A structured approach based on the concepts of abstraction levels and its further decomposition is proposed for the analysis, design and architectures concerned with automated data dictionary systems (DDS). The approach specifies three main structured levels: logical structure level; internal structure level and environment structure level. Two things are presented (a) an overview of DDS (being a new technique in the field of information systems) together with the current state of the art. (b) a description of the logical structure level (i.e. identification of entities and interfaces relevant to the level. The results come in the form of a minimal structure (called model) for the DDS which is extendible to cover different areas concerned with the users of DDS.