Database, Table, Record

DATABASE

consists of an organized collection of data for one or more uses, typically in digital form. One way of classifying databases involves the type of their contents, for example: bibliographic, document-text, statistical. Digital databases are managed using database management systems, which store database contents, allowing data creation and maintenance, and search and other access.

TABLE

In relational databases and flat file databases, a table is a set of data elements (values) that is organized using a model of vertical columns (which are identified by their name) and horizontal rows. A table has a specified number of columns, but can have any number of rows. Each row is identified by the values appearing in a particular column subset which has been identified as acandidate key.

Table is another term forrelations; although there is the difference in that a table is usually a multi-set (bag) of rows whereas a relation is a set and does not allow duplicates. Besides the actual data rows, tables generally have associated with them somemeta-information, such asconstraints on the table or on the values within particular columns.]

RECORD

In the context of a relational database, a row—also called arecord or tuple—represents a single, implicitly structured dataitem in a table. In simple terms, a database table can be thought of as consisting of rowsand columns or fields. Each row in a table represents a set of related data, and every row in the table has the same structure.

For example, in a table that represents companies, each row would represent a single company. Columns might represent things like company name, company street address, whether the company is publicly held, its VAT number, etc.. In a table that represents the association of employees with departments, each row would associate one employee with one department.

The implicit structure of a row, and the meaning of the data values in a row, requires that the row be understood as providing a succession of data values, one in each column of the table. The row is then interpreted as a relvarcomposed of a set of tuples, with each tuple consisting of the two items: the name of the relevant column and the value this row provides for that column.