Jump Start MySQL

Chapter 2Storing Data

Data stored in a relational database is organized into tables. A database table organizes data in a grid-like fashion, where each entry forms a row and each column identifies a specific value in the entry. To illustrate this, here’s a table showing the number of medals won by each of the top five medal-winning countries that participated in the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. Each row lists the country’s name, how many gold medals, silver medals, and bronze medals were won, and the total number of medals won.

Country	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
Russia	13	11	9	33
United States	9	7	12	28
Norway	11	5	10	26
Canada	10	10	5	25
Netherlands	8	7	9	24

A table like the one above is “physical” in that we can see it printed in a book or drawn on a whiteboard. It’s limited ...