1. What types of data does the DBMS support?
2. Does it support NULLS?
3. What about Primary and Foreign Keys?
4.Can you specify an index that is unique and then have the system enforce that?
5. Does the DBMS support views?
6. What type of data dictionary does the DBMS provide - is it independent or integrated, in its association to a DBMS?
7. Is it a simple catalog or is it more sophisticated with information about the types of programs that can access it?
8. is it integrated with the non-procedural language?
9. Does the DBMS support concurrent update (more than one user updating the database)?
10. What is the unit that can be locked (field, row, table, etc.)?
11.Are locks exclusive or shared? (Shared locks allow other users to read the data: with an exclusive lock, no other user can access the data in any way).
12.Does the DBMS resolve deadlocks or must the programs do this?
13.Does the database support replication?
14.If so, does the DBMS allow partial replicas (copies of only selected rows and fields from tables), and how does the DBMS handle updates from two or more replicas?
15.Can the DBMS distribute a database? (Divide into segments split over more than one sever).
16. Does the DBMS provide procedural support for distributed databases?
17.What limitations exist with respect to the number of tables, fields and rows per tables?
18. How many files can be open at the same time? (In some DBMS's, each table and index is considered to be a separate file. Thus, a single table with three indexes, all in use at the same time, would account for four files).
19. What type of operating system and hardware is supported?
20. What types of LAN's can you use? (In a LAN, concurrent update is critical as many users may be updating the database at the same time).
20.How well does the DBMS perform, where performance is a measure of how rapidly the DBMS completes it's tasks?
21.Does the organisation have internal benchmarking standards to be met?
22. Does the DBMS provide a performance monitor to measure the different types of performance whilst the DBMS is running?
