3.1 Relational Model Concepts
The relational model represents the database as a collection of relations. Informally, each relation resembles a table of values or,to some extent,a flat file of records.It is called a flat file because each record has a simple linear or flat structure. For example, the database of files that was shown in Figure 1.2 is similar to the basic relational model representation. However, there are important differences between relations and files,as we shall soon see. When a relation is thought of as a table of values,each row in the table represents a collection of related data values. A row represents a fact that typically corresponds to a real-world entity or relationship.The table name and column names are used to help to interpret the meaning of the values in each row. For example, the first table of Figure 1.2is called STUDENT because each row represents facts about a particular
student entity.The column names—Name, Student_number, Class,and Major—specify how to interpret the data values in each row, based on the column each value is in.All values in a column are of the same data type. In the formal relational model terminology,a row is called a tuple, a column header is called an attribute, and the table is called a relation. The data type describing the types of values that can appear in each column is represented by a domain of possible values. We now define these terms—domain, tuple, attribute, and relation— formally.