CS 377

Database Systems

Relational Algebra and Calculus

Li Xiong
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Emory University

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ER Diagram of Company Database

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Relational Algebra and Relational Calculus

Previous lecture on relational model presented the structures and
constraints for the relational model

Relational Algebra
 Formal foundation for relational model operations
 Basis for implementing and optimizing queries in RDBMS
 Basis for practical query languages such as SQL

Relational Calculus
 Formal declarative language for relational queries

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 Outline

Relational Algebra
 Unary Relational Operations
 Relational Algebra Operations From Set Theory
 Binary Relational Operations
 Additional Relational Operations

Relational Calculus
 Tuple Relational Calculus
 Domain Relational Calculus

Coming up
 SQL

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 Relational Algebra

Relational algebra is a mathematical language with a basic
set of operations for manipulating relations.

A relational algebra operation operates on one or more
relations and results a new relation, which can be further
manipulated using operations of the same algebra.

A relational algebra expression is a sequence of relational
algebra operations.

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Relational Algebra Operations

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 Unary Relational Operations - Select

SELECT Operation: select a subset of the tuples from a relation that satisfy a
selection condition.

Example: To select the EMPLOYEE tuples whose department number is four or
those whose salary is greater than $30,000 the following notation is used:
σDNO = 4 (EMPLOYEE)
σSALARY > 30,000 (EMPLOYEE)

Notation: σ <selection condition>(R)

Selection condition is a Boolean expression containing clauses in the form:
<attribute name> <comparison op> <constant value>
<attribute name> <comparison op> <attribute name>

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 SELECT Operation Properties
 The SELECT operation σ <selection condition>(R) produces a relation S that has the
same schema as R

 The SELECT operation σ is commutative; i.e.,

σ <condition1>(σ
σ < condition2> ( R)) = σ <condition2> (σ
σ < condition1> ( R))

 A cascaded SELECT operation may be applied in any order; i.e.,

σ <condition1>(σ
σ < condition2> (σ
σ <condition3> ( R))
= σ <condition2> (σ
σ < condition3> (σ
σ < condition1> ( R)))

 A cascaded SELECT operation may be replaced by a single selection with a

conjunction of all the conditions; i.e.,
σ <condition1>(σ
σ < condition2> (σ
σ <condition3> ( R))
= σ <condition1> AND < condition2> AND < condition3> ( R)))

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 Unary Relational Operations - Project

PROJECT Operation: selects certain columns from the table and discards the
other columns.

Example: To list each employee’s first and last name and salary
π LNAME, FNAME,SALARY (EMPLOYEE)

Notation: π<attribute list>(R)

Duplicate Elimination: the project operation removes any duplicate tuples, so the
result of the project operation is a set of tuples

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PROJECT Operation Properties
 The number of tuples in π <list> (R) is always less or equal to
the number of tuples in R
 If the list of attributes includes a key of R, then the number
of tuples is equal to the number of tuples in R
 π <list1> (π <list2> (R) ) = π <list1> (R) as long as <list2> contains
the attributes in <list1>

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 Sequences of Operations and the
RENAME Operation

In-line expression:

Sequence of operations:

Rename attributes in intermediate results

RENAME operation

Examples
 ρ DEPT5_EMPS (σDNO = 5 (EMPLOYEE))
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 Relational Algebra Operations From
Set Theory

UNION Operation: denoted by R ∪ S, is a relation that includes all tuples
that are either in R or in S or in both R and S.
 Duplicate tuples are eliminated.

INTERSECTION operation: denoted by R ∩ S, is a relation that includes
all tuples that are in both R and S.

Set Difference (or MINUS) Operation: denoted by R - S, is a relation
that includes all tuples that are in R but not in S.

Type Compatibility: The two operands must be “type compatible”.
 The operands R(A1, A2, ..., An) and S(B1, B2, ..., Bn) must have
the same number of attributes, and the domains of corresponding
attributes must be compatible; that is, dom(Ai)=dom(Bi) for i=1,
2, ..., n.
 The resulting relation for R∪S, R ∩ S, or R-S has the same
attribute names as R (by convention).

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 Relational Algebra Operations From
Set Theory - Properties

Notice that both union and intersection are commutative operations; that is
R ∪ S = S ∪ R, and R ∩ S = S ∩ R

Both union and intersection can be treated as n-ary operations applicable to

any number of relations as both are associative operations; that is
R ∪ (S ∪ T) = (R ∪ S) ∪ T, and (R ∩ S) ∩ T = R ∩ (S ∩ T)

The minus operation is not commutative; that is, in general

R-S≠S–R

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 Relational Algebra Operations From Set
Theory – Cartesian Product

CARTESIAN (or cross product) Operation: combine tuples from two

relations. In general, the result of R(A1, A2, . . ., An) x S(B1, B2, . . ., Bm) is a
relation Q with degree n + m attributes Q(A1, A2, . . ., An, B1, B2, . . ., Bm), in
that order. The resulting relation Q has one tuple for each combination of
tuples—one from R and one from S.
 Hence, if R has nR tuples (denoted as |R| = nR ), and S has nS tuples, then
| R x S | will have nR * nS tuples.
 The two operands do NOT have to be "type compatible”

Example:
FEMALE_EMPS ← σ SEX=’F’(EMPLOYEE)
EMPNAMES ← π FNAME, LNAME, SSN (FEMALE_EMPS)

EMP_DEPENDENTS ← EMPNAMES x DEPENDENT

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FEMALE_EMPS ← σ SEX=’F’(EMPLOYEE)
EMPNAMES ← π FNAME, LNAME, SSN (FEMALE_EMPS)
EMP_DEPENDENTS ← EMPNAMES x DEPENDENT
 Binary Relational Operations - Join

JOIN Operation: the sequence of cartesian product followed by
select

Notation: R <join condition>S
where R and S can be any relations that result from general relational algebra
expressions.

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ACTUAL_DEPENDENTS ← EMPNAMES SSN=ESSN
DEPENDENTS
Retrieve the department and the manager’s information:

DEPT_MGR ← DEPARTMENT MGRSSN=SSN

EMPLOYEE
 Variations of Join

EQUIJOIN Operation
 Involves join conditions with equality comparisons only.
 The result always have one or more pairs of attributes (whose names need not be
identical) that have identical values in every tuple.

NATURAL JOIN Operation *
 Gets rid of the second (superfluous) attribute in an EQUIJOIN condition.
 Requires the two join attributes, or each pair of corresponding join attributes, have
the same name in both relations.
 If this is not the case, a renaming operation is applied first.

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Proj_Dept <- Project * Department
Dept_Locs <- Department * Dept_Locations

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 Additional Relational Operations –
Outer Join

In NATURAL JOIN tuples without a matching (or related) tuple are
eliminated from the join result. Tuples with null in the join attributes are
also eliminated.

Outer joins can be used when we want to keep all the tuples in R or S,
regardless of whether or not they have matching tuples in the other relation.

The left outer join operation keeps every tuple in the first or left relation R
in R S; if no matching tuple is found in S, then the attributes of S in
the join result are filled or “padded” with null values.

The right outer join, keeps every tuple in the second or right relation S in the
result of R S.

A third operation, full outer join, denoted by keeps all tuples in
both the left and the right relations

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 Outer Join Example
EMPLOYEE left outer join (SSN=Mgr_SSN) DEPARTMENT

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Binary Relational Operations - Division

DIVISION Operation: R(Z) ÷ S(X), where X subset Z.

Example: retrieve the SSN of employees who work on all the
projects that ‘John Smith’ is working on

Let Y = Z - X (and hence Z = X ∪ Y). The result of DIVISION
is a relation T(Y) that includes a tuple t if tuples tR appear in R
with tR [Y] = t, and with tR [X] = ts for every tuple ts in S.
 For a tuple t to appear in the result T of the DIVISION, the values in t
must appear in R in combination with every tuple in S.

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