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The Relational Database Model

The relational database model was invented in 1969 by Dr. E. F. Codd and has become the most widely used database model. It stores data in tables composed of records and attributes. Each record is uniquely identified. Relationships between tables can be one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many. Data is retrieved using SQL. Advantages include built-in integrity, logical and physical independence, consistent accurate data, and easy retrieval from single or related tables. Other models include object databases for unique item retrieval and object-relational databases combining aspects of relational and object models.

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57 views

The Relational Database Model

The relational database model was invented in 1969 by Dr. E. F. Codd and has become the most widely used database model. It stores data in tables composed of records and attributes. Each record is uniquely identified. Relationships between tables can be one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many. Data is retrieved using SQL. Advantages include built-in integrity, logical and physical independence, consistent accurate data, and easy retrieval from single or related tables. Other models include object databases for unique item retrieval and object-relational databases combining aspects of relational and object models.

Uploaded by

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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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The Relational Database Model

The relational database model was first conceived in 1969 and has arguably become
the most widely used database model in database management today. It was
invented by an IBM researcher named Dr. E. F. Codd, who was looking for new
ways to handle large amounts of data. He applied the discipline and structures of
mathematics to all the database-related problems and the relational database model
was born.
A relational database stores data in relations, which the user perceives as tables.
Each relation is composed of records (table rows) and attributes (table fields). The
physical order of the records or fields in a table is completely immaterial, and each
record in the table is identified by a field that contains a unique value. These are the
two characteristics of a relational database that allow the data to exist independently
of the way it is physically stored in the computer. As such, a user isn't required to
know the physical location of a record in order to retrieve its data. This is unlike the
hierarchical and network database models, in which knowing the layout of the
structures is crucial to retrieving data.

Figure 1.3. Examples of related tables in a relational database.


The relational model categorizes relationships as one-to-one, one-to-many, and
many-to-many. As long as a user is familiar with the relationships among the tables
in the database, he can access data in an almost unlimited number of ways. He can
access data from tables that are directly related and from tables that are indirectly
related. You retrieve data in a relational database by using Structured Query
Language (SQL). SQL is the standard language used to create, modify, maintain,
and query relational databases.
Note: All the new terms listed in the previous paragraph (relationship types, SQL etc) are
explained in later lectures.

The relational database provides a number of advantages over previous models,


such as the following:
Built-in Integrity. Data integrity is built into the model to ensure the accuracy of the
data, to ensure that records are not duplicated, to detect missing key values, to
ensure that the relationship between a pair of tables is valid and at the business level
to ensure that the data is accurate in terms of the business itself.
Logical and physical data independence. Neither changes a user makes to the
logical design of the database, nor changes a database software vendor makes to
the physical implementation of the database, will affect the applications built upon
the database.
Guaranteed data consistency and accuracy. Data is consistent and accurate due
to the various levels of integrity you can impose within the database.
Easy data retrieval. At the user's command, data can be retrieved either from a
particular table or from any number of related tables within the database. This
enables a user to view information in an almost unlimited number of ways.
You'll learn more about the relational database model and understand the concept
better as you work through the design process presented in this course.

Other Database Models


The Object database model. An object database model provides a three-
dimensional structure to data where any item in a database can be retrieved from
any point very rapidly. Whereas the relational database model lends itself to retrieval
of groups of records in two dimensions, the object database model is efficient for
finding unique items. Consequently, the object database model performs poorly
when retrieving more than a single item, at which the relational database model is
proficient.
The Object-Relational database model. The object database model is somewhat
spherical in nature, allowing access to unique elements anywhere within a database
structure, with extremely high performance. The object database model performs
extremely poorly when retrieving more than a single data item. The relational
database model, on the other hand, contains records of data in tables across two
dimensions. The relational database model is best suited for retrieval of groups of
data, but can also be used to access unique data items fairly efficiently. The object-
relational database model was created in answer to conflicting capabilities of
relational and object database models. It attempts to include the most readily
accountable aspects of the object database model into the structure of the relational
database model, with varying (and sometimes dubious) degrees of success.

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