Relational Databases

The Relational
Model

Jennifer Widom
 The Relational Model
 Used by all major commercial database systems
 Very simple model
 Query with high-level languages: simple yet expressive
 Efficient implementations

Jennifer Widom
 The Relational Model
Database
Schema
Schema
Key
NULL – =structural
set value
– –attribute
special of named
structural
whose relations
description
description
value
for ofof(or
is unique
“unknown” tables)
relations
eachinin
relations
orin database
tuple
“undefined”database
Each relation
Instance has a contents
=actual
actual set of named attributes (or columns)
Instance
Or set of –attributes contents atatgiven
given
whose combined point
point inintime
values time
are unique
Each tuple (or row) has a value for each attribute
Each attribute has a type (or domain)

Jennifer Widom
 The Relational Model
Creating relations (tables) in SQL
Create Table Student(ID, name, GPA, photo)

Create Table College

(name string, state char(2), enrollment integer)

Jennifer Widom
 The Relational Model
 Used by all major commercial database systems
 Very simple model
 Query with high-level languages: simple yet expressive
 Efficient implementations

Jennifer Widom