Chapter 1. Basic Concepts
So, what is this mythical creature called a relational database? Briefly, a database is a tool for storing and manipulating information efficiently and effectively. “Efficiently and effectively” means that the data is protected from accidental loss or corruption, that it doesn’t use more resources (human or computer) than necessary, and that it can be retrieved in sensible ways within acceptable performance constraints. To qualify as relational, the database must implement the relational model, which is a way of describing some aspect of the real world according to a set of rules first proposed by Dr. E. F. Codd in the late 1960s.
In theory, a relational database could be coded from scratch, but in reality you’ll normally ...
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