Farouk got into him in the first place, though this does bring both sides into conflict with the Time Eaters.


title: Legion (TV series)

text: After completing work on the first season of "Fargo" at FX in 2014, Noah Hawley was presented with the opportunity to develop the first live-action television series based on the X-Men comics, of which he was a fan when growing up. Hawley was initially pitched two different ideas for the potential series, including an adaptation of the comics' Hellfire Club, but the ideas did not interest Hawley. Instead, he worked with "X-Men" film series writer and producer Simon Kinberg to reverse-engineer an idea for the series. After discussing an "interesting show in this genre ... that isn't being done", the two settled on the character of David Haller / Legion. Hawley found the character interesting because of his mental illness, and for the potential of the series to depict his unique mindset. He pitched the series as "a deconstruction of a villain ... and a love story".


title: Legion (TV series)

text: In October 2015, FX ordered a pilot for "Legion", with Marvel Television and FX Productions producing; FX Productions would handle the physical production. Hawley was set to write the pilot, and executive produce the series alongside "X-Men" film producers Lauren Shuler Donner, Bryan Singer, and Kinberg, Marvel Television executives Jeph Loeb and Jim Chory, and Hawley's "Fargo" collaborator John Cameron. Steve Blackman, Alan Fine, Stan Lee, Joe Quesada, and Karim Zreik also executive produce. Hawley's initial script for the series was described as "less fractured", "cohesive [and] much more regular." However, he quickly reconceived the series "and decided more "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", Terrence Malick, more whimsy, more impressionistic and went in that direction." By January 2016, FX President John Landgraf was confident that the series would be picked up by the network, saying that "the vast majority of things that we pilot do go forward to series" and "the scripts [for "Legion"] are extraordinary." That May, FX ordered an eight-episode first season of "Legion".


title: Legion (TV series)

text: In June, Landgraf said that the series, if successful, could run for as many seasons as Hawley feels it needs to tell the story. Discussing future seasons, Hawley said in January 2017 that he was open to continuing the story past the first season, but didn't want the audience to get to the end of the first run and have "no resolution of any kind at the end of it." Star Dan Stevens said, "I know for a fact that there are more issues that David has to deal with than the one that we really address in the first season." Also at that time, Singer explained the executive producers' roles in the series, saying that he, Donner, and Kinberg brought their experience from making the "X-Men" films, but their involvement generally consisted of giving small notes on scripts and early cuts of episodes. In March, FX ordered a second season of the series. With the end of the first season, Hawley said that the second season would consist of ten episodes, and explained that he was unsure at that time how long he would like the series to run: "I think there were things about the first season that [I felt] would unfold faster than they did, and things that I thought would take longer that I dealt with more quickly. I think by the end of the second year I'll have a better sense of how many more years there are to go".


title: Legion (TV series)

text: Singer was removed as an executive producer on the series in January 2018, and his name was removed from the credits of the series' episodes beginning with the second season, due to sexual abuse allegations against him being made. Hawley said that it had been Singer who had asked for his name to be removed, and that Singer had only had limited involvement with the series anyway; he had initially expressed interest in directing the pilot of the series, but had not been directly involved since Hawley took over. That month, Hawley stated that he was planning for a third season of the series, and soon elaborated that the second season would clearly lead in to the third, and that "it's not a show where each year there's a new villain and the end of the table. It's a three or four or five act story where each season is another chapter in that story." In March, he discussed the proposed acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney, saying that he was unsure how it would affect the series and that he had not discussed the issue with either studio, but that he believed "as long as the show is making noise and is watched by people, I won't be worried that they're going to cancel "Legion" because it doesn't fit in with their larger brand."


title: Legion (TV series)

text: In June 2018, FX renewed "Legion" for a third season. In February 2019, Hawley said that the third season would premiere in June 2019, and would be the final season of the series, which he said had always been his intent. On May 2, 2019, FX said the final season would premiere on June 24, 2019.


title: Legion (TV series)

text: Kinberg teased in November 2015 that the series would tell "X-Men stories in a slightly different way and even with a slightly different tone" from the films, noting the differences in tone between the "operatic" "X-Men" films and the "irreverent and hysterical" "Deadpool", and feeling that "Legion" gives "us an opportunity to go even further ... in some ways to sort of blow up the paradigm of comic book or superhero stories and almost do our "Breaking Bad" of superhero stories." Loeb noted that "the core" of all "X-Men" comic books has always been that "the X-Men were different ... We live in a world right now where diversity and uniqueness and whether or not we fit in is something that's on our minds twenty-four hours a day. The X-Men have never been more relevant than they are right now." Hawley added, "The great thing about exploring this character is before he has an opinion about anyone else, he has to figure out his own shit. That's what we all have to do. This journey isn't necessarily racing toward a battle with an entity, so much as embracing the battle within."


title: Legion (TV series)

text: In May 2016, Hawley described his take on the series as being inspired by the works of David Lynch, and said that "the structure of a story should reflect the content of the story. If the story, as in this case, is about a guy who is either schizophrenic or he has these abilities, i.e., he doesn't know what's real and what's not real, then the audience should have the same experience ... my goal with this is to do something whimsical and imaginative and unexpected. Not just because I want to do something different, but because it feels like the right way to tell this story." Elaborating on structuring the series to reflect Haller's point of view, Hawley said, "I love the idea that even when you're in it on the journey, there is this "Alice in Wonderland" quality to it, of a story within a story." Discussing the increasing popularity of unreliable narrators in television, Hawley said that he wanted to avoid making the audience think that the series is a puzzle that needs to be solved by solving the mysteries for them upfront—"We're going to take a character out of confusion into clarity and an audience out of mystery into clarity." Hawley deliberately chose not to directly adapt any storylines from the comics, feeling that "you're bound to offend somebody, no matter what you do" in that situation. Instead, he wanted to take the character of Legion and basic set-up around him, and "play" with that, which he described in relation to "Fargo"—"my job was not to remake the movie, to sort of retell a story that had already been told, but to try to tell a different story with the same effect, the same impact."


title: Legion (TV series)

text: Concerning the mental illness aspects of the character, Hawley said, "It's a tragic condition that people have, and so I don't want to use it for entertainment purposes ... if we can ground that [aspect] for the audience, then the idea that he's fallen in love and that he's not ill, there's a hope to that that the audience is gonna grab onto." In January 2017, Hawley explained that he was willing to use different tropes from the superhero genre in the series, such as superhero costumes with capes, if necessary, but did want to avoid "sending a message that all conflict can only be resolved through battle. There is a sense in a lot of these stories that everything always builds to a big fight ... I wanted to find a story that was just as exciting and interesting but doesn't send the message that in the end that 'might makes right'." At the end of the first season, Hawley said, "I like this idea of having to face our demons", with the first season seeing Haller go through an internal struggle with the malevolent Shadow King occupying his mind, and then the second season seeing that character possess someone else "making it an exterior agent. And there's going to be something very complicated about going to war with himself. It's been with him since he was a baby, it's like a phantom limb now, it's part of him." Hawley said he preferred this idea of a villain "worthy of creating a whole story around", rather than a villain-of-the year. He was unsure at the time how long that storyline would continue throughout the show, but said "it's a fascinating setup to follow."


title: Legion (TV series)

text: In January 2016, Rachel Keller was cast as the female lead of the series, after her breakout role in "Fargo". In early February, Stevens, Aubrey Plaza, and Jean Smart were cast as Haller, his friend Lenny Busker, and therapist Melanie Bird, respectively. Keller's role was revealed to be Syd Barrett. Later that month, Jeremie Harris was cast in the regular role of Ptonomy Wallace, and Amber Midthunder was cast as the savant Kerry Loudermilk. In March, Katie Aselton was cast as Haller's older sister Amy. With the full series order in May 2016, Bill Irwin was added to the cast, in the role of Cary Loudermilk.


title: Legion (TV series)

text: Stevens, Keller, Plaza, Irwin, Harris, Midthunder, and Smart returned for the second season, with Aselton making a guest appearance in the season before Amy's body is transformed into a new one for Busker. They are joined by Navid Negahban, cast as the true form of the Shadow King, a character that appeared in several different forms throughout the first season. Jemaine Clement and Hamish Linklater also star in the second season, after having guest roles during the first season as Oliver Bird, the husband of Melanie, and the "Interrogator" Clark Debussy, respectively.


title: Legion (TV series)

text: Season 3 added relative newcomer Lauren Tsai as Switch, "a young mutant whose secret ability serves as the key to executing David Haller's plan". She is loosely based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. In February, it was announced that the characters Gabrielle Haller and Charles Xavier would appear, played by Stephanie Corneliussen and Harry Lloyd, respectively; Prior to Lloyd's casting, Patrick Stewart was approached about reprising his role as Xavier from the film series.


title: Legion (TV series)

text: Though he put little thought into the aesthetics of the series when writing the pilot, as a director Hawley wanted the series to be highly stylized, describing his vision for it as "a 1964 Terence Stamp movie". It was not feasible to literally translate Bill Sienkiewicz's iconic artwork of the character to the screen, and Hawley wanted the series to have "its own visual aesthetic to it, and part of that is being a story kind of out of time and out of place". He stated that "the design of a show has to have its own internal logic", and compared this sensibility to the series "Hannibal", which he said was "a great example of something that had this almost fetishistic beauty to everything that you saw, whether it was food or violence." Hawley elaborated that the design choice of 60s British films came about because "this whole show is not the world, it's David's of the world. He's piecing his world together from nostalgia and memory and the world becomes that."


title: Legion (TV series)

text: Filming for the pilot took place in Vancouver, with Hawley directing and Dana Gonzales serving as cinematographer. With the series order, the rest of the first season were set to also film in Vancouver, with Craig Wrobleski also working as a cinematographer. Both Gonzales and Wrobleski previously worked with Hawley on "Fargo". The pilot featured a large amount of in-camera effects, which Hawley admitted would be a challenge for the series' directors to maintain, given he had 21 days to film the pilot, but the subsequent episodes were only scheduled 8 days of filming each. Some of these shoots ultimately had to be extended to 10 or 11 days filming to meet Hawley's vision. For the second season, the series relocated its production to California to take advantage of tax incentives provided by the California Film Commission under its "Program 2.0" initiative.


title: Legion (TV series)

text: Jeff Russo was revealed to be composing the series' score in October 2016. Hawley stated that when first meeting with Russo about the series, he told the latter that he wanted the series to sound like Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon", explaining "that album more than anything is really the soundscape of mental illness to some degree". Russo felt that "the important part is allowing the humanity of these characters to really shine through", and in addition to an orchestra he used "a bunch of old synthesizers" and "a lot of interesting sound design" to represent the "otherworldly" elements of the series. With the series' premiere, Russo reiterated that the "through-line" of the series is the relationship between Haller and Barrett, and said that a love story "lends itself to musical moments. It allows it to underscore the character." After his early meetings with Hawley, Russo developed some initial ideas for the score, and created three different themes to represent Haller. He adapted these ideas to fit the episodes once they had been edited. A soundtrack album for the first season was released digitally on February 24, 2017, on Amazon.com.


title: Legion (TV series)

text: Landgraf stated, in January 2016, that the series would be set in a universe parallel to the "X-Men" films where "the US government is in the early days of being aware that something called mutants exist but the public is not". He felt it was unlikely that characters would cross over between the show and films, but noted that this could change between then and the premiere of the series. That July, an article on Marvel.com referred to Legion as one of several characters joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), suggesting that "Legion" would be set in that shared universe like Marvel Television's other series. The next month, Singer said that "Legion" had actually been designed to fit into the "X-Men" universe, but also to stand alone, so "you wouldn't have to label" the relationship between the series and the films. He teased plans to have the series "relate to future "X-Men" movies".


title: Legion (TV series)

text: At New York Comic-Con 2016, Donner said that the series is "far from the "X-Men" movies, but still lives in that universe. The only way for "X-Men" to keep moving forward is to be original and to surprise. And this is a surprise. It is very, very different." Hawley explained that because the series is depicting the title character's "subjective reality", it would not have to address any connections to the films straight away, noting that "Fargo", which is connected to the 1996 film of the same name, at first "had to stand on its own feet" before exploring those connections more; "We have to earn the right to be part of this universe. My hope is we create something so strong that the people in the movie studio call and say they would be foolish enough not to connect these things." He did state that "you can't tell this story without" acknowledging that Legion is the son of the incarnation of Charles Xavier who appears in the films (portrayed by Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy). In regards to the MCU, Loeb stated that his involvement in the series was a sign that "bridges are being made" between Marvel and Fox, "but I don't want to make any promises ... Marvel heroes at their core are people who are damaged and are trying to figure out who they are in life. It doesn't matter whether or not they're X-Men, Tony Stark, Matt Murdock or Peter Parker ... If you start at a place as strong as David's character is and you have a storyteller like Noah, then it's Marvel. In that way, it all connected." Set designer Michael Wylie had tried to put Roxxon Corporation and Stark Industries logos as Easter eggs in "Legion" but was not allowed to since "Legion" existed in a separate universe than Marvel Television's MCU-related series.


title: Legion (TV series)

text: Loeb and Donner stated in January 2017 that there were no plans to have "Legion" be the first in a series of connected shows on FX, like Marvel Television's group of interconnected "Defenders" series on Netflix, and that "Legion" and the "X-Men" series being developed for Fox are "not going to get in each other's way." Donner stated that the series was just a chance to bring an X-Men character to the screen who was not going to be used by the films. The producers hoped that audiences would watch the show because of its character-focus and the talents of Hawley and the cast, rather than to "see a Marvel franchise show." Donner also noted that having Hawley focus on Haller's perspective of reality rather than connections to the "X-Men" films allowed the series to avoid the convoluted continuity of the films, "because we play with so many different timelines, and we rebooted and not really rebooted and all that" throughout the films. Therefore, "the cinematic universe will not worry about "Legion". They will not worry about these TV worlds at all. They will just continue in the way that they have been continuing." For the onscreen confirmation that Xavier is Haller's father in "Chapter 7", with Xavier's signature wheelchair shown in a brief flashback, the series' production was able to choose from any of the variant wheelchairs used throughout the film series. They settled on the version from "", with the prop used in that film being brought out of storage for the show.


title: Legion (TV series)

text: Prior to Harry Lloyd's casting as a young Charles Xavier in the third season, in March 2017, Patrick Stewart was approached about reprising his role as Xavier from the film series, saying he was "Absolutely 100%" willing to reprise the role; while having Stewart return as a present-day Xavier had been "seriously considered" by showrunner Noah Hawley, he elected the older character's presence to be unnecessary upon deciding to have the season revolve around time travel, casting Lloyd instead after finding James McAvoy to be unavailable for filming.


title: Legion (TV series)

text: "Legion" aired on FX in the United States, and on Fox channels in over 125 other countries, releasing using a "day-and-date" delivery system so that viewers around the world get the series on the same day as the U.S.; Fox Networks Group's sales division handles distribution of the series to third parties.


title: Legion (TV series)

text: The first season was released on Blu-ray and DVD in region 1 on March 27, 2018, in region 2 on October 2, 2017, and in region 4 on November 22, 2017. The second season was released as a manufacture on demand DVD in region 1 on October 30, 2018.


title: Legion (TV series)

text: Writing for Screen Rant, J.M. Brandt noted that FX extensively advertised the series, but was debuting the 90 minute (with commercials) premiere at 10:00pm on a Wednesday night, later than other genre "monster hits" like "Game of Thrones" and "The Walking Dead". Brandt felt that the series' success would heavily depend on DVR viewing "to bolster what might be a likely smallish live audience". Following the series premiere, "Legion"s debut ratings were described as "OK, not great", in line with other cable series debuts, but lower than other high-profile FX debuts such as "American Crime Story" and Hawley's own "Fargo".


title: Legion (TV series)

text: The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 90% approval rating for the first season, with an average rating of 8.45/10 based on 237 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Bold, intelligent, and visually arresting, "Legion" is a masterfully surreal and brilliantly daring departure from traditional superhero conceits." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 82 out of 100 based on 40 reviews for the season, indicating what the website considers to be "universal acclaim".


title: Legion (TV series)

text: Ben Travers from "IndieWire" called the first season "the most intricate, intimate superhero story to date." Travers praised the relatability and uniqueness of the show and how it never lost his interest. He wrote that "David’s story is one quickly identifiable to anyone who’s questioned themselves, and yet wholly unique to his one-of-a-kind point of view. The combination of character and presentation makes for constantly fascinating television." Travers was especially impressed with the quality of Legion's set pieces and the performances of the main cast. He writes "the sets could be admired independent of the show if they didn’t add so much to it, and the entire production raises its artistry to a level atypical of superhero stories (and at least on par with the best design on TV)" and "toss in dynamite performances (Jean Smart, we owe you a rave) matched by sizzling editing most Marvel movies would envy, and boom — 'Legion' is top-tier TV, right off the bat." His final grade of the first season was an A.


title: Legion (TV series)

text: A 91% approval rating for the second season was reported by Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 7.75/10 based on 160 reviews, and a critical consensus reading, ""Legion" returns with a smart, strange second season that settles into a straighter narrative without sacrificing its unique sensibilities." Metacritic assigned a score of 85 out of 100 based on 10 reviews for the season, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: Legion (TV series)

text: David Fear from "Rolling Stone" called Legion "the most mindblowing show on TV right now." He wrote that the show as a whole "keeps pushing the boundaries of the genre - then obliterates them entirely." Fear has heavy praise for season 2's uniqueness, and specifically praises a key scene in the first episode where the titular character Legion and his arch nemesis the Shadow King have a dance battle and relates it back to how he enjoys the show as a whole. He writes "Since "Legion"‘s sophomore season started airing in April, I have watched this Bob-Fosse-meets-Maori-tribal-dance scene several dozen times. Every time I see it, I think: It makes no sense. It makes "complete" sense. It is self-indulgent, and utterly insane, and 19 different kinds of perfect. It inspires a total and utter sense of bliss. It’s familiar, riddled with pastiche and shout-outs, and totally "sui generis." It is, in a way, exactly how I feel about "Legion" as a whole."


title: Legion (TV series)

text: Allison Shoemaker from "Consequence" has a less positive review of the show. Shoemaker wrote that season 2 "looks great and not much else" and that it "ends on a note that's hollow and hard to accept." Shoemaker also criticizes the character development of some of the side characters, and thought that they were very underdeveloped. She wrote "when you fall in love with a show, you sometimes make excuses for awhile and hope it gets its shit together. 'Well, Lenny is fascinating,' you say, justifying the paper-thin characterizations (and not just of women; Ptonomy, Oliver, and Clark are also all underdeveloped.)." Shoemaker's overall verdict of the season was that "There’s so much mess and emptiness. Looks great. Less filling." She gave the finale a D+ grade and the overall season a C+.


title: Legion (TV series)

text: Rotten Tomatoes reported a 93% approval rating for the third season, with an average rating of 7.9/10 based on 71 reviews. and a critical consensus reading, "In its final season, "Legion" remains a singular piece of visually arresting, mind-bending television that never fails to surprise." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 72 out of 100 based on 6 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Legion (TV series)

text: Tim Goodman from "The Hollywood Reporter" called the third season "weirdly told and wonderfully acted" but also cautioned viewers to not "get hung up on the plot." He gives this warning because he believes that viewers tend to get disappointed when TV shows do not line up with their exact expectations for the plot and writes that "if you were expecting something predictable or literal, well, you weren’t paying attention "from the very first frame"." Goodman reviewed the first four episodes of the third season and wrote that he was "loving the direction the third and final season of "Legion" is going in because it has been less about Marvel and more about Hawley and, given the television track record of each, I’ll take the latter every time." His main thoughts on the first half of season 3 are that "Hawley is once again having a blast reimagining a Marvel superhero show and that "he is tripling down on the visual gymnastics and mind-altering aspects."


title: Legion (TV series)

text: In a less favorable review with a similar critique to Shoemaker's review of Season 2, David Sims from "The Atlantic" called the third season "visually dazzling, but little else." He writes that "The set design is striking, and Hawley’s direction even more so: The pilot is rife with elaborately choreographed shots in which not a detail is out of place. It’s truly cinematic stuff that deserves to be taken in on the biggest screen possible." However, he critiques the show for not being able to stick to one main message and having messily delivered themes, which makes the overall story weaker. He wrote that the show "isn’t sure if it wants to be a show about David’s abilities, or about mental illness" and that "it tries so hard to dazzle that it forgets to tell a meaningful story."


title: Legion (TV series)

text: Discussing the series' exploration of mental illness, Charles Pulliam-Moore of io9 stated that schizophrenia is widely featured in popular culture and is generally misrepresented and noted that giving Haller schizophrenia was a change from the comics where the character had dissociative identity disorder. He felt that the series takes advantage of this change both to show "mind-bending, trippy moments meant to convey to viewers how fractured and disorienting David's perceptions of reality can be" and by having characters like Melanie Bird insist that Haller can improve with treatment and counselling. Pulliam-Moore explained that other telepaths with mental illnesses in the "X-Men" franchise—Jason Stryker in "X2", Jean Grey in "", and Charles Xavier in "Logan"—were all treated with drugs, and praised the alternative therapy explored in the series, as well as the fact that the removal of the Shadow King from Haller's mind was not an excuse to ignore the mental illness issues moving forward. He concluded, "It's that idea—that healing is an ongoing, complex, and dynamic process—that made "Legion"s first season so strong", and hoped that it would be continued in the second season of the series.


title: Legion (TV series)

text: Tony Stallings from "Hollywood Insider" also discussed Legion's take on mental illness and mental health problems. He wrote that the show "is the first of its kind, as no other series in its genre has addressed the issue of mental health within the makeup of a superhero show quite like it has before or since." He thought that the show's choice to connect "David’s power with his mental instability raises the stakes" and that "it makes David as much of a danger to his friends as he is to his enemies despite noble intentions." Stallings thought that Hawley provided an accurate and closer look at mental illness with the show's writing and that "he demonstrates how severely it can impact people’s lives by weaponizing David’s disorder into potentially lethal powers and shows how important it is for David to get the treatment he needs to keep everyone around him safe." In his opinion, the show's best take on mental health is that it shows that "treatment itself is more than just medicine or pills. The most important treatment is support."


title: Gaia

text: In Greek mythology, Gaia (; from Ancient Greek , a poetical form of , 'land' or 'earth'), also spelled Gaea , is the personification of the Earth and one of the Greek primordial deities. Gaia is the ancestral mother—sometimes parthenogenic—of all life. She is the mother of Uranus (the sky), from whose sexual union she bore the Titans (themselves parents of many of the Olympian gods), the Cyclopes, and the Giants; as well as of Pontus (the sea), from whose union she bore the primordial sea gods. Her equivalent in the Roman pantheon was Terra.


title: Gaia

text: The Greek name Γαῖα ("Gaia" or ) is a mostly epic, collateral form of Attic ("Gē" ), and Doric ("Ga" ), perhaps identical to ("Da" ), both meaning "Earth". The word is of uncertain origin. Beekes suggested a Pre-Greek origin.


title: Gaia

text: Hesiod's "Theogony" tells how, after Chaos, "wide-bosomed" Gaia (Earth) arose to be the everlasting seat of the immortals who possess Olympus above. And after Gaia came "dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth", and next Eros the god of love. Hesiod goes on to say that Gaia brought forth her equal Uranus (Heaven, Sky) to "cover her on every side". Gaia also bore the Ourea (Mountains), and Pontus (Sea), "without sweet union of love" (i.e., with no father).


title: Gaia

text: Afterwards with Uranus, her son, she gave birth to the Titans, as Hesiod tells it:She lay with Heaven and bore deep-swirling Oceanus, Coeus and Crius and Hyperion and Iapetus, Theia and Rhea, Themis, and Mnemosyne and gold-crowned Phoebe and lovely Tethys. After them was born Cronos (Cronus) the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children, and he hated his lusty sire.


title: Gaia

text: According to Hesiod, Gaia conceived further offspring with her son, Uranus, first the giant one-eyed Cyclopes: Brontes ("Thunder"), Steropes ("Lightning"), and Arges ("Bright"); then the Hecatonchires: Cottus, Briareos, and Gyges, each with a hundred arms and fifty heads. As each of the Cyclopes and Hecatonchires were born, Uranus hid them in a secret place within Gaia, causing her great pain. So Gaia devised a plan. She created a grey flint (or adamantine) sickle. And Cronus used the sickle to castrate his father Uranus as he approached his mother, Gaia, to have sex with her. From Uranus' spilled blood, Gaia produced the Erinyes, the Giants, and the Meliae (ash-tree nymphs). From the testicles of Uranus in the sea came forth Aphrodite.


title: Gaia

text: Because Cronus had learned from Gaia and Uranus that he was destined to be overthrown by one of his children, he swallowed each of the children born to him by his Titan older sister, Rhea. But when Rhea was pregnant with her youngest child, Zeus, she sought help from Gaia and Uranus. When Zeus was born, Rhea gave Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling-clothes in his place, which Cronus swallowed, and Gaia took the child into her care.


title: Gaia

text: With the help of Gaia's advice, Zeus defeated the Titans. But afterwards, Gaia, in union with Tartarus, bore the youngest of her sons Typhon, who would be the last challenge to the authority of Zeus.


title: Gaia

text: According to Hyginus, Terra (Earth/Gaia), along with Caelus (Sky) and Mare (Sea), were the children of Aether and Dies (Hemera/Day). According to the mythographer Apollodorus, Gaia and Tartarus were the parents of Echidna.


title: Gaia

text: The god Hephaestus once attempted to rape Athena, but she pushed him away, causing him to ejaculate on her thigh. Athena wiped off the semen and threw it on the ground, which impregnated Gaia. Gaia then gave birth to Erichthonius of Athens, whom Athena adopted as her own child.


title: Gaia

text: Nonnus describes a similar myth, in which Aphrodite fled from her lustful father Zeus, who was infatuated with her. As Zeus was unable to catch Aphrodite, he gave up and dropped his semen on the ground, which impregnated Gaia. This resulted in the birth of the Cyprian Centaurs.


title: Gaia

text: Gaia resented the way Zeus had treated her children, the Titans, so she brought forth the Gigantes to fight Zeus. It was prophesied that the Gigantes, who were born from Uranus's blood, could not be killed by the gods alone, but they could be killed with the help of a mortal. Hearing this, Gaia sought for a certain plant that would protect the Gigantes even from mortals. Before Gaia or anyone else could get it, Zeus forbade Eos (Dawn), Selene (Moon) and Helios (Sun) to shine, harvested all of the plant himself, and had Athena summon the mortal Heracles, who assisted the Olympians in defeating the Gigantes.


title: Gaia

text: According to Hesiod, in his lost poem "Astronomia", Orion, while hunting with Artemis and her mother Leto, claimed that he would kill every animal on earth. Gaia, angered by his boasting, sent a giant scorpion to kill him, and after his death, he and the scorpion were placed among the stars by Zeus. According to Ovid, Gaia for some reason sent the scorpion to kill Leto instead, and Orion was killed trying to protect her.


title: Gaia

text: When Boreas, the god of the north wind, killed Pitys, an Oread nymph, for rejecting his advances and preferring Pan over him, Gaia pitied the dead girl and transformed her into a pine tree.


title: Gaia

text: Zeus hid Elara, one of his lovers, from Hera by stowing her under the earth. His son by Elara, the giant Tityos, is therefore sometimes said to be a son of Gaia, the earth goddess.


title: Gaia

text: In classical art Gaia was represented in one of two ways. In Athenian vase painting she was shown as a matronly woman only half risen from the earth, often in the act of handing the baby Erichthonius, a future king of Athens, to Athena to foster. In mosaic representations, she appears as a woman reclining upon the earth surrounded by a host of Carpi, infant gods of the fruits of the earth.


title: Gaia

text: Gaia was worshiped under the epithet "Anesidora", which means "giver of gifts". Other epithets were Calligeneia(born beautiful), Eurusternos(goddess with a broad chest), and Pandôros.


title: Gaia

text: In ancient times, Gaia was mainly worshiped alongside Demeter and as a part of the cult of Demeter and does not seem to have had a separate cult. Being a chthonic deity, black animals were sacrificed to her:


title: Gaia

text: Gaia is believed by some sources to be the original deity behind the Oracle at Delphi. It was thus said: "That word spoken from tree-clad mother Gaia's (Earth's) navel-stone [Delphoi]." Depending on the source, Gaia passed her powers on to Poseidon, Apollo, or Themis. Pausanias wrote:Many and different are the stories told about Delphi, and even more so about the oracle of Apollo. For they say that in the earliest times the oracular seat belonged to Earth, who appointed as prophetess at it Daphnis, one of the nymphs of the mountain. There is extant among the Greeks an hexameter poem, the name of which is Eumolpia, and it is assigned to Musaeus, son of Antiophemus. In it the poet states that the oracle belonged to Poseidon and Earth in common; that Earth gave her oracles herself, but Poseidon used Pyrcon as his mouthpiece in giving responses. The verses are these: "Forthwith the voice of the Earth-goddess uttered a wise word, And with her Pyrcon, servant of the renowned Earth-shaker." They say that afterwards Earth gave her share to Themis, who gave it to Apollo as a gift. It is said that he gave to Poseidon Calaureia, that lies off Troezen, in exchange for his oracle.Apollo is the best-known as the oracle power behind Delphi, long established by the time of Homer, having killed Gaia's child Python there and usurped the chthonic power. Hera punished Apollo for this by sending him to King Admetus as a shepherd for nine years. Gaia or Ge had at least three sanctuaries in Greece which were mentioned by Pausanias. There was a temple of Ge Eurusternos on the Crathis near Aegae in Achaia with "a very ancient statue":It is a journey of about thirty stades [from the stream of Krathis (Crathis) near the ruins of Aigai (Aegae) in Akhaia] to what is called the Gaion (Gaeum), a sanctuary of Ge (Earth) surnamed Eurysternos (Broad-bossomed), whose wooden image is one of the very oldest. The woman who from time to time is priestess henceforth remains chaste and before her election must not have had intercourse with more than one man. The test applied is drinking bull's blood. Any woman who may chance not to speak the truth is immediately punished as a result of this test. If several women compete for the priesthood, lots are cast for the honor.Pausanias also mention the sanctuary of Ge Gasepton in Sparta, and a sanctuary of Ge Kourotrophe (Nurse of the Young) at Athens. Aside from her temples, Gaia had altars as well as sacred spaces in the sanctuaries of other gods. Close to the sanctuary of Eileithyia in Tegea was an altar of Ge; Phlya and Myrrhinos had an altar to Ge under the name Thea Megale (Great goddess); as well as Olympia which additionally, similar to Delphi, also said to have had an oracle to Gaia: On what is called the Gaion (Gaeum, Sanctuary of Ge) [at Olympia] is an altar of Ge (Earth); it too is of ashes. In more ancient days they say that there was an oracle also of Ge (Earth) in this place. On what is called the Stomion (Mouth) the altar to Themis has been built. Her statues were naturally to be found in the temples of Demeter, such as the Temple of Demeter in Achaia: "They [the Patraians of Akhaia (Achaea)] have also a grove by the sea, affording in summer weather very agreeable walks and a pleasant means generally of passing the time. In this grove are also two temples of divinities, one of Apollon, the other of Aphrodite . . . Next to the grove is a sanctuary of Demeter; she and her daughter [Persephone] are standing, but the image of Ge (Earth) is seated." The Temple of Zeus Olympios in Athens reportedly had an enclosure of Ge Olympia: [Within the sanctuary of Zeus Olympios in the lower town of Athens:] Within the precincts are antiquities: a bronze Zeus, a temple of Kronos (Cronus) and Rhea and an enclosure of Ge (Earth) surnamed Olympia. Here the floor opens to the width of a cubit, and they say that along this bed flowed off the water after the deluge that occurred in the time of Deukalion, and into it they cast every year wheat mixed with honey . . . The ancient sanctuary of Zeus Olympios the Athenians say was built by Deukalion (Deucalion), and they cite as evidence that Deukalion lived at Athens a grave which is not far from the present temple. In Athens, there was a statue of Gaia on the Acropolis depicting her beseeching Zeus for rain as well as an image of her close to the court of the Areopagos in Athens, alongside the statues of Plouton and Hermes, "by which sacrifice those who have received an acquittal on the Areopagos".


title: Gaia

text: Some modern sources, such as Mellaart, Gimbutas, and Walker, claim that Gaia as Mother Earth is a later form of a pre-Indo-European Great Mother, venerated in Neolithic times. Her existence is a speculation and controversial in the academic community. Some modern mythographers, including Kerenyi, Ruck, and Staples, interpret the goddesses Demeter the "mother", Persephone the "daughter", and Hecate the "crone", as aspects of a former great goddess identified by some as Rhea or as Gaia herself. In Crete, a goddess was worshiped as "Potnia Theron" (the "Mistress of the Animals") or simply Potnia ("Mistress"), speculated as Rhea or Gaia; the title was later applied in Greek texts to Artemis. The mother goddess Cybele from Anatolia (modern Turkey) was partly identified by the Greeks with Gaia, but more so with Rhea.


title: Gaia

text: Beliefs and worship amongst neopagans regarding Gaia vary, ranging from the belief that Gaia is the Earth to the belief that she is the spiritual embodiment of the earth or the goddess of the Earth.


title: Gaia

text: The mythological name was revived in 1979 by James Lovelock, in "Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth". The hypothesis proposes that living organisms and inorganic material are part of a dynamical system that shapes the Earth's biosphere, and maintains the Earth as a suitable environment for life. The Earth itself is viewed as a "superorganism" with self-regulatory functions. Further books by Lovelock and others popularized the Gaia Hypothesis, which was first embraced in the 1970s by New Age environmentalists as part of the heightened awareness of environmental concerns. In the ensuing decades, ecologists and other experts, as well as Lovelock himself, confirmed and continue to discover in continually-increasing detail that the atmospheric concentration of O2, the salinity of the oceans and numerous other characteristics of Earth are self-regulated in tightly-coupled processes involving rocks, air, water and living organisms. Consequently, Lovelock's insight earned him the Royal Geographical Society Discovery Lifetime award (2001) and the Wollaston Medal (2006), the Geological Society of London's highest award, whose previous recipients include Charles Darwin; further, Lovelock was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to the study of the Science and Atmosphere in the 1990 New Year Honours and a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) for services to Global Environmental Science in the 2003 New Year Honours.


title: Gaia

text: Gaia is the personification of the Earth, and these are her offspring as related in various myths. Some are related consistently, some are mentioned only in minor variants of myths, and others are related in variants that are considered to reflect a confusion of the subject or association.


title: Database

text: In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases spans formal techniques and practical considerations, including data modeling, efficient data representation and storage, query languages, security and privacy of sensitive data, and distributed computing issues, including supporting concurrent access and fault tolerance.


title: Database

text: A database management system (DBMS) is the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and analyze the data. The DBMS software additionally encompasses the core facilities provided to administer the database. The sum total of the database, the DBMS and the associated applications can be referred to as a database system. Often the term "database" is also used loosely to refer to any of the DBMS, the database system or an application associated with the database.


title: Database

text: Computer scientists may classify database management systems according to the database models that they support. Relational databases became dominant in the 1980s. These model data as rows and columns in a series of tables, and the vast majority use SQL for writing and querying data. In the 2000s, non-relational databases became popular, collectively referred to as NoSQL, because they use different query languages.


title: Database

text: Formally, a "database" refers to a set of related data and the way it is organized. Access to this data is usually provided by a "database management system" (DBMS) consisting of an integrated set of computer software that allows users to interact with one or more databases and provides access to all of the data contained in the database (although restrictions may exist that limit access to particular data). The DBMS provides various functions that allow entry, storage and retrieval of large quantities of information and provides ways to manage how that information is organized.


title: Database

text: Because of the close relationship between them, the term "database" is often used casually to refer to both a database and the DBMS used to manipulate it.


title: Database

text: Outside the world of professional information technology, the term "database" is often used to refer to any collection of related data (such as a spreadsheet or a card index) as size and usage requirements typically necessitate use of a database management system.


title: Database

text: Existing DBMSs provide various functions that allow management of a database and its data which can be classified into four main functional groups:


title: Database

text: Both a database and its DBMS conform to the principles of a particular database model. "Database system" refers collectively to the database model, database management system, and database.


title: Database

text: Physically, database servers are dedicated computers that hold the actual databases and run only the DBMS and related software. Database servers are usually multiprocessor computers, with generous memory and RAID disk arrays used for stable storage. Hardware database accelerators, connected to one or more servers via a high-speed channel, are also used in large volume transaction processing environments. DBMSs are found at the heart of most database applications. DBMSs may be built around a custom multitasking kernel with built-in networking support, but modern DBMSs typically rely on a standard operating system to provide these functions.


title: Database

text: Since DBMSs comprise a significant market, computer and storage vendors often take into account DBMS requirements in their own development plans.


title: Database

text: Databases and DBMSs can be categorized according to the database model(s) that they support (such as relational or XML), the type(s) of computer they run on (from a server cluster to a mobile phone), the query language(s) used to access the database (such as SQL or XQuery), and their internal engineering, which affects performance, scalability, resilience, and security.


title: Database

text: The sizes, capabilities, and performance of databases and their respective DBMSs have grown in orders of magnitude. These performance increases were enabled by the technology progress in the areas of processors, computer memory, computer storage, and computer networks. The concept of a database was made possible by the emergence of direct access storage media such as magnetic disks, which became widely available in the mid-1960s; earlier systems relied on sequential storage of data on magnetic tape. The subsequent development of database technology can be divided into three eras based on data model or structure: navigational, SQL/relational, and post-relational.


title: Database

text: The two main early navigational data models were the hierarchical model and the CODASYL model (network model). These were characterized by the use of pointers (often physical disk addresses) to follow relationships from one record to another.


title: Database

text: The relational model, first proposed in 1970 by Edgar F. Codd, departed from this tradition by insisting that applications should search for data by content, rather than by following links. The relational model employs sets of ledger-style tables, each used for a different type of entity. Only in the mid-1980s did computing hardware become powerful enough to allow the wide deployment of relational systems (DBMSs plus applications). By the early 1990s, however, relational systems dominated in all large-scale data processing applications, and they remain dominant: IBM Db2, Oracle, MySQL, and Microsoft SQL Server are the most searched DBMS. The dominant database language, standardized SQL for the relational model, has influenced database languages for other data models.


title: Database

text: Object databases were developed in the 1980s to overcome the inconvenience of object–relational impedance mismatch, which led to the coining of the term "post-relational" and also the development of hybrid object–relational databases.


title: Database

text: The next generation of post-relational databases in the late 2000s became known as NoSQL databases, introducing fast key–value stores and document-oriented databases. A competing "next generation" known as NewSQL databases attempted new implementations that retained the relational/SQL model while aiming to match the high performance of NoSQL compared to commercially available relational DBMSs.


title: Database

text: The introduction of the term "database" coincided with the availability of direct-access storage (disks and drums) from the mid-1960s onwards. The term represented a contrast with the tape-based systems of the past, allowing shared interactive use rather than daily batch processing. The Oxford English Dictionary cites a 1962 report by the System Development Corporation of California as the first to use the term "data-base" in a specific technical sense.


title: Database

text: As computers grew in speed and capability, a number of general-purpose database systems emerged; by the mid-1960s a number of such systems had come into commercial use. Interest in a standard began to grow, and Charles Bachman, author of one such product, the Integrated Data Store (IDS), founded the Database Task Group within CODASYL, the group responsible for the creation and standardization of COBOL. In 1971, the Database Task Group delivered their standard, which generally became known as the "CODASYL approach", and soon a number of commercial products based on this approach entered the market.


title: Database

text: The CODASYL approach offered applications the ability to navigate around a linked data set which was formed into a large network. Applications could find records by one of three methods:


title: Database

text: Later systems added B-trees to provide alternate access paths. Many CODASYL databases also added a declarative query language for end users (as distinct from the navigational API). However, CODASYL databases were complex and required significant training and effort to produce useful applications.


title: Database

text: IBM also had its own DBMS in 1966, known as Information Management System (IMS). IMS was a development of software written for the Apollo program on the System/360. IMS was generally similar in concept to CODASYL, but used a strict hierarchy for its model of data navigation instead of CODASYL's network model. Both concepts later became known as navigational databases due to the way data was accessed: the term was popularized by Bachman's 1973 Turing Award presentation "The Programmer as Navigator". IMS is classified by IBM as a hierarchical database. IDMS and Cincom Systems' TOTAL databases are classified as network databases. IMS remains in use .


title: Database

text: Edgar F. Codd worked at IBM in San Jose, California, in one of their offshoot offices that were primarily involved in the development of hard disk systems. He was unhappy with the navigational model of the CODASYL approach, notably the lack of a "search" facility. In 1970, he wrote a number of papers that outlined a new approach to database construction that eventually culminated in the groundbreaking "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks".


title: Database

text: In this paper, he described a new system for storing and working with large databases. Instead of records being stored in some sort of linked list of free-form records as in CODASYL, Codd's idea was to organize the data as a number of "tables", each table being used for a different type of entity. Each table would contain a fixed number of columns containing the attributes of the entity. One or more columns of each table were designated as a primary key by which the rows of the table could be uniquely identified; cross-references between tables always used these primary keys, rather than disk addresses, and queries would join tables based on these key relationships, using a set of operations based on the mathematical system of relational calculus (from which the model takes its name). Splitting the data into a set of normalized tables (or "relations") aimed to ensure that each "fact" was only stored once, thus simplifying update operations. Virtual tables called "views" could present the data in different ways for different users, but views could not be directly updated.


title: Database

text: Codd used mathematical terms to define the model: relations, tuples, and domains rather than tables, rows, and columns. The terminology that is now familiar came from early implementations. Codd would later criticize the tendency for practical implementations to depart from the mathematical foundations on which the model was based.


title: Database

text: The use of primary keys (user-oriented identifiers) to represent cross-table relationships, rather than disk addresses, had two primary motivations. From an engineering perspective, it enabled tables to be relocated and resized without expensive database reorganization. But Codd was more interested in the difference in semantics: the use of explicit identifiers made it easier to define update operations with clean mathematical definitions, and it also enabled query operations to be defined in terms of the established discipline of first-order predicate calculus; because these operations have clean mathematical properties, it becomes possible to rewrite queries in provably correct ways, which is the basis of query optimization. There is no loss of expressiveness compared with the hierarchic or network models, though the connections between tables are no longer so explicit.


title: Database

text: In the hierarchic and network models, records were allowed to have a complex internal structure. For example, the salary history of an employee might be represented as a "repeating group" within the employee record. In the relational model, the process of normalization led to such internal structures being replaced by data held in multiple tables, connected only by logical keys.


title: Database

text: For instance, a common use of a database system is to track information about users, their name, login information, various addresses and phone numbers. In the navigational approach, all of this data would be placed in a single variable-length record. In the relational approach, the data would be "normalized" into a user table, an address table and a phone number table (for instance). Records would be created in these optional tables only if the address or phone numbers were actually provided.


title: Database

text: As well as identifying rows/records using logical identifiers rather than disk addresses, Codd changed the way in which applications assembled data from multiple records. Rather than requiring applications to gather data one record at a time by navigating the links, they would use a declarative query language that expressed what data was required, rather than the access path by which it should be found. Finding an efficient access path to the data became the responsibility of the database management system, rather than the application programmer. This process, called query optimization, depended on the fact that queries were expressed in terms of mathematical logic.


title: Database

text: Codd's paper was picked up by two people at Berkeley, Eugene Wong and Michael Stonebraker. They started a project known as INGRES using funding that had already been allocated for a geographical database project and student programmers to produce code. Beginning in 1973, INGRES delivered its first test products which were generally ready for widespread use in 1979. INGRES was similar to System R in a number of ways, including the use of a "language" for data access, known as QUEL. Over time, INGRES moved to the emerging SQL standard.


title: Database

text: IBM itself did one test implementation of the relational model, PRTV, and a production one, Business System 12, both now discontinued. Honeywell wrote MRDS for Multics, and now there are two new implementations: Alphora Dataphor and Rel. Most other DBMS implementations usually called "relational" are actually SQL DBMSs.


title: Database

text: In 1970, the University of Michigan began development of the MICRO Information Management System based on D.L. Childs' Set-Theoretic Data model. MICRO was used to manage very large data sets by the US Department of Labor, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and researchers from the University of Alberta, the University of Michigan, and Wayne State University. It ran on IBM mainframe computers using the Michigan Terminal System. The system remained in production until 1998.


title: Database

text: In the 1970s and 1980s, attempts were made to build database systems with integrated hardware and software. The underlying philosophy was that such integration would provide higher performance at a lower cost. Examples were IBM System/38, the early offering of Teradata, and the Britton Lee, Inc. database machine.


title: Database

text: Another approach to hardware support for database management was ICL's CAFS accelerator, a hardware disk controller with programmable search capabilities. In the long term, these efforts were generally unsuccessful because specialized database machines could not keep pace with the rapid development and progress of general-purpose computers. Thus most database systems nowadays are software systems running on general-purpose hardware, using general-purpose computer data storage. However, this idea is still pursued in certain applications by some companies like Netezza and Oracle (Exadata).


title: Database

text: IBM started working on a prototype system loosely based on Codd's concepts as "System R" in the early 1970s. The first version was ready in 1974/5, and work then started on multi-table systems in which the data could be split so that all of the data for a record (some of which is optional) did not have to be stored in a single large "chunk". Subsequent multi-user versions were tested by customers in 1978 and 1979, by which time a standardized query language – SQL – had been added. Codd's ideas were establishing themselves as both workable and superior to CODASYL, pushing IBM to develop a true production version of System R, known as "SQL/DS", and, later, "Database 2" (IBM Db2).


title: Database

text: Larry Ellison's Oracle Database (or more simply, Oracle) started from a different chain, based on IBM's papers on System R. Though Oracle V1 implementations were completed in 1978, it wasn't until Oracle Version 2 when Ellison beat IBM to market in 1979.


title: Database

text: Stonebraker went on to apply the lessons from INGRES to develop a new database, Postgres, which is now known as PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL is often used for global mission-critical applications (the .org and .info domain name registries use it as their primary data store, as do many large companies and financial institutions).


title: Database

text: In Sweden, Codd's paper was also read and Mimer SQL was developed in the mid-1970s at Uppsala University. In 1984, this project was consolidated into an independent enterprise.


title: Database

text: Another data model, the entity–relationship model, emerged in 1976 and gained popularity for database design as it emphasized a more familiar description than the earlier relational model. Later on, entity–relationship constructs were retrofitted as a data modeling construct for the relational model, and the difference between the two has become irrelevant.


title: Database

text: The 1980s ushered in the age of desktop computing. The new computers empowered their users with spreadsheets like Lotus 1-2-3 and database software like dBASE. The dBASE product was lightweight and easy for any computer user to understand out of the box. C. Wayne Ratliff, the creator of dBASE, stated: "dBASE was different from programs like BASIC, C, FORTRAN, and COBOL in that a lot of the dirty work had already been done. The data manipulation is done by dBASE instead of by the user, so the user can concentrate on what he is doing, rather than having to mess with the dirty details of opening, reading, and closing files, and managing space allocation." dBASE was one of the top selling software titles in the 1980s and early 1990s.


title: Database

text: The 1990s, along with a rise in object-oriented programming, saw a growth in how data in various databases were handled. Programmers and designers began to treat the data in their databases as objects. That is to say that if a person's data were in a database, that person's attributes, such as their address, phone number, and age, were now considered to belong to that person instead of being extraneous data. This allows for relations between data to be related to objects and their attributes and not to individual fields. The term "object–relational impedance mismatch" described the inconvenience of translating between programmed objects and database tables. Object databases and object–relational databases attempt to solve this problem by providing an object-oriented language (sometimes as extensions to SQL) that programmers can use as alternative to purely relational SQL. On the programming side, libraries known as object–relational mappings (ORMs) attempt to solve the same problem.


title: Database

text: XML databases are a type of structured document-oriented database that allows querying based on XML document attributes. XML databases are mostly used in applications where the data is conveniently viewed as a collection of documents, with a structure that can vary from the very flexible to the highly rigid: examples include scientific articles, patents, tax filings, and personnel records.


title: Database

text: NoSQL databases are often very fast, do not require fixed table schemas, avoid join operations by storing denormalized data, and are designed to scale horizontally.


title: Database

text: In recent years, there has been a strong demand for massively distributed databases with high partition tolerance, but according to the CAP theorem, it is impossible for a distributed system to simultaneously provide consistency, availability, and partition tolerance guarantees. A distributed system can satisfy any two of these guarantees at the same time, but not all three. For that reason, many NoSQL databases are using what is called eventual consistency to provide both availability and partition tolerance guarantees with a reduced level of data consistency.


title: Database

text: NewSQL is a class of modern relational databases that aims to provide the same scalable performance of NoSQL systems for online transaction processing (read-write) workloads while still using SQL and maintaining the ACID guarantees of a traditional database system.


title: Database

text: Databases are used to support internal operations of organizations and to underpin online interactions with customers and suppliers (see Enterprise software).


title: Database

text: Databases are used to hold administrative information and more specialized data, such as engineering data or economic models. Examples include computerized library systems, flight reservation systems, computerized parts inventory systems, and many content management systems that store websites as collections of webpages in a database.


title: Database

text: One way to classify databases involves the type of their contents, for example: bibliographic, document-text, statistical, or multimedia objects. Another way is by their application area, for example: accounting, music compositions, movies, banking, manufacturing, or insurance. A third way is by some technical aspect, such as the database structure or interface type. This section lists a few of the adjectives used to characterize different kinds of databases.


title: Database

text: Connolly and Begg define database management system (DBMS) as a "software system that enables users to define, create, maintain and control access to the database". Examples of DBMS's include MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, and Microsoft Access.


title: Database

text: The DBMS acronym is sometimes extended to indicate the underlying database model, with RDBMS for the relational, OODBMS for the object (oriented) and ORDBMS for the object–relational model. Other extensions can indicate some other characteristics, such as DDBMS for a distributed database management systems.


title: Database

text: The functionality provided by a DBMS can vary enormously. The core functionality is the storage, retrieval and update of data. Codd proposed the following functions and services a fully-fledged general purpose DBMS should provide:


title: Database

text: It is also generally to be expected the DBMS will provide a set of utilities for such purposes as may be necessary to administer the database effectively, including import, export, monitoring, defragmentation and analysis utilities. The core part of the DBMS interacting between the database and the application interface sometimes referred to as the database engine.


title: Database

text: Often DBMSs will have configuration parameters that can be statically and dynamically tuned, for example the maximum amount of main memory on a server the database can use. The trend is to minimize the amount of manual configuration, and for cases such as embedded databases the need to target zero-administration is paramount.


title: Database

text: The large major enterprise DBMSs have tended to increase in size and functionality and have involved up to thousands of human years of development effort throughout their lifetime.


title: Database

text: Early multi-user DBMS typically only allowed for the application to reside on the same computer with access via terminals or terminal emulation software. The client–server architecture was a development where the application resided on a client desktop and the database on a server allowing the processing to be distributed. This evolved into a multitier architecture incorporating application servers and web servers with the end user interface via a web browser with the database only directly connected to the adjacent tier.


title: Database

text: A general-purpose DBMS will provide public application programming interfaces (API) and optionally a processor for database languages such as SQL to allow applications to be written to interact with and manipulate the database. A special purpose DBMS may use a private API and be specifically customized and linked to a single application. For example, an email system performs many of the functions of a general-purpose DBMS such as message insertion, message deletion, attachment handling, blocklist lookup, associating messages an email address and so forth however these functions are limited to what is required to handle email.


title: Database

text: External interaction with the database will be via an application program that interfaces with the DBMS. This can range from a database tool that allows users to execute SQL queries textually or graphically, to a website that happens to use a database to store and search information.


title: Database

text: A programmer will code interactions to the database (sometimes referred to as a datasource) via an application program interface (API) or via a database language. The particular API or language chosen will need to be supported by DBMS, possibly indirectly via a preprocessor or a bridging API. Some API's aim to be database independent, ODBC being a commonly known example. Other common API's include JDBC and ADO.NET.


title: Database

text: Database languages are special-purpose languages, which allow one or more of the following tasks, sometimes distinguished as sublanguages:


title: Database

text: Database storage is the container of the physical materialization of a database. It comprises the "internal" (physical) "level" in the database architecture. It also contains all the information needed (e.g., metadata, "data about the data", and internal data structures) to reconstruct the "conceptual level" and "external level" from the internal level when needed. Databases as digital objects contain three layers of information which must be stored: the data, the structure, and the semantics. Proper storage of all three layers is needed for future preservation and longevity of the database. Putting data into permanent storage is generally the responsibility of the database engine a.k.a. "storage engine". Though typically accessed by a DBMS through the underlying operating system (and often using the operating systems' file systems as intermediates for storage layout), storage properties and configuration settings are extremely important for the efficient operation of the DBMS, and thus are closely maintained by database administrators. A DBMS, while in operation, always has its database residing in several types of storage (e.g., memory and external storage). The database data and the additional needed information, possibly in very large amounts, are coded into bits. Data typically reside in the storage in structures that look completely different from the way the data look at the conceptual and external levels, but in ways that attempt to optimize (the best possible) these levels' reconstruction when needed by users and programs, as well as for computing additional types of needed information from the data (e.g., when querying the database).


title: Database

text: Some DBMSs support specifying which character encoding was used to store data, so multiple encodings can be used in the same database.


title: Database

text: Various low-level database storage structures are used by the storage engine to serialize the data model so it can be written to the medium of choice. Techniques such as indexing may be used to improve performance. Conventional storage is row-oriented, but there are also column-oriented and correlation databases.


title: Database

text: Often storage redundancy is employed to increase performance. A common example is storing "materialized views", which consist of frequently needed "external views" or query results. Storing such views saves the expensive computing them each time they are needed. The downsides of materialized views are the overhead incurred when updating them to keep them synchronized with their original updated database data, and the cost of storage redundancy.


title: Database

text: Occasionally a database employs storage redundancy by database objects replication (with one or more copies) to increase data availability (both to improve performance of simultaneous multiple end-user accesses to the same database object, and to provide resiliency in a case of partial failure of a distributed database). Updates of a replicated object need to be synchronized across the object copies. In many cases, the entire database is replicated.


title: Database

text: With data virtualization, the data used remains in its original locations and real-time access is established to allow analytics across multiple sources. This can aid in resolving some technical difficulties such as compatibility problems when combining data from various platforms, lowering the risk of error caused by faulty data, and guaranteeing that the newest data is used. Furthermore, avoiding the creation of a new database containing personal information can make it easier to comply with privacy regulations. However, with data virtualization, the connection to all necessary data sources must be operational as there is no local copy of the data, which is one of the main drawbacks of the approach.