Appendix A. SQL fundamentals
A table, with its rows and columns, is a familiar sight to anyone who has worked with an SQL database. Sometimes you'll see tables referred to as relations, rows as tuples, and columns as attributes. This is the language of the relational data model, the mathematical model that SQL databases (imperfectly) implement.
The relational model allows you to define data structures and constraints that guarantee the integrity of your data (for example, by disallowing values that don't accord with your business rules). The relational model also defines the relational operations of restriction, projection, Cartesian product, and relational join [Codd, 1970]. These operations let you do useful things with your data, such as ...
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